QuickStart Course – Week 1 Part 5 – © copyright 2011 by Eric Bobrow

QUICKSTART COURSE – MODULE 1 PART 5 – Troubleshooting and Additional Notes

Hello, this is Eric Bobrow, and in this section, we’ll look at some troubleshooting tips and additional notes related to the first module of the QuickStart course.

Now perhaps onscreen, your version of ArchiCAD doesn’t look quite the same as what I’ve been doing.  You may have some questions about how to turn things on or off or adjust them.  So we’ll just look at a couple of quick things that may have caused you some confusion.  For example, there is the status bar down below here.  You’ll see that it says, “Enter first node of PolyWall”.  That means that when I click, it’s going to be starting a series of walls.  And you’ll see that it now says down below, “Enter next node of PolyWall”.  And I will click again, and click a series of them.  [:55]

And when I finish the last one, I can either click on the same point a second time, in other words double click the last point, or I can right click and say OK, and finish that up.  Now this status bar here will switch when I go to the Arrow tool.  It will say, “Click an element or draw a selection area.” So it’s giving me some guidance.  Now if you don’t have a status bar visible on your screen, perhaps it’s been closed. I’ll just close it here by clicking the little red button, the button on the left side.  To get it back, I go to the Window menu, Window Palettes, and Status Bar.  So this is considered a floating palette, and you can turn it on or off using this option.  Window, Palettes, Status Bar.  [1:48]

Now if your screen looks significantly different than what you see here, perhaps your entire work environment is set up differently, and you may need to, to be able to follow the training here more easily, you may need to go to your Work Environment (Options, Work Environment.) And in the Work Environment, when I bring up that dialog box, you’ll see that there is something called Palette Schemes.  And Palettes Schemes, if I look, it may have only just two or three items here. But if I go to Standard Palettes and apply a scheme, then it will tell me that it’s going to apply it, and is going to move all of the palettes, such as the status bar and the toolbar, into the position that Graphisoft ships the software with.  [2:44]

So you can see things have readjusted just a little bit.  But that will put your ArchiCAD into a certain standard configuration.  Now in fact, you could go under the Options, Work Environment here, and instead of going down to the Palette Schemes, you could look at the entire work environment.  And when you’re first to starting to work with ArchiCAD, you may want to just make sure that its setup with a standard profile.  For whatever version, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15; or Start edition (SE) etc.  So just go to the Work Environment, Profiles, Standard Profile, Apply Schemes of Profile, and just click on the Apply button and say OK. We didn’t see any real change visually, but it did change some of the preference settings that will put your session in ArchiCAD into a reliable copy of what I’m working with. [3:48]

Now in terms of moving palettes around, you can, if your screen is small or large, you can move them. You can grab the navigator here, for example, and you can stretch it out to whatever size you want.  And then perhaps put it in towards the corner.  If you make your navigator off to be exactly touching the side here, then when you click on either the green plus sign on the Mac or the Restore button for Windows, it will make sure that it fits precisely between these palettes, And therefore when you won’t have any part of it sticking behind and being hidden by another palette.  So this green button here, or the zoom that would be in the upper right, the restore, will allow you to resize it automatically or, of course, you can manually grab the bottom right. Or if you’re on Windows, you can grab any side and resize this. And you’ll notice that the 3D window is actually sitting behind that and it can be resized as well.  [4:58]

So those are a few little tips here. I could resize this manually or again I could click on the green button here, and you’ll see how it jumps to take up the available space.  So the second thing I wanted to talk about is in terms of the work environment. In some versions of ArchiCAD, if we’re creating a series of elements like I did earlier, they would be grouped.  And we aren’t going to be looking at grouping quite yet as a training mechanism, but if I select a single element, in some cases in ArchiCAD, it would select all of them.  And then you may be frustrated trying to follow along with what I did, where I deleted a single one.  [5:46]

So let me show you where the group settings are.  If you don’t have this problem, you can ignore this next minute or two of training for now, but it will be useful for you at some point.  So I’d suggest you watch it anyway.  I’m going to draw a box around these elements and select them.  And I will go to the Edit menu. There is a submenu called Grouping and a command called Group.  So if these are grouped, you’ll see the handles, or grips, change their color and configuration.  Now I’ll click away from everything to deselect.  And now when I just click to select a single item, you’ll notice that it selected all of them, as if they were one element. But they’re actually a group.  Now that of course would mean that I can’t delete just a single wall here.  [6:37]

It actually limits the editing capabilities, although I can drag them as a whole into a new position. which of course is very useful in many cases.  Now even if they are a group, I can use a button up here in the toolbox that says “Suspend Groups”.  This command here is also available under the Edit menu, Grouping. And you’ll see “Suspend Groups” now has a check box.  So you can suspend groups using either the button or this command.  Now with groups suspended, when I select this wall, the handles indicate that it’s part of a group because it has the round hollow handles, but it’s only selecting that one element. And that of course does allow me to then delete by hitting the Delete key.  And I can proceed with what I had done before.  And I’ll Shift click to select these two and intersect. [7:34]

So if your ArchiCAD is setup with a command under the Grouping menu that says “Auto Group” – and in some versions of ArchiCAD this was turned on by default – with Auto Group turned on, and Suspend Groups not turned on, then you might have tried to do something similar to what I did, like this. And even without trying to group them, when I select this, they’re already a group.  Because Auto Group says whether you draw a series of walls like this or perhaps a box of walls like this, when these are done with one of those methods, they’re all going to be grouped together.  So with Auto Group, this will automatically connect all of these elements into a single group without you having to do it.  And it can be useful, but Graphisoft I think decided at a certain point that Auto Group actually was confusing to people until you really wanted it. So they, in later versions, turned that off as the default. [8:53]

But of course you can turn it on or off as you wish.  The main thing to realize is if it is turned on, you can turn it off, and if things are grouped and you want to modify an individual element, you can suspend groups, which again is available from this check box here. You see the two rectangles, and by clicking it, it’s now activated, which means I can select an individual element when this is clicked the other way. Then when any one or more elements of a group are selected, they will all be selected.  So Suspend Groups here is a very important thing to understand if you’re finding that you’re selecting one thing and it’s selecting multiple ones.  If that’s not what you want, then try spending groups. [9:42]

Now a few other things just for troubleshooting.  If you have – if you’re in the middle of doing something, and you realize you don’t want to complete that action, you can hit the ESC key.  So hitting the ESC key, that key on the upper left, will cancel that action.  You can also right click and say Cancel.  So right clicking will work, in most cases, to give you an option that includes Cancel.  Now, if you’re on a Mac, and you have a single button mouse, or you’re on a laptop, and you don’t have a right click button accessible, then you can use the CTRL key on the Mac.  So the Mac as the Command key with the little cloverleaf, or four circles arrayed.  That Command or Apple key gives you shortcuts.  But then near it, you would have the Option key and the CTRL key.  And by pressing down the CTRL key, and just doing a standard mouse button – if I press down the CTRL key, it changes my cursor to show a little tiny context menu, and then a normal click of the mouse will bring up this context menu.  So that is available if you need it on a Mac.  [11:06]

Now in general, the right click button or CRTL+click will bring up a menu based on whatever is your context.  Right now nothing is selected, so there are some general things that allow me to navigate or refresh the screen or paste in.  If I have something selected, and I’ll just select this, when I right click, you’ll see that there are different options such as being able to move the elements I’ve got selected.  So the right click menu is very useful. And we’ll repeatedly refer to it during the course of the QuickStart course and as you work with ArchiCAD.  So the ESC key is very powerful, because it will not only cancel an operation like drawing something you don’t want to draw, or dragging or changing something that you don’t want, it will also, when I hit the ESC key and nothing is currently active, it will switch from say the Wall tool to the Arrow tool.  [12:10]

So when you want to draw, you’ll switch to one of the tools for drawing, and when you want select, often you’ll want to be in the Arrow tool.  So hitting the ESC key is a great shortcut just to jump back to the Arrow tool.  So it will cancel an operation and process, it will actually deselect elements that are selected. So if I have some elements selected and I hit the ESC key, it will deselect them.  And it will also with possibly a second or third click, bring you back to the Arrow tool.  And now, if I am in a tool such as drawing the wall here, let’s switch here to draw a single wall.  And notice that even in the middle of an operation, I can switch what I’m doing.  So I can say, “No, I want to do a single wall not a box.”  And you can see how that changes.  [13:06]

Now I’ve just completed drawing a wall. Let’s say that I wanted to make some change to this wall.  I can select it by holding down the Shift key.  Hold down the Shift key, the same one you use for capital letters on the keyboard, and click.  So you’ll notice that I’m still in the Wall tool, but temporarily, while I held down the Shift key, it changed the cursor. You see now the cursor is an arrow.  When I let go of the Shift key, it goes back to being a cross hair, allowing me to either click outside to deselect, or click to start a new wall.  So if I do want to select things, I can just hold down the Shift key, Shift click, Shift click, and that selected those two items. And of course one of the options that we looked at earlier was the intersect.  So we can do that using the Shift click there.  [14:04]

So I think that this concludes the extra points that I wanted to make to help clarify some typical questions that come up.  Some typical things that may look different on your screen. I think the final thing – I had just pulled down, so I actually have this a little longer to be able to see more things. You’ll see that we can scroll through tools if there’s not enough space. I’m working with a low resolution screen to make the recording as clean as possible for you to view.  Let me just show you a couple of other things about the palettes and then we’ll finish up.  This palette here is called the Quick Options.  And you’ll see when I click on it again, that it appears.  I’ll click again and it comes up.  So this Quick Options is one that we will use later on.  And I normally have this below the navigator area.  [15:05]

So I’ll just bring this up, and slip this underneath.  So I can resize it and move these around.  Now on Mac and Windows, the snapping is slightly different. On Mac, elements will dock to each other or snap to each other, so if I grab the navigator both these move together.  Whereas on Windows, they will dock and they’ll snap to the sides of the screen.  So they have slightly different behaviors.  But on Windows, you can grab things on the sides. On Mac, you generally have to grab them by the bottom right or the top title bar in order to be able to move or resize them.  [15:48]

So this concludes the module on troubleshooting and additional notes and the end of the first module of the QuickStart course.  Thanks for watching.   [15:59]