January – June 2013
ArchiCAD Training – Coaching Call – March 26, 2013

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
Problems with getting a roof to clean up properly with the walls beneath it, and how to make walls join together cleanly The first problem was a vanishing wall (in 3d window). The wall was still there in theory because there were windows hanging in thin air. The lady caller had drawn a building on top of another building, and Eric thought the most likely scenario was that she had cropped the wall with the roof of the building below (by accident). To make the wall re-appear Eric selected the wall in question and opened up its selection settings (click twice on the wall icon to open its settings) and under the “model settings” Eric selected “undo all crops”. 0:09:00
  Eric explains the principles of the reference line and how it effects how walls clean up. When getting walls to clean up it might be a good idea to turn off “true line weights” view>on screen view options>true line weight, as thick lines can make it difficult to see what is going on. 0:14:40
Item blocking the view Eric gave a tip – if you have items that are in the way and you temporarily want to turn them off, don’t open and do this with the layers manager as this is time consuming. Just bring up the quick layer palette at window>palette>quick layers. This palette allows you to select the item that is blocking your view and then turn it either on or off with just the click of a button on the quick layers palette. 0:14:20
Explanation of the pivot and contour line for the roof tool The lady caller had set the roof settings to “pivot lines down” and she had also positioned the pivot line at the top of the roof – normally you would position the pivot line at the bottom where the roof goes up. The position of the lady caller’s pivot line was making ArchiCAD think that all the roof below the pivot line was an overhang (outside the pivot area). So in the lady’s case she needed to change the trimming body in the roof selection settings from “pivot lines down” to “contours down”. Basically contour lines will go to the full extent of the roof, whilst pivot lines will go from the face, from wherever you put the pivot line it will go upward. 0:24:45
A strange looking notch in a wall where it turns a corner (the wall had been trimmed to a roof) Eric selects and then isolates the problem area in a marquee in the 3d window, and then gets to work in solving the issue. Eric deletes the problem wall and draws it in again and this appears to cure the notch issue. As mentioned above (regarding pivot and contour lines) the position of the pivot line was again effecting how everything was trimmed, so Eric suggested to the caller that the safest thing to do here was set the roofs to “contour lines down” 0:29:00
Is it possible to have more than one set of story levels for a project? The caller has two existing buildings on the same site, built at different times with different construction and floor levels. A single project will only have one story level, however the buildings within it can be set at different heights, so if you do want both buildings within the same file and if there’re for context rather than construction, then it makes sense. If you were to do a new project with multiple buildings, then you may want to have each of these buildings in a separate file for the construction documents, and then combine them into a site file. Eric demonstrates the various options 0:53:15
Is it possible to alter the model tile fill patterns for walls and floors? Eric first describes the various types of fill patterns e.g. vectorial, symbol etc. Eric then shows how to move the fills origin (this enables you to choose where the fill pattern starts e.g. do you want to start with a full or half tile). Eric then selects the fill on the floor plan with the eyedropper tool, and then goes to options>element attributes>fill types. This opens up the fills settings (the eyedropper tool makes sure the selected fill is the one that shows up in the settings). In the fill settings Eric creates a new fill and also alters the size of the fill he creates. 1:03:15
How to split up a wall for different decorations Eric describes how to do it. You may also want to check out one of Eric’s previous tutorials on the subject http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VI6XUf8ubI 1:07:35
How to draw hexagonal patterned linework quickly and easily. This was then used to create a fill type pattern This is done using the circle tool and the magic wand (with a few adjustments to the magic wands settings). Eric then explains how to turn this pattern into a new “symbol” fill type. Eric had a problem in this tutorial and it didn’t quite work out right, but please be assured it can be done. 1:11:00
An angled wall meets a pair of walls at their 90 degree intersection and the caller can’t get this joint to clean up Eric describes what to do, and he says that if your walls still don’t clean up then consider drawing a polygonal wall (just at the junction where the three walls meet). The polygonal wall is the icon that looks slightly like a pacman (although with angled and pointy edges). The limitation with the polygonal wall tool is that it won’t show a composite wall inside it. In this case you would have to draw a patch inside the polygonal wall that matches up with the composite walls that go into it. 1:17:45
Drawing a foundation complex profile to put in a project The lady caller had a foundation detail drawing that she wanted to be able to replicate in ArchiCAD. Eric went through the necessary procedure to achieve this. Note: when drawing your profile there is an origin point at zero, zero and this is the reference side of the line, and the thickness of the wall should go to the left of this point (if you want it to resemble a standard wall definition). If you don’t do this the foundation detail will be facing in the wrong direction. 1:26:00
Cleaning up some walls slabs and roofs in a section view Eric advises the caller to use solid element operations to clean up her drawing – design>solid element operations. For extra information check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTg9qQ1IX7c 1:38:00
How to create doors with no head The caller wants to be able to make some gates within walls. There is actually a gate library part (at least in the US version). If you don’t live in America you can still download the gate through the BIM portal. Eric also goes through some of the gates settings. 1:41:52
Shortcut to make two currently unconnected independent roofs meet up and join at the ridge line. Select one roof and then go across to the other roof and with the control/command key held down click on the edge where you want to join the roofs, and then do the same procedure to the other roof. 1:48:09
How would you take a door from ArchiCAD 6.5 and convert them to ArchiCAD 16 If you go to the Graphisoft website you can download file converters (http://www.graphisoft.com/support/archicad/downloads/Fileconverter.html) and earlier version libraries (http://www.graphisoft.com/support/archicad/downloads/libraries/INT.html or http://www.graphisoft.com/support/archicad/downloads/libraries/USA.html). Eric goes through the various options and procedures when doing this. 2:00:30

ArchiCAD Training – Coaching Call – March 26, 2013

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