January – June 2012
ArchiCAD Training – Coaching Call – March 21, 2012
Thank you for visiting the Best Practices Course website. The video lessons are available for members only. If you are an active member and would like to watch the ArchiCAD training video on this page, please login to the website. If you are not currently a member, please visit the following pages for more information and to sign up for the Best Practices Course, the QuickStart Course or for the Best Practices ArchiCAD Coaching Program. Eric Bobrow, Creator of the Best Practices Course
Want to download this video, pause or resume playback, jump to a specific point or watch this video in a larger window? Click here for Video Playback Notes...

 ArchiCAD Training Session Notes

QUESTION ANSWER SUMMARY AND NOTES START TIME
Introductions    
Start   0:01:37
Finding the true shape and dimensions of an octagonal roof How to create octagon walls quickly with the magic wand tool. And how to then rotate these octagon walls to an exact position using snap points. 0:03:54
  Creating a complex hip roof that follows the outline of the octagon walls. Note: in ArchiCAD 10-14 you have options for creating the slope and offset, before the roof creation operation completes, and in ArchiCAD 15 it uses the default settings to complete the roof. This is because you have the ability to make alterations after the roof has been completed. 0:07:15
  Setting up a perpendicular view. View>3d navigation extras>look to perpendicular of clicked surface. Note: you have to make sure that your screen is set to axonometric and not perspective view to ensure you are seeing the true lengths of objects being viewed. Note: only the side you clicked when you set up a perpendicular view will have true lengths. View>3d view mode>axonometric 0:09:20
  Pasting a screen shot of the model in the 3d window into the 2d floor plan. If you need to then resize the screen shot and still keep its original proportions you would select the screenshot and select the stretch option and then resize with the shift key pressed down. Marquee>edit copy>paste 0:10:00
  To be able to draft and dimension the true shape of the roof you need to first switch from open GL 3d engine to internal 3d engine.  Then you draw a selection marquee and go to copy, a dialogue box appears and you select the scaled drawing option and select your preferences from elements to copy View>3d view mode>internal 3d engine 0:11:37
  Making a framing plan using the roof maker tool Design>design extras>roofmaker>roof wizard 0:20:33
Editing ArchiCAD pen set How to create a penset that has a couple of colour pens for emphasis, but retains the majority of the pens set to black 0:23:53
  Creating custom pen sets. Document>pen sets>pen set selection 0:25:35
  How to associate selected views with the newly created pen set 0:29:08
  Setting up model view options to make a drawing stand out for a particular purpose (e.g. set up walls to show less detail) document>set model view>model view options 0:29:45
  Note: if you want the drawing to print out using your newly created pen set. You must ensure that the drawing selection settings aren’t overriding your chosen pen set 0:31:38
2d window settings Changing the window settings in 2d from detailed to basic 0:38:10
Locking a drawing on a layout and record copies To lock the viewport once it has been placed on a layout sheet; first select the drawing and then go to edit>locking>lock 0:43:58
  To lock a drawing as a record copy (stop future updates) file>external content>drawing manager 0:47:28
  Saving back-up or record copies of a project 0:51:39
Schedules and scheme settings Questioner has a problem with information not always showing up 0:55:30
  Eric explains how to set up criteria, values and fields 0:57:40
  How to find where information in the schedule is found on the plan 1:00:03
  The user can also input information into the schedule from the window selection settings 1:01:17
Linking an image to a drawing on a sheet Start 1:11:37
  How to place a linked detail marker and defining the marker reference 1:14:28
  Changing the appearance of the marker 1:16:55
Drawing a roof that is sloped in one direction, with roof sides not parallel to the walls. (so it appears to be sloped in two directions) Start 1:25:24
  Altering the roof plane of a simple single plane roof on the fly. Note: clicking on a node that is not on the pivot line, will enable you to change the roof angle (This is very useful when you have an adjoining roof or building that you want to match heights with) 1:27:50
  Eric illustrates how the pivot line works 1:30:10
  Eric draws three walls all joined together with different heights, and illustrates how to draw a roof that will intersect all three heights on each of the walls 1:32:40
  Archicad tip: an easy way to handle a two pitched roof is to use columns and treat their heights as survey elevation points and attach the roof to their centres and then save the columns to an invisible layer for record purposes 1:48:39
Importing a dwg drawing that is editable Start 1:37:50
  The place external drawing and attach xref options will make the dwg file uneditable in ArchiCAD. To bring in a dwg file that is editable you can select merge (file>file special>merge) this can get messy though because you will be bringing in all the dwg files layers from AutoCAD. Continued below 1:39:10
  Eric advises that you use the place external drawing option to bring in the dwg and then you should do a explode in current view (edit>reshape>explode into current view) a dialog box then pops up and you should select “keep drawing primitives only” and uncheck keep drawing primitives original layers. If you do all this the dwg will be fully editable and all the AutoCAD layers will go on just the ArchiCAD layer. Another sophisticated way to bring in an editable dwg (and still keep all the dwg layers) is to bring it into a separate project file, open it rather than place it as a drawing. And in the separate project file look at the layers and collapse elements that are on several layers onto a smaller number of layers  

 

ArchiCAD Training – Coaching Call – March 21, 2012

Let us know how you feel... (No comments so far)

You must be logged in to post a comment.

No comments yet