QuickStart Course – Week 5 Part 2 – © copyright 2011 by Eric Bobrow

QUICKSTART COURSE – MODULE 5 PART 2 – Layer Selection and Management; Placing Text and Dimensions

Hello, this is Eric Bobrow.  And in this lesson, we’ll be looking at layer selection and management, and start the process of putting in text and dimensions into our drawings.  So I’ve drawn in all of the furniture for the project, and you can see that it’s sitting on the floor plan, along with the equipment and fixtures that had been placed earlier.  Now, I want to start looking at how to create certain drawings by turning on and off different information. [00:32]

So in order to do this, I’d like to turn off the roofs to begin with, to clear up my drawing before I start putting in some text annotation.  So I’ll go highlight the roof by selecting it with the Arrow tool, and when I do that I can see that it’s on a layer called “A-Roof”.  Now I’d like to turn that layer off so that I don’t have that cluttering up my view.  So I’m going to go to the Document menu, Layers, Layer Settings.  Or simply click the shortcut Command+L on Mac or CTRL+L on windows.  When I bring that up, you’ll see the dialog box called Layer Settings, and I’m going to go and find the roof layer here and click the eyeball to turn it off.  [1:24]

So now the eyeball is closed, and when I say OK, that roof disappears, or all of the roofs disappear if you’re in before ArchiCAD 15 and have multiple pieces.  Now I’d like to turn off the furniture so that I have a clearer space to put in some of my annotation.  And so I’m going to go and select say a piece of furniture, say this chair, and see what layer it is on. And it’s on “A-Floor Fixed”.  Now I’m going to go and turn that layer off.  Now there is going to be a problem which we’ll actually demonstrate some of the things you need to think about when you’re working with layers.  So I’m going to turn this layer off, and guess what?  The furniture disappears, but so do the cabinets and the plumbing fixtures, because they were all put onto the same layer. [2:11]

So what I’ll need to do is go back into the Layer Dialog, hitting Command+L or CTRL+L, and turn it back on. Turn it back on the fixtures layer here that was active.  And then I’m going to go and re-designate that this piece of furniture as well as let’s say this plant and this plant and this piece of furniture and this one, all of these I’ll put onto the correct layer, the furniture layer.  So, here we’ll go to “A-Furn”.  Now the layer names are going to be different in the international version, and I will take a few minutes at this end of this lesson to show some of the differences.  So if you’re an international user, and the layers are different, just be patient, absorb it the principles that I’m explaining, and I’ll explain some things to you later that will just clarify any questions.  [3:10]

So I’ll put these on the furniture layer.  Now I’ll go and hit Command+L or CTRL+L, and turn off the furniture layer.  You can see that the furniture layer now has the closed eyeball, and the furniture disappears. However and didn’t quite get all of the furniture.  So one of the nice things that you can do is once you’ve turn off the layer, you can’t actually select other elements perhaps that shouldn’t be seen, and then switch them directly.  I’m going to go right in the info box and switch these elements from where they are checked, the Floor Fixture layer, to the furniture layer which has the closed eyeball, and they now disappear.  So I think I’ve got it pretty well in hand at the moment. [3:52]

Now, the furniture is turned off, and in roof is turned off, and I’m now ready to start putting in some text annotation. So let me go to the Text tool, and I’ll start putting in some room names.  So when I activate the Text tool, it has many settings that we can look at.  One thing that we’re paying attention to right now is what layer it’s on.  So, it’s right on the “A-Anno Text” layer.  So this is for annotation that is just general text.  Now, we could put it there, but I’m going to choose the “A-Area Iden” or area identifiers. Basically, this is a layer specifically for identifying areas or rooms.  So I’ll use that as the convention for the text that I’ll use for the room names.  [4:45]

Now, I’ll be explaining a few different options for the Text tool as we go along, but for now I’m simply going to double click or click twice in the same place to start putting in some text in the kitchen. And I’ll put Caps Lock on, so as I type this it will all be in caps.  You can see the word “KITCHEN” shows up. In order to finish this, I simply click outside that text. [5:09]

Now I’ll go into this one here and type in “BEDROOM”, and click outside to finish it.  So it’s very easy to put in text annotation.  Now if you want to slide it around, in other words it’s not quite in the right place, to go to the Arrow tool, position yourself over the text, and when you see the checkmark it gives a preselection highlight, press and start to move all in one action.  That will place the text in the new position; it will drag it with that gesture.  Now I’d like to place the next text here for the bathroom, and it’s a little bit tight. So let me show you an option when I go back to the Text tool, because I had switched to the Arrow tool, and let me go and look at what’s called “The Anchor”. [5:54]

So, when I put this text in here, I’d like to actually click in the center and have it just take up as much space as it needs to the sides. So I’m going to go and move the scroll bar here for the text and select a center anchor.  And what that means is that the text is put in. It will just use that, my initial shall click point as the center, and it will fill out around it.  So now, as I click in the general center of the room, click twice, and then I type in “BATHROOM”.  You can see how it stayed centered over that area.  Now, I’m going to go and use the Pan tool.  I’ll press down the center mouse wheel in pan up to this back area here.  And in this back area, I’d like to put in a designation “UTILTY ROOM”. [6:51]

Now, actually there are going to be a couple pieces of equipment in here, and so we need to keep it very tightly controlled in the center area.  So I’d like to actually have this go on two lines.  Now when I make a go on two lines, I can have it lined up on the left, center, right, or with multiple lines, I can justify them.  But right now I’ll just say center.  So this is actually another separate choice. So now when I click twice and start to type in utility, and then hit the Return or Enter key to break the line, and then type in room, you can see how the text stayed centered over each other.  [7:31]

So that texts centering is also available from the Text palette while we’re in the middle of typing or editing text. And I’ll click outside to deselect.  So that’s the basics of putting in text for room names. I’ll now zoom out a little bit; I’ll just double click on the minus and double click again on the minus, and then zoom in on the living room area here.  And again, I’ll click twice, and type in “LIVING”, and maybe I’ll put them on two separate lines, LIVING ROOM or type it all out there.  Now I’d like to put in some text, I’ll just zoom out a little bit and pan over. I’d like to put in some text that’s going to a longer note over to the side of the building near the doorway. [8:19]

Let’s that say that this is a note for the contractor, and it’s going to be a whole paragraph of text.  So, before I do that, I’ll switch the layer. So I’ll be thinking about the fact that this is not a room name, but it’s just a general annotation.  And so I’ll select “A-Anno Text”.  And then I’m going to want this to be left aligned, because what I’d like to do is have it be a nice, straight, flat border close to this wall. And whatever the other side is, it can be ragged or vary.  And in order to do this, I will also need to change the anchor point.  So I’ll pick the anchor point say on the left side.  If could be top, middle, or bottom. Let me do the middle and let me see how that works. Actually let me take the upper one.  That means that when I click, that’s the first point, that’s the top left corner of where the text is going to be. [9:12]

Now, instead of clicking a second time right on top of that, I’ll just draw a width, which will indicate how wide I would like ArchiCAD to use in terms of space before it wraps from one line to another.  So the second click, instead of being on top of the first point, will be a separate one.  And now I’ll say, “Note to contractor, please verify on site.”  So I’ve typed in a note, and you can see how it’s keeping itself within a certain boundary and wrapping lines.  Now, obviously that boundary is a little bit too tight for this text to be graceful.  I can’t even fit the word “contractor” in fully.  So what I’ll do is select the text. I’ll go back to the Arrow tool, hover over the text and click on it. [10:02]

Now I’ve got the Quick Select magnet on, that’s this little symbol here, that means that I can click anywhere inside the text.  And when I do that, it will select it. Now I want to make this a little wider, so what I’ll do is press down on the corner, and use the editing palette option, or the pet palette, to stretch.  And now remember if I had this first option, then it’s going to move the whole thing around.  You can see the ghost image. And if I use the other options, I’ll move them around.  But here, is says “Stretch”. So let’s say that I take it a little wider.  I’ll just take it a little bit further, and now you can see how it re-wraps as I change the width.  And it just changes the height to fulfill all of the text that I’ve typed in.  [10:47]

So this text now is what’s called “Paragraph text”.  And it will break in terms of lines based on the boundary.  I can also force a line break, if I say Edit it here, I can go and put in a fixed line break by hitting the Return or Enter key, much like you do in a word processor.  Now to edit text, you can select it and go to the Text tool and then click anywhere inside it. And you can see that the normal text cursor shows up.  I’ll hit the Return or Enter key, and I’ll just put this in on a separate line, and put a period there.  So, you can see how I just broke the line, even though that probably would have fit on that same line, I wanted it to be separate. Maybe I’ll just put in say a dash at the beginning of this, so that this really stands out.   [11:52]

So you can see how we can break lines that way.  Now, another way we can edit the text directly is if we have the Arrow tool set for the Quick Select.  We can hover over the text, and as long as we’re not in the center point where we have a checkmark here, you can see that there’s a checkmark right there. As long as we’re over any of the regular text, we can double click.  So that allows us to very quickly with the Arrow tool, select the text and switch into text editing mode at the same time.  So now we’ve got some text on, and we’ve got the rooms defined. So let’s go and put in some dimensions.  So, the Dimension tool is this one here.  And when I put in the dimensions, it has its own layer.  [12:43]

The default in the template is just fine; it’s on the layer called “A-Dims” or the corresponding layer in the international version. And I’m going to teach you the basics of how you put in some dimensions. Now the dimension tool has changed a little bit between ArchiCAD 10 and 15. I think around ArchiCAD 13, 12 or 13, they introduced some options to, on the fly, be able to choose vertical or horizontal dimensions or on an angle. Whereas previously, it was choosing either vertical or horizontal or an angle.  Now, I’m using ArchiCAD 15 of course.  So this will apply directly to ArchiCAD let’s say 13, 14 and 15. There will be a slight variation for the earlier versions.  [13:31]

That being said, in all versions, I’m going to click on a point with the Dimension tool. And you see how it gets a little bull’s eye, a round circle.  And I’ll click on another point, say the other end of this wall, and that gets it a circle.  Now if I click in a space where there is nothing, you see how gets a square indicator. And you can dimension to an arbitrary point in space.  But of course, it’s not really that useful, because it it’s just pointing at something in the middle of nowhere. Now to get rid of a point that I accidentally put in, I can click again on it, and that will tell it to go away.  Now when I’m done, let’s say I just wanted to do these two points here, I can right click. And let me just right click where you can see.  I’ll say OK.  [14:19]

So when I right click and say OK, and then it allows me to dimension this.  Now, I’ll place this dimension with a hammer down here.  Now if you are in the earlier versions of ArchiCAD, 10, 11, maybe 12, you would need to make sure that you were in the horizontal dimensioning mode, whereas opposed to vertical. In ArchiCAD 12 or 13 and later, you can simply – it will just understand automatically which way it has to go.  So they made it a little easier.  Now I’d like dimension another point in time with the windows involved.  So again, I’ll go click on these two ends, and then go back over the windows. So the order is actually not that important, but I will explain one thing.  [15:07]

Sometimes it’s important that the first two points define the line of the dimension.  In other words, the direction that you’re going to be dimensioning, in this case, horizontally.  And so, sometimes it’s important to do the ends.  You can experiment with that and see, but that’s a good tip just as a starting point. Now I’ll show you a shortcut.  Instead of right clicking and saying OK, if I don’t do that, I can actually just double click.  So if you double click very quickly, it will give you the hammer immediately, and you can see the dimensions that are coming up. So let me go on now and dimension the side of the building. And I’ll start with these two points along here. Notice that we get a black pencil when I’m hovering over a corner. That’s indicating that it is going to dimension to a building element.  [15:58]

And actually, you’ll see a building element highlighted. It says “slab”.  So it’s dimension to the edge of the slab here. If I really want to dimension to the edge of the wall, I can use the Tab key.  You’ll see it says, “Multiple Elements, Tab” at the bottom of that. When I hit the Tab key, you see it that chooses a different element.  So now when I click, I’ll be locking the dimension to the corner of the wall.  The reason why this is important is perhaps that wall will move, but the slab will stay fixed.  Perhaps elements will reposition themselves. So understanding which point you’re clicking on can be important. But for the basics, just make sure you have a black pencil, and then you know that it’s going to be attached to a building element. [16:44]

Now again, I’ll double click in empty space, and then I’ll be able to place the dimension out here.  Now you notice I can move it around, and it will just stay locked on the appropriate elements at whatever length it needs to be, and create these lines pointing at them that are usually called Witness lines or Reference line.  Now if I want to dimension to the windows as well, again I’ll go in and click on these points and add the window and perhaps add the center of the door, and go to the bottom corner, double click, and place the next one.  So remember, if double clicking is a little hard for you, you can always right click and say OK.  So I’ll go across the top here and do this one, and double click, and place this.  And of course I could repeat this with all the windows.  Let me just finish up with these points along the side, double click, and place it.  [17:46]

Now if you are in ArchiCAD 10, 11, possibly 12, You would have to switch your mode between what was vertical or horizontal. You have to actually choose that before you place the dimension. As you notice here, it actually was quite happy to go in whichever direction I was pointing at. Now, if we decide that we’d like to move a dimension around, it’s not a problem.  We can simply go with the Arrow tool and select it, and perhaps just drag it in a single step. Again, when you press down and drag without stopping, press and move the mouse, it will interpret that as a drag command. I can also press and release, which will select it, and then use the mouse to say “Move”, right click and say, “Move”, and then “Drag”. And then I’ll say I’m moving it from here to there.  So we can reposition it easily and it stays fixed.  [18:45]

Now, if we decide that a dimension – for example, this one. We’d like to actually add a point to it. For example, add a reference to this door. I can hold down on Mac the Command key, or on Windows the CTRL key, and click. I’ll make sure that I’m on a check mark, in this case the center insertion point of the door, and click.  And so I held down the Command key and clicked. Or what would be the CTRL key on Windows.  And let me just zoom in on this upper area and pan over a little bit. And with this still selected here – and that’s important, you have to have the dimension selected. I’m going to hold down the Command key and then find the checkmark for the center of the window, make sure the window is highlighted; and with the Command or CTRL key held down, click the mouse. And you can see how that then adds that point.  [19:40]

Now sometimes you may want to actually edit the text. For example, these two that are 5 feet 0 are equal measurements.  And sometimes you just simply want to designate them as “EQ” or something similar.  Now I’ve deselected by clicking outside, or I can hit the Esc key, and now with the Arrow tool, I’m going to select just the text. so I actually go to this text element, and with the text element selected, I’ll open up its settings. So I can open up the Settings dialog just like when I open up the Wall settings, and you can see that when we select the dimension text individually, it allows me to switch from the measured value to custom text.  [20:20]

Now depending on which version of ArchiCAD, it may show a blank, or you may have to remove the measured values field.  I’ll just delete that, and then type in “EQ”, which is what I’d like it to say.  And say OK.  And of course I can repeat the same thing on the other one, I’ll just go, again switch it to custom text, delete this, and type in “EQ”.  I could have actually selected both of them at the same time, and then had them both changed, which would have been just fine.  Now the last thing I’m going to show you about creating dimensions is how do you remove a point, and how do you delete an entire dimension string.  [20:58]

So suppose I didn’t want to reference the door.  With nothing selected, I’m going to hover over the tick mark, this point right where the witness line meets the dimension line.  You’ll notice that it’s highlighting the witness line and the door itself highlights.  I’ll move away, and you can see how the door becomes normal.  When I hover over this, it’s indicating that it’s a witness line, and when I click on it, it will select it.  And we know that it’s referring to the door.  Now the only thing that is selected is the one witness line reference, and I can hit the Delete key, just on the keyboard, the Delete or Backspace key. And you can see how the dimension chain of multiple dimension references didn’t disappear, but that one reference went away. [21:51]

And the dimension then healed itself, and now refers to the long distance.  So the tools that I just showed you in terms of dimensions were how to place a dimension. Just to say from one corner of the wall to another, how to put it in multiple dimension points in a row. Typically we wanted to start at one end and then the other and then go back, through although many cases you can just go in sequence.  But it really doesn’t matter the order that you do.  I also showed how to move dimensions by grabbing them and just moving them around, or selecting them and using the “Move” command from the right click, Move, Drag submenu.  And then I showed you how to add points by selecting a dimension element and holding down the Command or CTRL key, and then clicking on the element with the Command or CTRL still held down. And then finally, how to delete a point that you don’t want.  Make sure that you have nothing selected, hover over to tick mark, and then select it.  And then you can delete it individually. [23:00]

So this concludes our lesson that started with some work on layer selection and management, and then focused mostly on how to place and edit text and dimensions in your drawings.  This has been Eric Bobrow; I look forward to getting your feedback and comments on the page down below, thanks for watching. [23:23]