QuickStart Course – Week 5 Part 4 – © copyright 2011 by Eric Bobrow

QUICKSTART COURSE – MODULE 5 PART 4 – The Fill Tool and the Label Tool

Hello, this is Eric Bobrow.  And in this lesson, we’ll take a look at the Fill tool and the Label tool.  So the Fill tool is located in the Document group here of tools.  It’s a 2D tool for creating hatch pattern or general filled areas.  Now when I double click on the Fill tool, you’ll see that it has a variety of settings of course, like all other tools.  And when I press down on the choice of fill, you’ll see 25%. These are some of the solid fills These are the ones that are going to cover an area without any particular line work.  So 100% would be opaque, 25 or 50% would be partially transparent, and then there are fills like “Air Space” or “Empty Fill” that actually have nothing inside them, but they do create a bounded area, which you can use sometimes for purposes just to create an outline for an area. [1:08]

We have gradient fills like these, Linear and Radial, which will do some presentation type of effects for an area. And then we have Vectorial fills.  And Vectorial fills are the ones you probably will use most often. They will have line work, perhaps just simple parallel lines or grids, and then there are a variety of other options that you will see.  Now I’m going to move this dialog box over a little bit. And we’ll see also that there are some ones over on the right.  We can’t see on the current screen the title, it says “Symbol Fills”, but there are some that are more complex like these Sea Stone or Cultured Stone or River Rock. [1:49]

If you’re in different versions of ArchiCAD, you may see different entries in this list.  But basically, the Symbol fills are ones that can be more complicated.  And you can actually create your own if you wish.  And then in later versions of ArchiCAD, there is a group called Image fills, which allow you to do textures that might be more realistic looking, of grass or brick or things like that, much like a rendering.  Now I’m going to go and say that I’d like to put in some boards for the bedroom.  So in other words, it’s going to be a plank floor say 6 inches apart, which would be 150 mm approximately. And I’ll just say OK.  So I’ve chosen that, and I’ll just zoom in a little bit on the bedroom and go to one corner here, and go to the other corner down here, and you’ll see that it draws in the line work.  [2:44]

Now ArchiCAD has a natural order for elements.  In other words, the fills will fit behind certain things, and maybe ahead of some other elements. But in general, objects and text will float above the fill.  So that will work very nicely. We didn’t obscure the bed for example.  But we can use the Display Order command to move things in front or behind if necessary.  Now, having done that, let’s look at something that might appear on a different plan. For example, that’s shown on the Floor plan or on the Furniture plan.  Let’s go to a Ceiling plan.  So I’ll double click on the Ceiling plan that’s in the list here.  [3:25]

And we’ll now everything has changed in terms of what we’re seeing.  The bed and other furniture disappeared because that layer is turned off, and in fact, the layer that the fill was on which was called in the U.S. version, “A-Area Pattern”, that layer is turned off.  You can see the eyeball.  So what I’d like to do is put in a fill for an acoustic ceiling.  Now, this is a residence, and maybe we wouldn’t put in an acoustic ceiling in a residence, but certainly you will use this quite frequently in commercial buildings or institutional buildings. So what I’ll do is pick a layer that’s going to be visible for the Ceiling plan that we’re working on. You can see that “A-Anno Ceil” would be available, so that’s annotation for the ceiling, that’s 2D information. Or possibly “A-CLNG” or “A-ceiling” would be another choice. [4:15]

Typically I would use that for 3D things like an actual slab that would represent a ceiling, but we’re not going to do that in this simple training. I would do it certainly in a more advanced model of the building.  But let me just put this on the 2D annotation for the Ceiling plan. And let’s pick, instead of the parallel 6 inch boards, let’s pick a grid. And I’ll pick one that says “Grid 24×48”, which would be the equivalent to about 600×1,200 mm.  Now having done that, I can simply draw a box along here, and you can see how that appears.  [4:57]

Now, I’d like to change the way this looks, and show you some of the options that we have. So I’ll select it.  Now remember, you can always press down the Shift key to select something, and note that when I press the Shift key down with the Fill tool activated, that immediately highlights the fill.  In other words, there happened to be a roof and a slab in that same location, but it’s picking the fill first, whereas if I was in the Arrow tool, and I hovered over it, then it might actually pick the roof.  You can see how it’s preferring the roof as the first choice there. So let me go back to the Fill tool, and Shift+click to select that fill that I just drew.  [5:34]

Now, we can change the color of the line work.  I’ll just make it red so that we can see it changed. That will also change the thickness of the lines.  We can change the background color using this popup. Let me just make it something that we can see. This may be a little dark, let’s pick something a little lighter.  Now you’ll see that it does have a color, but it’s not obscuring any of the information like the roof plan or the Section Marker that’s jogging through this.  And that’s just fine, but just to demonstrate, we can bring this in front of other elements. By having it selected, you can see that we still have handles on it, and by right clicking and going to Display Order, Bring to Front.  [6:16]

Now if I do that, you can see that it is now in front of everything else and covering it all up.  It’s opaque.  Now, if I look to the background color, there are different color options of course.  And I could pick the white pen, for example, in whatever pen set you’ve got, and it would look white and probably work just fine in terms of most printing output. But for the most reliable output, where it just covers things up, it doesn’t have any color of its own, we can use this special pen at the very end of the pen list, which has a little symbol of a computer screen, otherwise known as “Window Background” or -1 for the pen number. And then, it doesn’t really look much different, but it’s guaranteed to have no printout. It will actually never print on any device, it will just be opaque. [7:08]

Now a special pen that we can use is the one just before it that has a zero with a line through it, sometimes called the “null” symbol.  And this also has a zero in terms of the actual pen number.  So these are pen 1, 2, 3, etc. You can see in this upper area what it says.  And when I go down and choose the transparent one, it will be zero.  Now, you can see right now that the fill is transparent, we can see through it. So all of those are options that may be important depending upon what you’re trying to use the fill for, whether it’s covering things up, or is supposed to see through it. Now if I select it again, I’ll just point out that the line work here for if this acoustic tile is sort of arbitrary. It’s just sort of floating in space. There’s no origin point. In other words, if we if we were to create an acoustic tile ceiling like this, it would be starting with a small piece of tile instead of starting with a whole tile in one corner or in one location. [8:15]

And ArchiCAD gives you a very easy way to control that.  If you do want to put let’s say the tile starting in a certain corner.  So what I’ll do is I’ll just scroll over in the info box and change it from the option where its construction method is relative to the project origin, which means it is sort of an arbitrary field that just will show itself in the area that I’ve drawn, just in a way that doesn’t relate to the actual geometry of the boundaries.  But I can also easily switch that to make it into a fill origin.  So I can actually control the origin of the fill.  And there are some fancier settings here for distortions, which can make it look like it’s tilted like on a roof, if you were doing a drawing more in perspective almost, and then there’s “Radio Distorted” fill.  [9:07]

But we’ll just use the “Relative to Fill Origin” here.  As soon as I do that, you’ll see that there are two more handles that show up in the center, and going to the right.  Now if I press down on this center hotspot, you’ll see that I can manipulate it. I can move the whole fill using one of these palette options at the bottom, but if I use the one in the upper row, is says, “Move that sub element only”.  Let me just move it a little bit over, and you’ll see as soon as I click, that that’s where the origin of the tile has moved.  So obviously, I might want to move it to one of the corners would be a common situation. So now starting with the whole tile in the bottom left corner.  [9:48]

Now the second handle that is there is I can move it around and edit it. You’ll see in the pet palette that I’ve chosen to edit just that element or that point.  And when I click, that sets an angle.  Obviously, I could go to something like a 45 here, or I could go around and take it vertically on the plan and rotate it.  But I’ll just move it back here until I get it nicely back in the horizontal orientation.  So I’ve now set it up to the location I want. Now this is a polygon element, and just like slabs and roofs, I can go to the edge and pull them back.  For example, I can go to this edge and you see that when I have a Mercedes and press down, the popup palette give me many options.  I can curve the edge or I can add a point to sort of notch it in or out. But a common thing would be to inset or offset it in one direction. [10:45]

So I can pull it around something else.  I can also go and grab an individual point and use the option to move that point. All of these ones in the upper area will change the shape, whereas all the ones in the lower row will move the whole fill as in entirety.  So if I move this into a new position, you can see I can notch it anywhere I want.  I can also go on an edge, instead of offsetting it, I can choose to add a new point, and that point can be moved to wherever I like for example. And finally, just in terms of general fill editing, if I use the plus or minus, I can add.  So I can just click on a couple points, and whatever is outside in this case will be added to the shape.  And all of that was sort of playing around. Obviously that doesn’t relate to the space. So I’ll undo back several steps, and now it’s back in his original place.  So that’s most of what you need to know to be effective with the Fill tool, and we’ll move on to looking at Labels. [11:49]

So the Label tool is available here, just below the Text and above the Fill, in the toolbox. And when I activate it, of course it has some settings such as what layer.  Right now it’s on a layer “A-Anno Note”, so that would be for annotations that are notes, which are apparently turned off for the Ceiling plan.  So I want to select again, annotation for the ceiling, because I’m working on the ceiling plan. And then I can look at the settings such as what font is, I’m leaving it in Arial, and what size.  So all of those settings. Now the color for text and labels really doesn’t matter in the sense that it is still – the pen number doesn’t change the thickness of the text letters, it’s based on the font, but will change it in terms of visibility on screen. [12:39]

Blue notes or red notes perhaps would draw your eye. You can change that around as you wish.  Now, in order to create a Label, were going to put in where we’d like to point to. In other words, the arrowhead. And if you’re not sure, you can see down in the bottom left area of this status bar, which I’m just moving around. That status bar gives me a prompt that says, “What is ArchiCAD expecting me to do?”  So I’ll click on this to start it, and then it say, “Enter next node of Label leading lines”. So typically that’s called a leader line. And this is going to be the elbow, if we have it set for straight, which would be the one that I’m using right now. [13:23]

So in other words, it’s going to create an angled line and a horizontal line here, and this is going to say where the text should start.  Now just like the Text tool, if I click a second time here, then the text will just go wherever I tell it to. In other words, it won’t wrap automatically, it will just go out from this point, and then only wrap when I hit the Enter or Return key. So that’s what I’ll do in this simple case. I’m going to make the forth click. Remember, the first click was on the arrowhead, the second one was on the elbow or turning point, the third click is this one that I just did, and the fourth click I’ll just finish it exactly on the same point. And then I’ll put in a note here. Let me just put it in capitals. And I’m just going to hit the Enter or Return key to break a line, and then to finish I just click outside it.  [14:24]

So you can see how it’s placed that very easily. Let me put one on the other side and maybe in a small drawing like this you wouldn’t repeat yourself. But certainly there are times when you would make a similar note to the side.  So I’ll just again click on the arrowhead, click on the elbow, and then two clicks to say I want to put some text here. And I’ll put a similar note. Hit the Enter key to break lines, and then outside to finish. Now, I’ll just scroll over a little bit so we can see it.  You’ll notice that the text is left aligned.  And depending upon what you’ve got, that may look okay or it or may not. For example, if I take out the word “grid” then this is perhaps going to be a little bit odd looking here.  [15:13]

So what I’ll do is I’ll select it, and I can use the Shift key to temporarily get the arrow, without having to switch to the Arrow tool in the toolbox.  And then I’ll switch the preference – right now it’s on left aligned.  I’ll switch it to right aligned.  And you can see how instantly that changes the appearance.  Now, sometimes we want to have a longer note, and we want it to fit into a certain area.  And just like normal Text tool, if I go across, if I click once to say that this is where the text should have one end, and then go to another location, which would be the other boundary, then I can type in a longer note.  So I’ll just say, “Here is a longer note that re-wraps automatically.”  Okay.  [16:07]

So you can see how it’s wrapping, of course its left aligned.  So perhaps I would want to select that and change it again to right aligned.  And if I do want to change this size, in other words, I realize I want to have a little bit more space to work with, I can go and use the Stretch icon in the pet palette and stretch it perhaps a little wider. And now it’s fitting into three lines instead of four.  So that’s the basics of working with the Label tool.  Now, one thing that you might need to do at some point is to put the text that is facing one way, you’ll need to adjust it in position.  So if I press down say this elbow, and use the upper row of the pet palette to say I’d like to move just that line, the end of that line, then I can reposition it.  See now I can do that, and I can go in with the same option and just press down and reposition that. [17:11]

Now, as I go to each one of these things, as I click, the pet palette remembers the last thing I was doing which was moving the end of that line.  So, it’s very easy. I don’t even have to click on the pet palette to say that’s what I want to do.  Now suppose that we were wanting the note to be going the other way.  Then I could go and move the elbow over to this direction, and then move the other end here to the other side of that.  And you’ll notice that instantly, the Label flips to the other side.  Now I might need to switch it to right aligned if I prefer, but you’ll notice that it’s very smart. When I switch it from one side to the other of the elbow, it will change which side the text is. And I can just click, and it’s very easy to just adjust the placement of these things.  [18:04]

Now, all of the Labels have a choice of an arrowhead here, and one thing you might want to experiment with for your own preference are some of the other settings.  For example, you can change from an arrow to something else, perhaps an open arrow like that. I’ll just zoom in so you can see that a little bit better. Or sometimes you may prefer to have a dot, things like that. Some people prefer that type of graphic. And finally, we also have the choice of this one here, whether it’s going to be angular or curved. And for some types of drawings, you may prefer to have it curved.  Of course, you can change all of your Labels to have that presence or just individual ones, depending upon what you want.  [18:53]

Finally, there is an option to put it above or below, but I’ve found that it’s actually not very nice looking, because it goes above the first line of text or below the last line, as opposed to pointing to the middle of that line.  So I don’t find that usable.  If you do want it to point to the middle of a line, here’s a little tip.  What you can do is say “Point to the Middle”, which is the default, and then you can add a blank line.  For example, I’ll just hit the Enter key after ceiling grid, and now when I click outside it, you can see there are three lines, and it’s pointing at the middle of the three lines. But visually, it looks like it’s pointing at the bottom line.  So, depending upon how many lines of your note, you may need to add one or more blank lines at the beginning or the end, in order to get this sort of effect. So that just a quick tip that would allow you to get this type of look where it’s pointing to the first line or the last line.  [19:57]

So this concludes our lesson on putting in fills, and some of the options for manipulating fills, as well as creating the Labels which are very similar to the Text tool, but have an integrated leader line and arrowhead.  So this has been Eric Bobrow, thanks for watching. I look for to getting your comments and questions on the page down below.  [20:22]