This 16 minute video covers typical problems and challenges you may encounter as you start working in ArchiCAD and try to follow a training demonstration. The screen configuration of palettes may be different than what I’m showing, so I go over both the manual resizing and placement of palettes and windows, as well as how to set the Options menu > Work Environment > Palette Schemes (and also Work Environment Profiles) to default or standard configurations.
I also cover typical issues that come up when the Edit menu > Grouping > Autogroup command is turned on, which will (when it’s activated) automatically group elements that are drawn using certain commands such as Polywall or Rectangle Walls. The use of the Suspend Groups button in the Toolbar or the Edit menu > Grouping > Suspend Groups command will allow you to select and modify individual elements of a group.
Additional tips are included for the use of the Escape key, right-clicking and Control-clicking (when you don’t have a multi-button mouse) to get the context menu, and the use of the Shift key for selection.
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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]
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Hi Eric,
Quick Start Module 1 part 5 Transcript PDF isn’t opening (parts 1 – 4 were all ok)
Cheers
Vaughan
Hi Vaughn –
Thanks for letting me know about the problem.
I believe I have resolved it – please try downloading it again.
Here’s the link:
https://www.acbestpractices.com/transcripts/quickstart/QSC-1-5-Troubleshooting-and-Additional-Notes-ArchiCAD-Training.pdf
Eric
Aloha Eric,
In this video it sounds like there is some way to dock ArchiCAD palettes in a Windows computer.
I’m using a Windows Vista computer and I don’t seem to have any docking features for my palettes. I can line them up next to each other but they just seem to float and not snap to each other.
I don’t think that it is my computer because in my Adobe programs palettes do snap and dock to each other.
Please explain how the ArchiCAD palettes can be docked in a Windows computer.
Mahalo,
John.
John –
On ArchiCAD Windows version, the palettes will dock to the sides, top or bottom of the screen. Grab the title bar to move them, or hover over any of the edges to stretch that side, and move the cursor close to the edge of the screen (or another palette that is already docked) and you will see them snap into place.
On the Mac side, they snap to each other, rather than docking to the edge of the screen. I can’t really explain or justify the difference in behavior; I believe Graphisoft has stated that “this is what users expect on PC or on Mac – we’re just making the palettes behave like other ones on that platform.”
Eric
Aloha Eric,
For some reason the ArchiCAD palettes do not dock on my computer. Can you tell me if there is a setting somewhere (work environment?) that controls whether palettes dock or not?
John –
I do not know of a setting that controls this behavior. As I wrote, this behavior is different on PC vs. Mac. On a PC, when you drag a palette to the side or top or bottom of the screen, you should see it dock into position. If you have multiple monitors, you may need to be at one extreme end or the other, rather than to the “seam” between them. To get the docking action to happen, your cursor must be within a few pixels of the edge; you’ll then see a visual change as the palette ghost image “grabs” onto the edge of the screen; let go at that point.
You can return all the palettes to their default, docked positions by using the Options menu > Work Environment > Palette Schemes and selecting the Default Palette Scheme and clicking Apply, then OK. Then you’ll have the palettes in their “original” arrangement, which may be a good starting point for your experimentation.
Eric
very good detels
Hi Eric,
These seems ridiculous, but I didn’t fully grasp how to use the Group command. F-i-n-a-l-l-y I get it! Thanks for covering this.
Mariya
Eric, One feature that would be awesome is a way to bookmark spots in the videos and make some notes. As you progress through the course, you would have set of Bookmarks pointing to specific areas in each video where you address a feature, or technique we could immediately jump to when working this course or another project.
I could see where this would be especially valuable in the Best Practices Course as well as your coaching Sessions, as this is where you really dive deep into the many aspects of AC, many of which may only be needed on rare occasions but I would much prefer to go to your video explanation vs. search endless help files online.
I have looked for similar sources on Google but what I have found only work with YouTube videos and not what you have assembled here or even our downloaded files.
Thanks,