January – June 2014
ArchiCAD Training – Coaching Call – February 18, 2014
Thank you for visiting the Best Practices Course website. The video lessons are available for members only. If you are an active member and would like to watch the ArchiCAD training video on this page, please login to the website. If you are not currently a member, please visit the following pages for more information and to sign up for the Best Practices Course, the QuickStart Course or for the Best Practices ArchiCAD Coaching Program. Eric Bobrow, Creator of the Best Practices Course
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 ArchiCAD Training Session Notes

QUESTION ANSWER SUMMARY AND NOTES START TIME
Pens and colors. Placing custom colored fills. Options>Element Attributes>Pens & Colors, pick a pen, double click on it and adjust it’s color then click OK. This will not update to the custom color on the layout sheet because the source view with the custom color was not saved. You can go back to the custom color. You can go back to the pen set and store the custom color with a new name. You can switch your colors by opening Quick Options (button on lower right of screen) you can make changes to the pen selection. Apply the pen set you want and then save the view so that it will save on the layout book. You may need to change the pen set on the drawing on your layout too. Quick Options changes are temporary and must be saved if you want to keep them. 0:10:30
Stair geometry. How to make stairs fan out at the bottom. There are two types of stairs, objects from the library or created stairs from Stair Maker. Go to stair tool. The library stairs do not have as much flexibility. Select Create Stair for one that is not a library object. Choose stair (verses ramp) and select your shape. The dialogue box will come up and give you controls on what it will look like that you can choose, but nothing about geometry. The geometry is chosen in the basic shape you select at first. If you want a shape that different from the standard shapes available, create a fill in the shape you want and place a line extending the length of the shape then go the Design>Create Stair Using Selection. To use this you have to have a fill and line chosen. AC will create a unique stair shape based on your fill shape. You can edit it from there as you do other stairs. You can also create stairs with the slab tool. 0:24:55
Problems with the geometry of the underside of stairs in the Create Stairs function of Stair Maker. Sometimes with Stair Maker you need to lock certain parameters such as Story to Story height and width and other sub-settings such as the tread height and width. For the underside there are options for the thickness of the stair body, and if it is going to be at the landing level or below the landing. There may be options for the shape of the stair. If your stair is not functioning properly (possibly corrupt) you may need to start over. If you are creating complex stairs a lot you could buy CAD Image Stairs from CAD Image. It is more flexible and faster and more automated. You can also create a morph in AC. You might use Solid Element Operations to clean up the underside of the stairs too. 0:34:52
Presentation images on layout sheets In plan you can’t create shadows in plan view in AC, but you can work with a top down 3D view and generate shadows. You can then put that view on a sheet or you can copy the shadows and paste them onto a plan view. You can do this in elevation as well. This is a hybrid of 2D and 3D that you create. You can take also take a top down view in 3D but not from parallel so the walls would have some foreshortening. Depending on how you set your camera it can be a more subtle 3D effect. In AC 17 you can use cutaways and choose how much to see and hide. You can also use sketch views for presentation. To create your view go to View>3D View Options>3D Projection Settings and choose which view you want from the options. Choose a top down view and it will look the same as a floor plan. The go to View>Elements in 3D View>3D Window Settings and choose sun shadows. You may need to adjust the amount of sun and ambient light and angle of the sun to get correct shadows. Now go to Marquee tool and select your drawing using the flat marquee tool to select what you are looking at on screen. Copy the screen shot then paste into the floor plan. It is not sized properly but can be re-sized. A better method is to go back to your 3D view and change it to Internal Engine to be able to select the shadows separate from the materials. Copy a Drawing and choose None for Construction Elements and Polygons for Shadows. Then paste into your plan and it will paste in place as fills. You can instead go to View>Elements in 3D View>3D Cutting Plane and use the tool to select what elements to view and it will cut everything else away. You can do this for a site plan too for shadows for trees and other site elements.You can choose to turn off the cutting plane. 0:45:37
Trimming a wall to a roof Basic correction if your walls are sticking up above roof is to select your wall or walls and roof then right click and choose Connect>Trim Elements to Roof/Shell. An issue can come up if your wall elements are made of stronger materials than your roof. You can use Solid Element Operations to trim the wall but it does not give you a clean section with elements cut in a complex fashion. You can also change the walls to composite elements, select the walls and roof, right click and choose Connect>Merge Elements. Then to the Trim Elements to Roof/Shell. This makes the sections well for cleaning up with each other. If they still need adjusting in Section you can select the wall and roof and go to Building Materials and give the roof greater priority than the wall materials. Sometimes you need to make copies of materials so they don’t merge when one is in a wall and one is a roof and you want to show them as separate. 1:13:59
Do complex profiles work with EcoDesigner? Eric’s guess is that it would because it is a complex profile made of building materials not fills. Each skin would be defined as a building material. You can not put two walls next to eachother. EcoDesigner is designed for Architects not Energy Specialists so it has its limitations. 1:35:22

 

ArchiCAD Training – Coaching Call – February 18, 2014

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