Welcome everyone to the Best Practices ArchiCAD coaching call for May 30, 2012. This is Eric Bobrow, and it’s a sunny spring morning here in San Rafael. Nice temperature. Just came back from the café. I’ve been making it a habit to get out walking every day. Sometimes just in the neighborhood, sometimes I walk just fifteen minutes over to Pete’s Coffee and pick up a latte and walk back or do some work on the laptop there. [00:34]

So, today, we have two questions that were sent in ahead of time but there’s definitely room for more to be submitted, so if you have any questions that you’d like me to cover, please feel free to type them into the questions box in GoToWebinar. If you’re not seeing it, then you may need to click on the little orange button with the white arrow to expand the GoToWebinar control panel and then you’ll see the questions area where you can type that in. If I don’t answer you right away or don’t let you know that I saw it right away, I will certainly be looking over to it in between questions and will get to it if I can. [01:18]

So we’re going to start out with a question submitted by Pengwai  Lee. Now I believe Pengwai may be in the U.K. Let me unmute you and see whether we can talk. So Peng, are you there? Hello? Ok, so it looks like Peng may not have a microphone plugged in. Peng, you’re, feel free to type into the questions box to let me know your questions. If you do want to talk to me, then you can either plug in a microphone into your computer or you can call in using the phone number that’s supplied. If you switch in the GoToWebinar from using mic and speakers to using telephone, it’ll give you a local phone number. [0:02:17]

Ok, So Peng sent in the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella. Let me just bring up his question here. It’s little bit small on the screen, I wonder if I can make it any bigger? So Peng asks, “The west front of this church is a decorative gable and part of a normal pitched roof, and it projects out. How you get this gable front?” And you also found that it was a challenging to make a simple gable wall projecting above the pitched roof. You found that to be a convoluted affair. Can I show the process step by step? Absolutely. [0:03:10]

So let’s take a look at this church here. Let me reduce it a little bit. Maybe that is a little bit too small. Alright, so we can see the gable in the front here and I can’t quite tell from the other images whether it’s directly connected to the actual roofs. Let see if there are any other figures that are on here, a lot of beautiful interiors. And here’s the Piazza itself. So of course we’re a little limited with this. I guess I can scroll quicker. No, there are no more pictures. Alright, so we’ll go back to the beginning. Let’s just focus on this, and I’m going to create a very simple version of this and go through a series of steps to show some options. Let’s go to ArchiCAD. [0:04:15]

I see one question. Tom Downer, I got your question about Pen Sets. So we’ll take that question a little later in the call. Let me know if, for some reason, you have to jump off early and I’ll try to make sure I get it in before you have to leave. [04:35]

Ok, so let’s just create a simple box of walls here. And I’ll just create two stories. It looks like I need to reconfigure my windows here, so let me go to my Work Environment and go under the Pallet Schemes. I’m going to set it up for my Optimized Screen. This is the small resolution I’m working with. So if you haven’t worked with the Work Environment, Pallet Schemes, this is an interesting thing. Just as a little side note, If you do change you screen resolution from time to time or have different focuses in terms of sometimes you are meeting with clients and you want things to be arranged one way; and sometimes you’re working on a project want it to be arranged a different way. You can record, anytime that you got your screen set up with certain pallets and certain orientations or arrangements, you can record it by storing it by name. [0:05:40]

Then later you can go ahead and apply the scheme. And so now I’m going to apply this. So what’ll happen before I leave this, notice it on the right side of my screen I’m not seeing the navigator. And when I say OK, we’re going to see all the sudden it shows up nicely on the screen because this is what I’ve set up for this small resolution which is a workable arrangement of the pallet. So use the Options menu, Work Environment. Pallet Schemes does not show up in the main level here. You have to pick any one of them and then Pallet Schemes becomes available once you’re in the Dialog Box. So either store what you’ve currently got set up or restore it from a previous set up. [06:23]

Alright, so now, we’ve got this set up so I can work. Let me go up to the second floor and I will turn on the first floor as a Trace Reference and I will just draw a similar box here. So it’s just going to be a two story structure. If I go to 3D and we make our 3D window, get it into view here, and take this as an axonometric view. So it looks like just one story but actually two is what I’ve got here. So let me just do a little quick sketch here. Now you’re not quite sure, we’re on the second floor, the upper floor. I’m not quite sure in terms of the main roof. Let me actually just draw on the – let’s see, how will I do this? [0:07:26]

Let me actually just draw a main roof and let’s draw something in front of it because there are some different things going on here. I’m going to use, in ArchiCAD 15, the option to create a rectangular gable style roof. This is a nice little convenience that was added into ArchiCAD 15. Previously, the automatic roof generation would only do a hip. But now I can actually go across here and create this roof automatically. If I go to 3D we can see if I zoom out a little bit, what that’s done. Now, let’s just say I wanted to take the side walls, and I’ll zoom around here. By the way the shortcut I’m using for navigation is that I’m using the center mouse button to pan and I’m pressing the Shift key to orbit. So I can actually easily rotate around while I’m in the mode without having to click on the Orbit button and leave the editing mode. [0:08:31]

Let me just take these two and stretch them up. Sometimes the pet pallet does not pay attention when you have it in a certain mode, so I have to switch to a different one and then switch back. So now I can take this up. In terms of the trimming here, if we were in a previous version of ArchiCAD before version 15, we would want to go under the Design menu to Solid Element Operations which in ArchiCAD 15 is under the Connect submenu. In ArchiCAD 15, we would simply just want to use the Trim Elements to Roof or Shell. And last coaching call I was a little bit confused in the sense that I did a trim operation and it wasn’t working for me and I realized in looking at the recordings I made one simple mistake so I thought it would be good to clarify that. [09:26]

When you say trim elements to roof or shell, you see ‘click an element’ as I’m looking down at the bottom left of the status bar, click an element to use as the trimming element. So I need to hover over the roof. You see that the cursor changes from having a little picture of a house or building with a roof, which is empty. So when I hover over the roof, it fills in with black, indicating that it recognizes an element that could be used for trimming. And then it says ‘click to select which part to keep from the element.’ Now, when I did this last time, I clicked over on the side walls, and actually what I need to do is be on one of the walls that’s in the selection set. [0:10:11]

In other words, I have to indicate something that is being trimmed rather than one of the ones off to the side that I didn’t happen to select. So now its saying ‘which part do you want to keep?’ Do you want to keep the upper part or the lower part? I’ll say the lower part and now it gets rid of the upper area. So that’s just a quick review of basic roof trimming in ArchiCAD 15. Now I’m doing this in part because I want to create some similar roofs on the side here and create that shape as the gable, even if the actual roof does not extend here. And then I’m going to show you how you would have the walls extend above the roof. So Peng, I hope you bear with me here because, although this doesn’t look like the church, we’re going to get something in a few minutes that will look similar. [11:04]

So now what I want to do is create – one approach is to create two diagonal roofs here, basically a gable and then a separate horizontal piece that is not a roof but could be done with a short piece of wall or beam depending. So let’s just see how we would work that. So I’m going to go, in this case I’ll just use the same option. Actually no, I’m going to do a single plane roof. I think this will be a little easier to demonstrate. With a single plane roof, I’m going to actually do something that I often do when I’m experimenting design or presenting, which is to draw something totally without paying attention to the placement, and then move it into the correct place. You’ll see what I mean in a minute. [11:55]

I’m going to go and when you create a roof here, I’ll make it a rectangular piece, you’re going to specify the pivot line. And I’m going to just say the pivot line is here and that it’s going up. And now I’m going to create a rectangular piece of roof. So what I’ve done is I’ve created a little piece of roof here that if I go to 3D, is at a certain relationship to it. Now because it has the same plate line or pivot line as the other roof but the pivot line has been moved in, of course it’s lower. Now the actual height here perhaps needs to be changed depending on what it is. [0:12:39]

In other words, right now it’s got a height. The pivot line is at 19 feet. Perhaps let me make it 17 feet. I can adjust it to whatever I need. You see how it’s gone down. So, obviously we would want to set this to the correct slope and the correct positioning, but that should be the easy part if you are able to do anything in ArchiCAD precisely, you can place it where you’d like. [13:04]

But now what I’ll do is go and take this piece of roof and mirror a copy of it across the center line. And now if I go to 3D, we’ll see that we actually start having that gable appearance. Now I’m going to draw in a piece of something. Perhaps we’ll just do it with the Slab tool. I’ll go to the Slab tool and I’ll create a rectangular piece across here. Now again, I didn’t pay any attention to the height of that piece or any other things, I just drew it. And when I go to 3D, I can move it into position. So although you can certainly calculate where it needs to be mathematically and draw it at the right height, I often find that just simply drawing it and then moving it into position in relationship to the elements is quicker. And now I can go here and press down, use the pet pallet to make it move up, and perhaps snap it into position here. [14:05]

So now we have something that if I switch back to that image here, you can see that it’s at least somewhat like that gable where we have a horizontal piece and two diagonal pieces that stick out in front of the wall. In terms of cleaning this up, if we left it as simple as this, in other words, just simple extrusions rather than an ornate pattern; then we might just simply want to use this Slab tool. And again use the option to connect it to the roofs up above. If we were using a previous version of ArchiCAD, we’d use Solid Element Operations so let me actually show that. [0:14:50]

With Solid Element Operations we’d say this is the target here and these two roofs here are the operator. And we would do Subtraction with Upward Extrusion and execute. And you can see now there’s no overlap there. Now the reason why we’re seeing a line in this case is because the edge of the roof, in terms of its material, if I say ‘what is the edge material?’ Right now it’s set to be Paint 02 Whitewash, whereas the roof here, its edge is set to be Paint 01 Ceiling White. So basically because they are different materials, we’re seeing that line. If I were to take this piece and change the edge of it to the same one, and then you’d see that it removes that line. It makes them all one uniform appearance. [15:52]

So, Peng, let’s see, can you just type into the box and let me know whether or not you’ve seen this? I’m hoping that you’re there because I can see you online but I haven’t gotten anything typed in. So let me know if you‘ve seen that and then we can proceed with detailing this a little bit further. I’m not quite sure if Peng is there, because I haven’t gotten any reply. So I will just go on with this and, hopefully Peng is watching or will watch it on the replay. [16:30]

So obviously some of the geometry could be changed. I can, for example, perhaps move this up to a different relationship. You can see that when I move it up it still is trimmed here to that. We can get whatever relationship that we want. Let me just move it back down that we might need here. Now if we did actually have it up higher here, we might want to take the roof edge and use the option in the roof pet pallet. Say this edge should it be vertical, like it is right now, it’s going up and down, or should it be on perpendicular. That would be another option. Here you can see a different sort of relationship. Or, should it possibly be horizontal. [0:17:25]

And now you can see we have a different relationship. So depending upon what you want, you can get different sorts of effects. And of course maybe this shouldn’t have a shingle here. This obviously is not going to have that kind of material. So we would want to just make this perhaps the same white color. And now you can see what that’s doing. So those are some simple variations. [17:52]

Now, let’s look at another way that this could be done. And I’ll go to the other side of the building here. Let me just undo do back a couple of changes so that we at least get this nice, neat shape. Let me go to the other side of the building. And, now by the way, this is dark here, so it’s a little hard to see. Some of you may not be aware of how you can move the sun around so let me just show you. If you go under the View menu, got to 3D View Mode, 3D Projection Settings, we can go and move the sun around. So I can move it around to the other side. [0:18:33]

Now, this little image here is just a preview of a sort of generic placeholder building. It’s not the actual building, but this is also the angle of it. And here’s the current viewing position reference. Now I say ‘OK’ and you see how that’s put back this side into the light. So, let’s look at an option where we might, instead of using roofs, in this case we might use the Beam tool. And so I go to the Beam tool. And we have a beam. We can make this beam have a rectangular profile or a custom profile. We’ll start with a rectangular one and then later make it more ornate. We can make it straight or on an angle. [0:19:21]

Now I’m going to go and select one of these roofs and see what angle it is. Its 12 and 12. So if you’re in the U.S., you have rise over run as one of the options. 12 feet rise over 12 feet run. We can also look at the degree and it says its 45 degrees, which, of course, that’s what it is. But I did that because I wanted to look at the Beam tool. And in the Beam tool, if we wanted it to slope, we have to type in an angle, so 45 degrees. So, now, let me go back to the floor plan and draw a beam up here. So perhaps if I wanted to line this up to be something similar, we could do a guideline here. Create a guideline segment from this over to here. [0:20:12]

So this is now a guideline and I do have a snap. Now I can go to the Beam tool and draw the beam up here. Now the beam that I just drew, if I zoom in on this, you can see is overlapping the wall, because its center axis line is on the wall. Now, given the situation, I could to a variety of things. The simplest thing is just to drag this, I’ll do Command+D or CTRL+D and just drag it out. Now if I go to 3D, we can see, oh, there’s this beam. Now, how thick is that beam here? Let’s go perhaps, in terms of the profile and say how wide is it? 8 inches. Let’s just make it 2 feet. So it’s just going to be thicker. So you can see how it’s gotten thicker. [0:20:59]

But on the floor plan you see that when it got thicker it got thicker from the center line. So I do have to adjust it if I wanted it to be out there. Whatever that distance is for now, we can just see that that’s another way that this can be created. And so if I go here, and again, say Mirror a Copy and zoom in on this, I can actually mirror it right here in 3D across that center line and create this. And then I could perhaps use the Beam tool and change it to a horizontal slope. This is a horizontal slope. And then I can go and do – actually let me just use the eyedropper to pick up the thickness of this beam and then after eyedropping it, change it to horizontal and draw another beam across like this. [0:21:57]

Now if I go to 3D, we’re going to see something similar. Now let’s just see if the Solid Element Operations works properly on this. Let me make this the target, make these two the operator, and execute this. And, yes, it does work a similar way. Now the reason why I picked the Beam tool as an alternative is that we can actually change the profile of the Beam tool. So I could select these beams and make them a profile. So just by simply clicking on the Profile option, the Complex Profile, it doesn’t change it, it actually keeps it as rectangular. But now we have the option of changing it to some type of a profile. [0:222:43]

Now we don’t have any ornate profiles here. Let me just see what would be the most interesting. None of these. Let’s see. What if I do the C Steel Section? We can see that there is a shape there. Let me just undo that. Let’s pick a different one and then we’ll actually create one that would be like that. Ok, so you can see as I zoom in on this that is has a profile. Now that’s obviously not what we want. This is steel. We want something ornate. So let me just create a profile based on at least a quick glance at the church. Let me go back to that image. Here is the . And so I’m just going to make  a total wild guess in terms of a shape, just to give you an idea of this. [0:23:56]

So, if I select an element like this and right click on it, there’s an option to capture the profile of the selection. It’s an interesting one because although I don’t want to use this simple rectangular profile, it does give me the actual volume or general shape that this is currently occupying. And then I can work with that as a profile that can get more delineated. Oh, by the way, Peng did type in. Okay, he’s saying that he’s following me and I’m doing fine for him to follow. And interesting, Peng referred me as ArchiCAD Sensei. So I am honored to be your Sensei. I only know of that term a little tiny bit, but I understand that that would be a reference for a respected teacher. So I am pleased to do that for you. [0:24:53]

Ok, so here is this profile editor,               and here’s the shape obviously that the beam has right now. Let me go and select this. This is a fill. So for those of you who may be less familiar with custom profiles, a profile is a shape you can extrude with a beam or wall or column to follow a path, either straight or in some cases, curved. Now, this shape right now of course is just a simple rectangle. But what I’ll do is I’ll go in and change its fill to have an extra point here, and let’s say, create an extra point here. Then I’ll move this point. Perhaps I’ll take this and find the intersection there. So now I’ve got a shape here and perhaps I’ll round this one just to go – something like that. [0:25:56]

Alright, so I’ll round this one as well. Ok, I’ve now got a shape. I’m sure it’s not the shape that was in the original actual shape in the church. But the idea here is you can make it any type of profile you want. And this is a single fill, but it could be actually multiple pieces if you wanted to have different colors. In other words, darker or lighter or perhaps accent colors. Right now, I’m just going to use a single one. And I’m going to store this profile for use with beams. You see, it actually came in by default saying that this is a profile that would be used with beams. If I clicked on this it would also be available for walls. [0:26:47]

Perhaps I might want to do that so that it could be used. I’m going to store it, and that means I have to give it a name. And we’ll just call it, “Church Trim”, and I’ll say OK. Now I have a profile that can use. Now just by creating it does not change these elements. I captured the profile of this but I didn’t tell it when I make changes to use the new profile. But now I’ll go in and select these two, and I’ll go now and change the profile from the custom rectangular piece to the church trim. And, let’s see what this did. [0:27:28]

You can see this trim is sort of what I was expecting. The lower one looks like it’s offset. It needs to be moved. And the one on the other side looks like it’s actually facing the other way. So what I’ll need to do is to do some adjustments here. So let me get rid of this trim piece. Actually, so this is the one that I think is good. Let’s see, this is the bottom one. So let me take the one that’s on top. Actually, let me go back to 3D. You see that I’ve now removed the other half and I can again go Mirror a Copy across the center line, and we now have a shape that is a profile. And certainly the connection here is nice and clean. I think you get the idea. This one down here, we would probably need a different profile because of the way that it’s joining, but it is sort of doing some interesting connection here. [28:55]

But one of the issues that we have is that when you join beams that are angled and horizontal, ArchiCAD doesn’t really know exactly how to clean that up. It can’t miter the corners in quite the way one that might expect. I’m going to show you one other option that would give you more controls over this. And that would be to create these three as if they were lying on the ground in the same plane, and then to create it as an object and flip it up. And this would give you the ability to make these clean up properly. So, here’s how that’s going to work. [0:29:33]

Now this trim here I’ve got facing horizontally. I’m going to need to create another version of this that is vertical or that’s oriented in a different way, because I’m going to be then flipping it afterwards. So, I’m going to duplicate this Church Trim and then I’ll select everything here. And I will rotate it around and perhaps drag this back in position to the origin. Now, interesting, I didn’t know that you could actually change the horizontal stretch zone. Okay, I don’t want to get into too many things here. Let me just undo this and let me just select just the trim piece here. And we’ll rotate that. And then drag it into position and flip these over. [30:34]

So I don’t want to get into teaching everything about complex profiles, I want to just stay focused on the main point, which is that I’ve created now a profile that is facing up that’s quite similar. And I’m going to store this as “Church Trim Vertical”. So it’s just another variation of it. Now, let’s go to the floor plan and I will create a shape here with the Beam tool in this case. I think it will probably work fine. And I will go and create a shape with the Poly method, Polygon method. So I’m going to create a triangle piece. Actually no, let me just do one piece here. [0:31:20]

Now let’s just do it at the 45˚ and Mirror a Copy. Actually, Mirror a Copy here, and let’s see if we then also can make a piece going here. So now you can see these three pieces. If I look in 3D now, these three beams here are lying horizontal. Let me change them to use the profile that I just selected. And this is the vertical one. And now you can see that if I zoom in on this, that they are making a nice clean intersection here. Actually, I guess I need to flip them around. So let me go and flip this, mirror it across here, and then mirror this one here. [0:32:43]

Now let’s take a look in 3D. Okay, so now they are a coherent set. Of course the actual size and shape, we’d want to do precisely in draft. But this is now lying down flat. You see it’s horizontal. And it’s similar to this, only it’s got a nice, clean intersection. So what I’m going to do now is actually turn it into an object. So let me close the Profile Manager and the Solid Element Operations window so we have some space. I’m going to select these elements here and say I want to just show this selection in 3D. So now these elements here, I’m looking at them just in a sort of an arbitrary axonometric view. I’m going to go and take a special view. When I go to that 3D View Mode, 3D Projection Settings, I’m going to take a view that is a side view from this side. Now, what does this do? This will be looking at the point, the apex of this from the side. So you can see, as I zoom in or out, that we’re looking at the top point. [33:55]

Now think about it.  This is what I would like to have as the top when I place it into the model.  So I am now looking at what will become the top, and ArchiCAD has a special feature for creating objects.  You can go to the File menu, Libraries and Objects, and say I’d like to save 3D model.  That’s just the element we have viewed right now in this 3D view, just the three beams. And I’m going to save it as an object. And we’ll call it “Gable Test”.  [0:34:27]

Now it’s going to go into the Embedded Library, that’s part of ArchiCAD 13 and Up as the default. If you are in a version before version 13, you would be saving it in a folder somewhere on your hard drive. But here it’s nice and convenient. It will just save within the project for future use.  I will just say save this as an object by the way, I’m not going to make a window or door, I’m going to say Save It. And now if I go to the floor plan and go to the Object tool, you’ll see that the Object tool has been loaded in with something called Gable Test.  And when I click, you can see that this is just a simple – it’s going horizontally.  [0:35:12]

We’re not seeing this triangle, we’re seeing it from the top.  Now if we look at this, we can see the rounded shape. It’s giving us a top view of that. And so I’m going to rotate this around.  And I will drag this along the building.  And let’s take a look in 3D.  So you can see – I will just move around.  You can see here are the beams that I’ve made horizontally.  Here is the new object that is basically a copy of those.  It’s of course not at the right height, but you can see how beautifully clean it is in terms of its appearance.  So if I were to select this and say move it up to here, let’s move it up to here.  [0:36:08]

And if I were to get rid of these other elements, we can see how that works.  So let me just go to the image here.  So if I zoom in on this, we can see that it’s got something like that.  Obviously it’s a different structure, but the idea here is that you can – in some cases it’s better to draw the elements horizontally and then turn them into an object that you can flip up vertically.  So that is an option that you may find useful from time to time. [0:36:56]

Now I think that’s probably as far as I want to go with this particular part of the demonstration.  There was another question Peng asked which is related which has to do with creating a wall that goes above the roof that would follow the gable side.  So Peng if you want me feedback please type that into the box, but I will go on to the next part.  And if anyone else has any follow-up questions I am of course happy to take them. [0:37:29]

So let’s go back to ArchiCAD here.  So let’s say, from what I understand if Peng’s question, we wanted these walls to actually follow the slope of this upper roof. But go up above them. So essentially the roof was inside the walls.  Here’s the way I might approach that if I understand the question correctly.  In order to trim the walls on an angle, we need to have an element like a roof that trims them.  However, the element that trims them does not necessarily have to be the actual roof, it can be another element that’s used just for trimming.  [0:38:16]

So let’s see how that would work.  I’m going to take this roof and I will go and say drag a copy right on top of itself.  So I am going to click twice. So now I actually have two sets of roofs exactly on top of each other.  But with the second set of roofs, I am going to raise it up let’s say a couple of feet. And now you can see I have two sets of roofs.  And I will now take this lower set, and I will say move the boundary in.  Actually let me move it in a little bit.  [0:38:58]

What did that do?  That wall disappeared when I did that, interesting.  Let me undo that.  Let’s go to the floor plan and look.  We’ve got then two sets of roofs here.  This is the 19 one. I’m going to take this and move in the edge of the side and move it to the inside face of the wall.  So what I’ve done is I’ve basically said that if this roof is going to go behind the wall.  Let’s take a look in 3D and see what that did. Okay, we’ve still got the same odd thing that that wall has disappeared.  I really don’t know why the wall would suddenly disappear, but let’s go and select this roof and in ArchiCAD 15, we have the option to cancel out trims on other elements using this.  [0:40:05]

I’m going to say forget the trim. Now you can see the wall got confused, it was being trimmed by something that actually moved out of position.  So I’ve basically canceled the connection or the Solid Element Operation on it.  Now I’m going to take this wall and instead connect it to the other one.  So I’ll use the Trim Elements to Roof or Shell or Solid Element Operations and tell it that I would like to trim it to this upper roof and I would like to keep the lower piece.  So now, the wall is going up higher than this lower roof, and this particular upper roof, I don’t actually have to show.  I can put it on a layer that is hidden.  For example, I’ll just put it on the layer that says “A-DEMO”.  Or I could put it on something like A-NPLT for “No Plot”, No Plot SEO.  [0:40:57]

So this is actually a layer that is built into the standard U.S. template that is for this purpose. It’s for doing connection operations or trimming operations but things are not supposed to be seen. So by default in the drafting layer combination they are in wire frame.  When I do that, you will see now that roof is shown in a wire frame, but it actually is not. We are not looking at it. We can see now the wall is going up above the other roof.  Let me take this roof here and say well we will make it a little bit higher. So make it 23 feet.  [0:41:35]

And then we will take this wall and tell it that it should go up higher. So I want to have its peak up. So I will take it up.  So now you can see this wall is sticking up above the other roof.  Now this roof that I’m using for trimming is in a wire frame, it’s on a certain layer.  At other times when I am not actually trying to design with it, I can go and turn that layer off.  In other words, that layer that it is set for Solid Element Operations, I can just turn it off entirely instead of making it wire frame. And now we have the wall sticking up above the gable of the roof.  [0:42:17]

So the roof is behind it and this is going up.  Now Peng, I hope that that was what your question was related to, let’s just bring up the original thing that you typed in, that says, “Even found the simple gable wall projecting 1 foot 6 above the pitched roof, a convoluted affair.”  So that’s what I interpreted by your question, that this is a gable wall projecting up above the pitched roof a certain distance. So this is a gable above the pitched roof a certain distance.  And if I interpreted correctly, then that is how I would deal with that, I would basically create another set of roofs that I would use for trimming the wall. [0:43:00]

These roofs would be parallel to the actual roof.  And it would be used only for trimming and would be hidden when they are not being used for design or for the modeling operations.  So hopefully while this in sort of a very simplistic version of it, this gives you the tools that you would need for that.  Now I see Pen has written that my answer, my demo demonstration answered his query.  And he thanks me.  So Peng I appreciate your question, it was a nice little exploration that I think covered a few different topic areas including different ways that you can create forms, because if we just do a very quick review, I started with just simply creating roof pieces and a slab as a way to do a very basic design study.  [0:43:58]

Then I did it with some beams in order to get some profiles here.  But the joining of the three elements there were some limitations there.  And I showed the three beams horizontally as one way of doing an approach where perhaps you can control the intersections when they are done in a horizontal plane, and then turn it into an object that gets rotated up.  And then finally the trim of the walls above the roof by creating an extra roof piece just simply for trimming purposes.  [0:44:41]

So I’m ready to move on then.  Thank you Peng for your question.  So let’s see what other questions we have today.  So Tom Downer, you asked a question. Let me unmute you. Tom are you there?

TOM: I am, good afternoon.

ERIC: Good afternoon or good morning for me. And I guess for Peng it’s actually good evening, because I believe he’s in England.  What is the weather like in Cambridge right now Tom? [0:45:15]

TOM: Overcast and threatening rain.

ERIC: So one of those spring days where you may get a little bit of a shower. So you asked about how to create a new pen set and how it will switch to all black for plotting.  Okay.  So let’s take a look at the pen sets.  Actually let me open up the sample project.  This is much better to have a real project, even if it’s a sample one here.  So here’s the sample project.  So in terms of pen sets, you asked how to create one. Tell me what you want to achieve with it?  [0:46:11]

TOM: From a previous CAD program I am very familiar with associating certain line widths with certain colors.  And I thought particularly when I was working on a worksheet where it’s all 2D stuff, it would be useful to have a pen set that reflected that set of pens using those colors and getting the right thicknesses to the lines.  But then I was thinking when it goes to the layout sheet and ends up being in an all black, if things are really coordinated by the numbers they may end up being different line thicknesses.  [0:46:51]

ERIC: Okay. So you want to, in some cases, work with a rather different standard for the pens because you just are working in 2D.  Would you be bringing in something from your old CAD environment as a basis that you’re going to customize?

TOM: I was just going to start from scratch and set up a new set of pens, 8 or 16 pens that reflected that old version.

ERIC: Okay because you’re just comfortable with the old version?  [0:47:20]

TOM: Yes.

ERIC: Alright well I will teach you how to do that as well as teach everybody. Just a quick bit of advice: if you’re starting from scratch, then I would suggest that you probably use the same pen set that you are using for the rest of the projects, so you don’t have to keep in mind two totally different pen sets.  But I will certainly teach you what you want, and if there is a point where this is important and that is if you are bringing in a detail drawing or a survey or anything else from DWG or another source, and you don’t want to have to reconfigure all of the pens, in other words, select all the lines and put them into different pens, then you can certainly set up a pen set that matches their standard.  [0:48:07]

So that would be a place where I would say I would recommend this thing. But what you are doing I would recommend that you use the standard pens so you only have to really think about one way of organizing the pens.  But certainly that’s up to you. Right now, if I were to go – there is an interesting – in MasterTemplate, and this file here is from MasterTemplate, there are a number of resources that are used for educational purposes.  So there are some worksheets here that are very specifically intended to teach you things.  [0:48:52]

So if I go to the one worksheet that is called the pen table objects, what you will see is this is – what do you call it, this is an object that we actually got and put into MasterTemplate, someone put it into ArchiCAD talk, and then with permission for the people to use it.  And what is nice about it is that although it looks like there’s a whole bunch of boxes, if I select this, it’s a single element.  You can see that when I select it there are a bunch of handles that show up but if I select it, it’s just one element up here. [0:49:30]

Now this is called Pen Table, and if you want if you don’t have MasterTemplate you can go and try to track down in ArchiCAD Talk where this was stored.  Or I can try to get it if somebody emails me.  But basically if I switch my pen sets here on the fly from let’s say the standard in the U.S. – is the ArchiCAD 10 default. Although here we are in ArchiCAD 15.  If I switch this to AutoCAD pens for example, we’re going to see everything dramatically changing.  So this is just a quick way to see what it is.  If I go to the View menu, Onscreen View Options, we have it in True Line Weight.  So let’s just zoom in on this. So right now the AutoCAD pen set in the standard template does not have differentiated line weights.  [0:50:22]

However of course if I go to the pen set for the standard, we are going to see that there are some differences. Pen one is much thicker than pen 2 for example. Now in terms of creating a new pen set, the way the you approach that is you go to the Document menu, Pen Sets, and instead of manually switching between them, you go to Pens and Colors which allows you to see the pen sets and possibly duplicate it.  So if I go to pens and colors here, you can see I am in the standard ArchiCAD 10 default. [0:50:56]

Each one of these has a color and has a weight that you can describe in points or millimeters.  And it also has a text description which is optional.  In other words, you can see some of these have different descriptions in the standard pen set describing what they are used for.  And then others just say general purpose throughout.  Now in the international version it’s very different.  They have a very different pen set and actually a much more elaborated one.  But let’s just say we want to create a new pen set.  It’s as simple as just saying, alright pen one. We want it to be thinner.  [0:51:33]

Maybe we want to go from thin to thick.  Let me just change this to 0.1.  It’s going to be a thin line.  Notice that as soon as I make any changes it says “Custom”.  So now I am working on a custom pen set.  And let me just change the edit a color and let’s just make this a gray for example.  And let’s take pen two and it’s pen 0.2.  Let me edit the color and let me – actually, let’s make it an orange. And I will take pen three.  And actually that’s interesting, now we have .1, .2, .3 and let’s say pen 4 let’s just make it .4. So just to be arbitrary.  [0:52:16]

So now I’ve changed four of their pens to custom.  And I can go ahead and store this.  Obviously you can go through as many pens as you want to make the pen set.  You could do all 255 of them or you could just do only the ones that you need.  So store it and we’re just going to call it “Downer pen set”.  Okay, so Tom Downer, there you go in your honor.  Now I say OK, and you can see all the sudden in this special object, it shows the current pen set.  It says you’re using a different one.  Here is pen one, two, three.  There are different colors and this is thin going up to thick. So obviously I have succeeded there. [0:53:02]

So now you can draw.  If I go to the Line tool and I pick pen one, and I do than pen two, then I do pen three, you can see obviously that it is giving me whatever I told it to do. Now, suppose that we wanted to do that in color, because then you can see even if we change this to turn off True Line Weight, you can still see the colors, and we can tell at least in general terms which one is thick or thin as we are drafting along here.  But when we are putting them onto a layout sheet, we want this to be all black or many of the pens to go to black.  So let’s take a look at what is setup in the standard template and then how we would do something with a custom pen set.  So are you following me so far?  [0:54:03]

TOM: Yes, that’s fine.

ERIC: All right.  So this particular thing, I haven’t drawn anything really, but I just want to focus on the principle of it.  Let me go two – let’s see, this is a worksheet DDX 03.  Actually let’s just create a new worksheet here, a new independent worksheet.  And we will call this “pen set test”.  Alright, so now we are in this pen set test.  I need to make sure that I’m using the new custom pen set here.  And let’s just draw this with the orange pen.  So at least here, we would be able to see that it is orange rather than black.  And I will draw another one with the gray.  Then one with the 0.4.  [0:55:04]

So I now have some lines that in hairline, we’re not seeing the difference.  But if I switch it to True Line Weight, we’re seeing the difference between it.  And of course, I don’t know what scale I’m at, this is quarter inch to a foot. Let’s say we’re doing a detail drawing, so let’s say that we were up at three inches to a foot.  Now of course now that I have done that, the scale of this is not going to show the weight.  So let’s just do something that you may at some point need to do which is to resize the drawing that was done at the wrong scale. Let me go to the Edit  menu, Reshape, Resize. And I’m going to make this diagrammatic thing smaller by saying I want to take this length and make it smaller. [0:55:58]

And if I zoom in on it, we can see some line weight differentiation.  Let me just do that again, it’s Command+K, or CTRL+K and let me just make this smaller.  So now we can see the differences. So let’s see the difference when we put it on a sheet. This is at the three inches to a foot. I need to create a view for it.  So we do have a clone folder for the worksheets which means that as soon as I create a new worksheet it shows up in this, what was it called, pen set test.  [0:56:34]

But the view in the clone folder was set by default to the quarter inch to a foot.  I need to change the settings for that to the desired scale for whenever the drawing is.  So now I’ve got the setting for this view ready to be placed on a sheet.  The other thing is that the setting for the view you’ll notice that the color changed because I didn’t go to the settings for it. I need to say that this one, when I’m working with it, is going to be using the custom pen set.  So in other words, the view has to be defined to match of course the scale, possibly layer combination, and definitely the pen set.  [0:57:16]

And I say OK.  So now you can see where we’ve got the revised pen set here.  So now this view gives us a working environment like what you were saying, you want to have a custom set of pens that you’re working in.  But now we want to place it on a sheet.  So if I go to a sheet, and let’s just take a detail sheet for example. So here is a detail sheet and let me go and then drag this little test drawing on here and you can see that it’s in black.  Now how did that happen? The weights are not the same as what we had before.  This was a thin line I believe. [0:57:59]

So what happened is that this drawing was put in with instead of using the Downer pen set, the custom pen set, it was put in here.  But it was put in actually not with the standard default ones that we would be designing with, but with a special one that has the first 20 pens all black.  So how did that happen and how would we control it more precisely?  Well the reason is if I deselect this and I go to the Drawing tool and I double click it, and now we’re in the drawing default settings.  So these are the settings for any drawing that is being added into the layout until otherwise changed, just like when you set the wall default settings, that’s how walls will be unless you change them or change the default.  [0:58:50]

So this is saying that the pen set for new drawings that are added is using the special one.  Now why is this?  This is a convenience that we set up in the template saying when you take something that was drawn in color you might want to, when you place it onto the sheet, most of the pens go to black.  So you have a nice crisp output. If you were to print in color or in grayscale, the main construction pens would be all black.  They keep the pen weights, they actually keep the different weights, which are thin and which are thick. But we’ve manually created a new pen set where everything is black.  [0:59:27]

So you can change an individual one, for example, let me just change this back in terms of – let’s see. I guess we can do this here. I can change this back to the custom pen set, and now you can see how it changed the weight and the color. What we want to do is keep these weights, but have them be in black.  So we’re going to go to the Document, Pen Sets, Pens and Colors, and then pick the Downer Pen Set. Now the Downer Pen Set here is the one we just created. And I’m going to pick these first four pens, or maybe even just the first 20 of them, any number. [1:00:08]

So I click on one and Shift+click on the furthest one, and then I can say Edit Color.  And let me just make this black.  So now, Downer Pen Set is still there, but we have a custom one, and I’m going to store this as Downer Pen Set Black. So now we have two pen sets that are similar.  This is 0.1 mm, this is 0.2 mm, this is 0.3 mm, the same as the earlier one. But this one obviously just has the colors changed.  So now if I select this drawing, I can go manually change it to the variation that has the pen set in black.  [1:00:54]

Now it keeps everything the same weight, but all those pens are made to black.  So the basic idea is that we can go to the Documents, Pen Sets, Pens and Colors to be able to adjust or create new pen sets.  And in the pen set, we can select any pen set as a starting point and then start modifying it.  As soon as we make a change to anything, as soon as we edit the color or the weight of something, then we’ll see it becomes custom.  [1:01:26]

We can go ahead and make as many changes as we want and then store it with a name.  That creates a new pen set that you can associate with a view, so you can use it at any time, and you can use it for drawings on the layout sheet.  If you want to have a variation of a pen set, such as this custom pen set with these colors but a similar one with similar weights but with different colors, then you can just simply start with one, change the colors, and then when you are finished you can store it and give it a name.  [1:02:07]

Now if you did want to tweak it, for example, I’ve got a pen set and say this is 0.1 and maybe 0.1 is not going to reproduce, it’s too thin a line for certain types of reproduction. Let’s make it 0.14 or something like that.  So now I’ve tweaked this. I could say let me store this as, and I can overwrite this one.  So I can basically say that I would like to overwrite this.  This will then update that pen set for any view that uses that.  So now the Downer pen set has 0.14.  Of course we would want to go to the black one as well and make this one match 0.14, and then again store it and overwrite the one that we want, and then it would update that.  Does that answer your question Tom?  [1:02:57]

TOM: Yes, that is easier than I thought it was going to be.  One question. If I’m not mistaken the second to the bottom row of the actual pen colors there, that is the AutoCAD pen set, is that right?

ERIC: In this one here, AutoCAD…

TOM: No, I’m sorry, in the one you just had there before, come back, yes, that one. In the second to the bottom row it goes red, yellow, green, blue. Are those not the AutoCAD colors?  [1:03:38]

ERIC: Let’s see, so this is Pen 121. So let’s look at AutoCAD pens, no. The AutoCAD pens are.

TOM: Up at the top though, that’s the same line as up at the top.

ERIC: It’s similar, red, yellow, green, cyan, and let’s just see. Red, yellow, green, cyan.  Yes they do look similar. That might be.

TOM: I guess that’s what I was wondering, if you had – if you could create from some of those gray boxes down below to have this other set. But it looks to me the way you just showed is probably a preferable way of dealing with it because you’re just really dealing with the top row of pens and ignoring the rest of them.  [1:04:18]

ERIC: There are 255 pens, no one uses all of them.  There are in addition to specifying line weights, pens can also be used for sorting.  In other words, you can find and select things based on their pens.  So you can say I want to find any object that is drawn with a certain pen or beams or walls that have certain pens.  So you can use it for categorizing elements as sort of a crude way to do it.  But it does give you some flexibility.  In addition to selecting things, sometimes it can be used in theory for quantifying elements.  [1:04:58]

In other words, you can say “rule” in the properties for quantities, you can say if a wall is drawn with a certain type of pen, then it has a certain attribute.  And if it’s drawn with a different pen then it may have as something different.  So there can be some other uses for pens in terms of selection and categorization.  But for the most part, most people do only use between 10 and 20 pens actively. Of course, you can also use some pens and there are some standard pen sets you can use for presentations and have different colors. Although I think the NCS National CAD Standards here in the U.S. has a very simplistic color, and the ArchiCAD default in the U.S. has a range but it’s not really a kaleidoscopic range.  [1:05:55]

In MasterTemplate, we have some example pen sets that are from some firms that some long time ago posted pen sets of their own. And so these are some pen sets that I’ve never really studied, but we’ve reproduced them with MasterTemplate in case someone wanted to study what they had. And there are some links in the MasterTemplate documentation to where these are described.  But you can see a few different ones that are rather different.  So there’s Link Ellis I think, he’s a well known ArchiCAD consultant and here you can see he’s got something with a much more rainbow arrange of pens. [1:06:38]

They might very good for making presentation images, because obviously you have more choices for colors. And here is another consultant named Matt Loden that has some similar things.  In any event, the standard one that Graphisoft supplies are functional, and you can feel free to modify it.  And you’ll notice that in the U.S. one, the bottom five rows are totally all one color.  In other words, they are an off white.  And you can feel free to add or define them as you wish, or you can just go for the first 20 or the first ones and redefine. [1:07:19]

One other little caution is that objects like doors, windows, chairs, cabinets, have default settings in the ArchiCAD library that rely on the fact for example that a door swing default is Pen six. Which is a very fairly thin line, .18 mm. and so if you were to redefine your pen set, and pen six was a thick line and you were using that on the floor plan, then your door swing would tend to be a heavy line. And if you didn’t want that to be the case, then you’d have to change each door, the settings, for that swing.  [1:07:57]

And so you would have extra work. If you are fighting the defaults, in other words, if you were actually changing the settings that are used in your general drawings, for the pens that are used by default, then you are going to have to change the default settings of those elements. So in other words, you will have to have extra work. So my general recommendation is if you are doing things with the standard library which for most is design, you would do – this would be separate from consultant’s drawings or detail drawings. [1:08:30]

But for design, when you are using library parts, you would want to have at least the first batch of ten or twenty pens have similar weight to what Graphisoft provides, so that way you don’t end up putting in a window and having it just look crappy. Anyway, is that good for finishing up Tom? [1:08:51]

TOM: Yes. My goal is really to do it with only with the detail type drawings and leave stay with the standard ArchiCAD pens for doing the modeling, etc. But when – for instance, I’m doing an independent worksheet right now and having the ability to understand what those line weights are going to do from my previous experience, is what I was trying to get at.  [1:09:17]

ERIC: Okay.

TOM: And I see that would work, that would work. I just switch back to the standard ArchiCAD pens when I am in the model.

ERIC: Right, right. Okay, well thank you for your question. I appreciate it. So let’s move on then. I see Ken Brooks typed in a follow-up question and let me unmute you here. Ken, are you there? [1:09:40]

KEN: Yes, I am, can you hear me?

ERIC: Yes. So tell everybody where you’re calling in from?

KEN: I am calling in from Green Valley Arizona.

ERIC: Okay, so Arizona. Is it hot there?

KEN: Let me look. 80 degrees.

ERIC: 80, okay. Not too bad. Alright. So you asked what is ArchiCAD’s concept for the default pen set. So here we have the U.S. ArchiCAD 10 default. Now in the U.S. we have one set, and I don’t have the international template open, so I’ll just speak in general terms. [1:10:23]

In the U.S. the first 20 pens have some dedicated usage. And so we have pen 1 being heavy cut lines, so the walls are typically drawn with that as the default outline. And then there are some other ones that are just sort of named by their thickness. There’s thin, but it also might be referring to the fact that it’s used for fills. And then we have medium. And I’m not quite sure why it’s called – I guess “slate” is sort of a color in terms of the slate blue, but it’s used for door and window lines in many cases. [1:11:00]

Pen 4 is for objects. Pen 5 has the color burgundy. Pen 6 here we have the door swing. So there is a note here. You can study this. There’s not a lot of description. In fact, most of these just simply have a color and a thickness, but here you can see this one says lamp. So the default settings for the lamp tool when you put in lamp objects would be to use this pen 10. [1:11:28]

Now uncut line here, they are saying that this is a medium line and this would be something that you are not cutting through, so you might be seeing a parapet wall or something down below the cut plane, as opposed to a cut line here. And then an overhead line is thinner, so that would be anything that you were drawing up above, say a roof or a fascia or something or what do you call it, soffit. [1:12:10]

So anyway, they have some designations. But if we go down to line two here, general purpose, and all these no matter where I click are going to say general purpose. So in terms of the U.S. version, there is just some colors, and you can use them as you wish for whatever purposes you might find appropriate. The only other thing that is special in the U.S. one from a historical legacy, there is pen 91 is white. It’s sort of odd being in the middle of things, but it actually is the part of a grayscale ramp. [1:12:47]

So pen 02 is slightly gray, pen 93 is a little bit darker, and so on, up through 98, 99 and 100 is actually solid black. But this is basically if you want to indicate things in different shades of gray, this is built into the standard pen set. And the reason they are 91 through 100 is many years ago, ArchiCAD only had 100 pens. Maybe up through version 5 or something like that, I can’t remember at what point it changed. [1:13:24]

But we are talking about many years ago. And so pens 91 through 100 in the U.S. were this ramp going from white to black. As we switched to 255 pens, Graphisoft in the U.S. said let’s not change that, and so a division was made to maintain compatibility that has been maintained to this day. Now in the international version, it’s very, very different, and actually it might be interesting to bring that up. Just to open the eyes of all the Americans on the call but also to give a little bit of a fair shake to the international people from outside the U.S. [1:14:02]

So I am going to go into ArchiCAD 15, and let’s see if I have the ArchiCAD template, no. the defaults ArchiCAD, here’s international template. So because we support international users both in terms of the Best Practices course and MasterTemplate, I have to have this set up and I of course even when it’s distributed internationally it doesn’t have the word INT on it, it would just say Template. But I have to tell which one is which. I am just going to open this template. [1:14:45]

So when I open it we will see a rather different pen set. And I don’t want to get into explaining all of it; I will just say that it was an eye opener when I saw this. And in some ways, I think it is probably a superior, more sophisticated pen set. But we didn’t want, in terms of MasterTemplate, and I don’t want in terms of the Best Practices course, to force people to use that in the U.S. because it isn’t compatible with the U.S. library. [1:15:18]

In other words, the pen settings there, if you were to use them, you would find the U.S. library parts would look pretty bad. So it’s designed for compatibility of course with the international library.  But let’s just look very briefly at the pen sets here, and you will see that there is color conceptual, site plan 1 to 500.  So 1 to 500 would be one inch equals 40 feet approximately.  Architectural 1-10, that would be 1/8 inch scale in the U.S. roughly. Building plans 1 to 50.  So if we look at just the pens and colors for the standard 1 to 100, which would be roughly 1/8 inch, you will see rather different colors. [1:15:59]

And if I look here at walls cut structural here is walls general, walls cut structural, walls cut nonstructural, walls, symbols and separators, wall outlines, and wall cut fills.  So this whole column is for walls.  If I go to the blue ones, it’s for text, different purposes.  And so these are all very different.  If I go to the next one over, objects general, objects cut structural, object cut nonstructural.  So basically in the international version, they’ve got a column which is for a particular purpose such as objects or walls or beams or things like that.  [1:16:44]

And each one of them, so here is mechanical element, general, hot water or cold water.  So they basically have a column for a particular category, and then for subcategories, they have different versions.  So it’s very different.  And if we go say from the walls at 1 to 100, this is 0.35 mm. if I go to 1 to 50, this may be a different weight in some cases for detailing.  Maybe not the walls, but certainly there will be some things here that would be – you can see this pen set is different for detailing than it is for building plans.  [1:17:23]

And so ultimately, I have not looked at this in great detail. I just took a look and went, my; this is a very much more detailed system. And so we did of course have to make sure with MasterTemplate that we set up the MasterTemplate standards to use the ones that are commonly used internationally.  Anyway, so that’s sort of maybe Ken a longer explanation than you were looking for, but does that give you a sense of what’s there?  [1:17:55]

KEN: Yes. I wanted to ask a question. In the U.S. template that you provide, is your model residence in the template; is it setup to use the ArchiCAD pen sets?

ERIC: Yes. We decided that pen sets were not something that we wanted to mess with in the sense that they are good enough. We might be able to make them a little better, but really they are good enough as they are. It would cause too much complications, it just wasn’t worth trying to redo the pen sets.  So MasterTemplate uses the same pen set in the U.S. for the U.S. version as the standard ones. In the international version, we of course follow the international pen set standards. [1:18:59]

KEN: Okay.  When I first started using ArchiCAD, I am not remembering this man’s name right now, but he had a template…

ERIC: The other person who created a template that was used by some U.S. resellers or distributed is Rex Maximilian.

KEN: Yes, Rex.

ERIC: So Rex was the reseller for ArchiCAD in Hawaii for many years. Very experienced consultant and designer with ArchiCAD.  I’m not sure if he’s an architect or not, but definitely knows his way around ArchiCAD beautifully. [1:19:48]

KEN: Rex’s pen set, I became accustomed to it.  And so the impression I have now is, for example, if I wanted to reproduce his pen set, as Ken Brooks’ template, I would have to go through it seems like every object setting in ArchiCAD and make sure that all the pens for a door swing for example was changed.

ERIC: I think that the work that you are contemplating really is not necessary, because although I haven’t looked at – I know Rex personally over many years, I have attached on for a while. But I doubt that he would have created a pen set that for the first batch of pens, the first 20 pens, that varied too much from the standard.  Because it would require too much work when you’re putting in library components.  It’s not practical to go into the ArchiCAD standard library and redo the defaults, so therefore you’re going to be working with the defaults that Graphisoft has, and you have to modify every time you put in an object or use favorites for that.[1:21:24]

So I don’t think that Rex would’ve done that.  My guess is that he would have left the first batch of pens compatible with the library and then had rows 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, whatever, set up in a way that maybe have some other nice options.  And so – and by the way, if you wanted to use that pen set, you could bring it in very quickly using the Options menu, Element Attributes, Attribute Manager. You can, for example, it will show you in the current project what is there for all of the different attributes. Here are the layers, the layer combinations, here is the pen sets, and here are the pens in any particular pen set that you can study or change.  [1:22:15]

Here are the pen sets that are in the current project.  We can go open on the right side another project, even an older project from a previous version of ArchiCAD.  And then you can select the pen set and add it in to your current file.  See you can easily bring it in and you can then play around and see what it looks like when you’ve got it.

KEN: Okay.  That sounds good.  You know what I recall is that every column in his pen set was within a column, the colors would change, but the pen weight would not.  And the pen weights would progress from left to right, thin to thick.  So it seemed real convenient for reasons I’m not able to explain right now. [1:23:12]

ERIC: But I think if you have a system where the pen weights are varying depending upon the position in the table. And you get used to that, then you know that you can easily change – you can get something thicker or thinner just by simply moving in that grid.  So I think there is a good theory to that. And I imagine that Rex worked out a coherent setup.  What I would say is that the standard U.S. ones are usable, they are not great or ideal, but we just didn’t feel like it was important enough to change in MasterTemplate.  [1:23:52]

But feel free to if you have access to Rex’s template, feel free to bring it in and then just make sure that the standard defaults for library parts in particular are not causing problems. I think that Rex would have been very well aware of that issue and you wouldn’t have those types of problems.

KEN: I think you’re correct.

ERIC: By the way, a little side note.  Here we are in the Attribute Manager and I just discovered something new that was added in.  I’m going to guess that it was added into ArchiCAD 15, but it could have been put in in 14 or 13 and I didn’t notice.  And that is I’m looking at a pen set, and I could pick the standard pen set or whatever, and here is this button that says, “Save As CTB”. Now this is for those of you who worked with AutoCAD, it is a special file for the pen weight, and it allows you to save this CTB TV file with whatever name you like for use in AutoCAD. [1:25:03]

So it basically will carry across the pen weights from the current ArchiCAD setup into AutoCAD.  So if you hand it over to a consultant, they can have matching pen weights.  This is something that we did not have an option to do before, and certainly it’s a very recent addition.  Now this is for going out.  I am wondering with there is one that allows you to bring in a pen table from AutoCAD, which has been a more common question.  [1:25:33]

I’m getting something from a consultant, I want to see it with the pen weights that they had.  And the only way that I knew up to this point to do that was to manually simulate their pen set. Basically create new pen set and one by one put in the pen weights, which if it was 255 pens would be very, very tedious.  But usually there are only 10 or 20 or 30 pens that you need to worry about.  But CTB is a new one. [1:26:05]

KEN: Eric, am I still on?

ERIC: You’re still on yes.

KEN: Okay, you know I recall in AutoCAD that different pen weights have different colors.  So if you wanted a real fine pen, it was yellow. If you wanted a really fat pen, it was white.  And there was a gradation.  And I remember you could set your settings, a line weight by color.  You remember that? [1:26:47]

ERIC: Of course.  And this is sort of similar to what ArchiCAD has, is that your colors, if I look at anything, this color has a line weight associated. And you can view it on screen in hairline where all of them are similar, but it will still print out in different weights.  So there is an association between the positions in the table, which is in this case number six. Click here its number five.  So that’s the position.  And the weight and the color, which are editable. Now in AutoCAD it’s similar, if you draw something with a certain pen number, then it has a certain color. [1:27:29]

I don’t believe you can edit the color in AutoCAD.  You can change the weight of a pen in AutoCAD.  And that’s why they have these pen tables that are controlled with a certain file, the CTB file and there may be another one I can’t remember what the initials are.  And that allows you to have – different offices may have different standards, and you can copy the standard from one office to another for reference.  So it’s very similar. They do have another option which we do not have which is to say color by layer. So that when you’re drawing something on the mechanical layer or the landscape layer or whatever, then it can actually automatically force it to a certain color. [1:28:18]

In one sense it’s good, because it ensures a certain consistency. But in another sense it sort of reduces some flexibility.  So I’m not going to argue whether it’s good or bad, it’s just that Graphisoft chose not to do it that way.  And the other thing that they do have, at least with poly lines, is that you can individually select something and even if it is a certain pen, you can say the poly line has a certain thickness that is manually set. And again, it gives a certain type of flexibility, but it can get a little hard to manage. In any event, it’s not something that we have. When we select something with a certain pen color, that’s the weight it has. Although that can be affected by the pen set that is currently active. [1:29:11]

KEN: Thank you Eric.

ERIC: Thank you Ken. I appreciate your questions and comments.  Let’s see if there are any other last questions today.  It’s been an hour and a half, so we are at a point where we can finish up.

Roderick put in a question at the beginning that I told him was – I could not answer directly now, which is having to do with construction simulation.  I will look into that. I’m not even quite sure if construction simulation is built into the menus, the standard menus. But very briefly, construction simulation is an option that allows you to choose when certain elements are going to appear in a construction sequence. [1:30:05]

So essentially, you can do phased presentations where you would say, we first build this, then later we build that, then we tear this down and then we add that. And so you can do this on a day by day or month by month or any sort of construction schedule that you might want to do. And it allows you to switch and set well what will we look like on June 15, or what were we scheduled to look like on June 15. In other words, we can see on that date that we were supposed to have torn out this room, etc. [1:30:42]

So I will have to refresh my memory on how you can do the controls on it. But it definitely is an interesting presentation tool.  I’m not quite sure how well it fits into construction documents, because views and drawings on layouts do not have a separate setting for saying I would like to see on this sheet the drawing at this particular time.  I think you can change the overall status of the project to be what it would look like on a particular day, but you can’t have in the same layout book different versions. At least I don’t think the management of it is that sophisticated. But it is an interesting option and I will try to freshen up on it and put it into one of the calls coming up.  [1:31:32]

So if you have any last comments, please type them into the questions box. I always appreciate hearing what you thought about the session. We’ll finish up for now then, and I will post this recording in the member area shortly.  I want to thank you all again for watching.  Bye for now.

[END OF AUDIO 1:31:57]