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

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ArchiCAD Training Session Notes

QUESTION	ANSWER SUMMARY AND NOTES	START TIME
The publisher tool	Eric first shows how to create a pdf and talks about the page setup. He does this for both current layout and selected layouts. Eric then demonstrates how to use publisher sets (this is found on the navigator toolbar). He does this by first opening the “organizer” (this is found on the navigator toolbar), he creates a new publishing set, and then he goes through all the publisher settings. There is an option in the publisher settings to save your work as individual sets or merge all the sets together (so, when you open the set, you click through the various pages to get to each drawing). You don’t have to save your drawings as a pdf as there are many other options such as jpeg, tiff, dwg etc. When you create a set you can publish either selected items within the set, or publish the entire set.	0:02:13
How to save a group of files for archival purposes when making publishing sets	If you don’t want to overwrite anything you can either change the path of an existing path, or make a duplicate of your publishing set. And then you can save the newly created set somewhere safe like an external hard drive or on the internet somewhere. Don’t forget to put enough information on the set to enable you to easily retrieve it later e.g. in the files name you could put the date and job title.	0:24:20
How to update a publisher set	Eric shows how to update the publishing set without having to delete everything and drag layouts back into the publishing set. Eric also describes issues that may be causing the caller’s publishing set not to update (i.e. manual and auto update).	0:26:20
Why use manual update when you can leave it on auto update permanently	Most people will wonder why everybody doesn’t always use auto update and the answer is everytime you flick to another view the auto update feature takes a few seconds to regenerate and if you need to work fast and find yourself flicking through many views/layouts it may be much faster to do a manual update when you have finished making all your changes.	0:31:55
Updating with the drawing manager	Just a brief discription on how to use the drawing manager to update drawings	0:33:59
Issue with a pdf that is being re-published failing to update	You should remember to close all pdf files (at least the files you intend to update) before updating. This is because it won’t update if it is already opened. It will give a fail warning if this is the case	0:39:55
Dimension settings keep reverting back to original within the project preference dimensions box	Eric goes to options>project preferences>dimensions and when the dialog box opens he changes the accuracy level ArchiCAD is working to. And by doing this he doesn’t change the accuracy of the drawing itself or even the position of the dimension string. All he is changing is what the dimension number will read or show e.g. you may have the dimension set to show up to 64th of an inch, and you feel that the dimension string needs to show every quarter of an inch. Therefore if you have a dimension that is actually 5″10 63/64, it may show on screen as 5’10” 3/4, or it may even round it up to 5’11”. You need to check this out for yourself. Don’t forget once you have changed the dimension you need to record it in the settings (if you want it to effect all your previously created views) – select the particular view or views that you want to change in the navigator>click on the views “settings” in the navigator>2d/3d documents>dimensions	0:44:09
Problem with ArchiCAD 12 crashing when publish command is used	This is a problem that a user on ArchiCAD 12 is having. Eric goes through some possible causes.	0:50:00
How to calculate volumes of materials	Select the element that you want to get the information from then go – window palettes>element information. This is a very handy tool as you can click on any element and find out its, length, area, surface, volume etc. It will even work out cropped and un-cropped surfaces and volumes (useful where doors and window openings are, and cut and fill calculations)	0:58:30
Brief look at quantities in scheme settings and also discussion on lists.		1:06:00
Do zones have volumes that will be useful for HVAC calculations	Yes, the caller wanted the volumes because she said that it was much more useful to contractors than just the areas off plans. Eric demonstrates how to get volumes for HVAC. He shows how to set up volumes on schedules and how to get the volume of irregular building shapes such as a cathedral (he trims the volume in 3d). To turn on zones in 3d go to – view>elements in 3d>filter elements in 3d>turn on the zones check box. He trims the zone by the trim elements to roof/shell command. Finally, Eric shows how to change the zone stamp style in the zone category.	1:12:15
	If you want a more sophisticated zone stamp visit http://www.masterscript.nl/. There is a charge for this product, but there are a lot of extra features to it compared with ArchiCAD’s in built zone stamps.

ArchiCAD Training Session Notes

ArchiCAD Training – Coaching Call – February 26, 2013

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