Best Practices Course – Week 8 Part 1 – © copyright 2012 by Eric Bobrow

BEST PRACTICES COURSE – WEEK 8 – ArchiCAD’s Structure: The Navigator, Part 1

PART 1 – The Project Map and the View Map

Hello, this is Eric Bobrow.  And in this lesson, we’re going to be looking at the difference in the Navigator between the Project Map and the View Map.  This is an area that users often get confused about.  And I’ve seen many ArchiCAD users spend a lot of their time of moving around in the Project Map to work on different parts of the project, and then have to spend a lot of extra time managing what layers are turned on and other things in order to get the model showing what they need at any given time to create drawings, or for design purposes. [:45]

So let’s take a look at the difference between these two.  Project Map has generaleric categories for the project. And this is been expended in recent versions.  So, for example, interior elevations and worksheets I believe were added in version 11 of ArchiCAD, and 3D documents were added in version 12.  So this is continued to – and sections and elevations were split up in version 11.  I’m not quite sure what version or year it was.  They used to be combined together.  But the basic idea is that these are parts of the project, and every one that you look at, for example, this is the first floor and its bold, this is a viewpoint of the project.  [1:51]

And so we have a first floor, and we have several sections defined in this little project.  Now, the View Map shows that we’re in the first floor plan, but there are many different versions of the first floor.  And again, this is a U.S. project, so the first floor would be the ground floor or the main floor in international reference.  If I switch, for example, to the lighting and reflected ceiling plan, you’ll see that, by double clicking on this view, I’m remaining on the first floor of the project, but I’m seeing different information.  And if I go down to something like a furniture plan, you’ll see another variation of this where we’re turning on furniture, but turning off some of the annotation dimensions and things like that that would be at a furniture plan.  [2:48]

So, all three of these are still on the first floor.  So in other words, this viewpoint did not change, but the layers and other things did change.  Now, if I go to another part of the project, for example, a section.  And I’ll open up this section right here.  We’re going to see something rather odd.  Because in this case, the section is showing furniture, which usually we don’t show, and it’s not showing roofs and other things that are structural, when normally we would.  And the reason for that is because this viewpoint does not define what’s turned on, it just defines where we’re looking.  We’re cutting through the building at a certain location.  So, in the View Map, in order to get a precise view of this, we create a view of the section.  So, when I double click on this, you’ll see that it will take a minute to refresh, and now the furniture is turned off, and all the structural information is completed, because the layers having changed.  [3:50]

Now, unlike the stories, where we have multiple views, or usually will have multiple different views for the same viewpoint, the sections most commonly are going to have a single view definition, where only specific layers are turned on and a certain scale is being used in a project.  There are exceptions, but in general, sections and elevations will have a single style that we’re going to use for construction documents.  And most of the time we’ll have that turned on when we’re working for modeling purposes.  So in other words, will use the same layers while modeling or developing the section as we will for the final outcome.   [4:34]

So, one difference is that when I double click on a view, it brings me to a viewpoint with the correct layers.  But there are other differences as well.  So for example, if I go up to the first floor, or go back to the first floor plan, we’ll see the information in a certain style, and you’ll notice that it says we’re in a layer combination called “Con Doc Floor Plan” or construction documents floor plan.  And I can manually change that of course to say, the furniture plan, which will change what’s visible.  But there are other things that are affected when I double click on this.  So I’ll double click it and put it back.  That is, for example the scale.  So if I manually change the scale here from 1/4 inch which would be the equivalent of 1:50 approximately, to 1/8 inch, which would be 1:00, the building will get a lot smaller, but you’ll notice that all of these markers stay the same size. [5:39]

So I’ll just put it back to the setting before here, and when I go to the 1/4 scale and zoom back out, you can see that the markers are smaller in relationship to the building, because the building is larger in it’s paper definition.  So it in fact, in some cases, you may have a set of views for alternate scales, for certain parts of the project, or for every story in some cases.  So here, I’ll double click on first floor.  And you can see that I’m still looking at the building.  Let me just looking at put it at 100% scale.  So this is how it would print out at 1/8 inch scale.  And if I double click on this first floor plan, we’ll see that the building still about the same size, because it’s switched to 50%.  But let me just switch that to 100%, and the building has gotten bigger, but the markers have stayed the same on paper. [6:39]

So, basically, when we have a view, it has certain settings.  So, if I open up the settings for the view, we’ll see that the view defines not only what’s showing, which would be the layers, but the scale of the building relative to paper and other markers, such as the grid bubbles or line weights, things like that.  It also will determine whether we’re showing the entire walls or just part of the walls and other low bearing elements.  What Pens are being used, in other words what colors and weights of the Pens.  And Model View Options, which in this case determines things such as whether the door and window markers are showing, or whether the doors are showing normally, or for example in a ceiling plan style view. [7:24]

So, all of these things, plus some others, are part of the View Definition.  And the bottom line is that when you double click on a view, you’re able to get a predictable reference.  So for example, when I’m working on the first floor lighting and ceiling plan, I know that I’m going to get it at a certain scale with certain elements turned on.  For example, the lighting, the lamps in the ceiling, ectetera, are turned on where is the furniture and the other pictures are turned off.  Things like that. [7:53]

So, the view that gives me a predictable base to work from.  Because it’s predictable, and because it can be really fine tuned to get exactly what you need for any drawing, it’s where I would spend my time while working on the project most of the time.  So, not all views though are intended for documentation purposes.  In other words, there may be a type of view, for example, if I go to the site design where I set this up.  And let me zoom out a bit here.  And I’ll turn off the Trace Reference of this sheet that’s being shown.  [8:38]

So here I’m seeing the site, and I’m seeing a footprint of part of the building, and I’m seeing trees.  This is not a complete site plan, but it does give me the ability to work on the site terrain in the context of the building.  Now when I go to the building design section and elevation, you’ll see that this is a type of drawing that is sort of like the framing plan, but it’s really not a construction document for framing purposes.  But it does have the layers that would be useful for working on the design of the building as a whole, and working on sections and elevations.  [9:16]

If I draw a marquee, for example, through an area here, and ask for that to take a 3D view of just the marquee elements, we’re going to see that the we’re seeing all of the structural components.  And we could work on all of the building in relationship between. For example, the dropped ceiling and the roof and things like that.  And even if we zoom in a little bit, we can see – just a little bit hard because of the coloring, but you can see the actual framing elements that are turned on.  Which of course we were seeing when we were on the other floor plan here.  [9:58]

So, the views in this case are defining a context for modeling and design, and we can have other variations.  Even for example this 3D AXO view.  So for example, this turns on and saves set layers specifically for working on the building from the outside, and for presentation purposes perhaps.  So we’re seeing the site information and the building shell.  But if I go back to the floor plan here, by clicking on Floor Plan, Shortcut, or hitting F2, I’ll see that this is not really a good working environment for the plan view, because all of these elements are sort of piled on top of each other.  [10:51]

So layers and views can be set up specifically for certain contexts, working in 3D for example.  Now, I would recommend that you spend most of your time working in the View Map.  And we’re going to be spending some time in a follow-up lesson looking at how you define views, and how you get the most benefit from the views.  But the question then comes, well when do you use the Project Map?  What is this good for?  Well, I’ll show you one example.  I go to, let’s say the Interior Design Layer Combination or view, and I’ll get rid of the marquee.  [11:33]

This is a view that sets up the layers for furniture plan at a certain scale and other settings, so that I can work out the fit out of the building.  Now, if this was a two story building, as it is, I could have second view that’s going up to the second floor.  If its a ten story building I could have ten of them, it might start getting a little bit tedious to have many views that are really just variations of the same style, but just a different viewpoint, a different story.  So, I might just jump to the Project Map and go, for example, to the second floor, and instantly be there.  So I can jump back and forth between different stories using the Project Map, even if I don’t have a view defined for each of the stories in this particular case.  [12:21]

So I may use the story structure here in the Project Map while I’m working to go around.  But I generally am not going to double click on a section here, because that’s going to take me – I’ll just go back to the section – we’re going to have this section with the wrong layers.  And if I go and use – this way to navigate.  Now the other thing that we do, I’ll just go back to the floor plan. The other thing that we may need the Project Map for, is when you want to create worksheets or details.  Now, we’re going to spend some more time on this later on in the course, but if you want to create an independent worksheet, you need to do it from the Project Map. [13:02]

This command, New, Independent Worksheet, is only available from the Project Map, not from the View Map.  When we do use an Independent Worksheet?  Well basically it creates a 2D drawing environment, that you can draw anything you like, perhaps just for sketching out something, or you can paste in something from somewhere else, or import a DWG file or a PDF file, so are real independent worksheet.  And I’ll just say, “Create This”.  We now have a blank area to work in.  And you can see that it created a new one.  I didn’t bother renaming it, it just called it “Wall Section”, but I’ll call this “New Worksheet”.  [13:45]

So, in order to create that, we need to right click on the worksheet group or any other worksheet, and then we can do that here.  We can’t do it from the View Map.  In the same way, the details, if we wanted to create a new independent detail, which would be a 2D drafting area where we could perhaps paste in something from the manufacturer, or something from a previous project. If we didn’t want to create a detail directly from calling out from a section or a current view in the project, this would be when I would go to the Project Map is to create a new independent detail or worksheet.  [14:29]

So, there are some limited cases where we may want to go to the Project Map.  There are some – the cameras that you create on the floor plan, if you were putting in multiple viewpoints with the camera tool, these will show up here. The path with multiple cameras for animations, these will show up there.  But, these are very limited purposes that I would spend time in the Project Map.  Mostly I would be in the View Map.  And going back and forth between different views, because they’re going to give me a predictable result, rather than jumping to a viewpoint and having the layers all wrong.  [15:10]

There’s one other thing that I want to tell you about in terms of the advantages of View Map over the Project Map.  View Map has the ability to create organizing structures of folders, and folders within folders.  So you can see here that we’ve got a group of views that are for modeling and design purposes, and they’re part of a larger design group that’s for modeling design and legends, the Kit of Parts that I’ve talked about.  I’m going to close this up, and you can see the structure here.  And I’ll close this all the way up, so now we’re looking at the structure that I’ve gotten in this particular project based on M asterTemplate.  [15:47]

We have a group of views for reference materials, these can be consultants drawings and manufactures things and other reference materials that might be brought into worksheets.  We have a group of views for modeling and design purposes, and then for construction documents and for presentation documents.  So each one of these can be very rich.  And when I open it up, you’ll see that we can have the presentation elevations.  So these are views specifically with shade and shadow for that.  We even have a folder here in case we want to put some of the views a way, possibly for later deletion, but we’re not quite ready to delete them, we’ll put them in the trash and recycling bin to get them out of the way. [16:26]

So the ability to create these new folders is quite simple.  We can just click on this button here to create a folder, and we’ll just say, I’ll just call it “Example”.  And you’ll see that this has been put in here.  I’ll just move this around, I can move this up in between these by carefully looking at this, we’ll move it to the left side here, and we can easily get it to be any level of the hierarchy. And then if we want to, grab something and put it into it, we can literally grab it and put it on top and it shows up inside that.  So creating folders and having things collapse and hide when we don’t want them makes it very easy to have lots of information, but be able to hide.  If we want to get rid of the folder, you can use the “X” here and of course, depending on whether there’s anything inside of it, it may give us a warning about that.  [17:32]

The Project Map, on the other hand, does not have much organizational options.  It basically has the categories of project viewpoints, such as stories, sections, elevations, etcetera.  And within each one of these, there are going to be viewpoints.  When you create a new story, it will become a new viewpoint in the Stories folder.  And when you create a new section, by drawing a section marker on the plan, it will automatically show up here.  But on the other hand, the View Map, you have the option to create folders and have the option to create as many views as you find useful.  [18:08]

So it allows you to have a very rich environment with as many views as you need, but still only expand that to the level that you might find useful at any given time in your workflow.  So that’s another reason why I spend a lot of my time in View Map, is because I can really focus in on the views that I want.  In fact, I can even in combine, for example, this particular folder for modeling and design has some plan views, a worksheet reference, some 3D different types of view, etcetera; all of these grouped in. Because when I’m working on modeling, I’m going to go back and forth between plan and 3D.  [18:48]

Maybe I even want to put in some sections or other things into this particular folder, they are all grouped. Whereas in the Project Map, all of these are separate and we have to manually go back and forth.  So the View Map is a very powerful, and I recommend that you spend the majority of your time working in the View Map to get best efficiency out of ArchiCAD. [19:11]

So that’s a short introduction to the difference between a Project Map and the View Map, and my recommendation.  Basically to spend most of your time in the View Map, and only limited times in the Project Map as you’re working in the project.  So we’ll be spending some more time in the next lesson on how to create views and get the most benefit from them.  And understanding layers, which are of course a key part of views, they determine the visibility of elements.  We will be looking at all of that in the next lesson.  So this has been Eric Bobrow, and thanks for watching.