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 |
QUESTION | ANSWER SUMMARY AND NOTES | START TIME |
Data. Taking projects from design through construction with various parties using the files. IFC file management. | Advanced concept of project coordination. Keeping the information in tact as you work with consultants by sharing your files. IFC is an acronym for a file format that is used to share AC projects with a variety of different software tools for use by structural engineers, etc. You can link to product manufacturers within the IFC setup manager. You can create your own pdf and place it in a dropbox and link it to your file. Currently if you put this information into AC it wont be clickable, but it will be in the IFC. For any internal work you can put a web address in any field in any schedule, but if you want it to be clickable for outside use it has to be in an IFC file. | 0:03:05 |
Skylight placed on roof shows up on existing plan but not on the proposed plan. | All elements have a catagory. The skylight is “to be demolished” so it will be removed when the roof that it is on is removed. For the skylight to show up in planned status then it must be placed on the new roof in the planned status. If you show “New Construction” it will show both with a special filter. The elements to be demo’ed are shown in a color and the new elements in another color. | 0:28:00 |
Hot water heaters showing up on roof horizontally not on the slope. | Go to the planned status and look at the object. It is horizontal. It an object that does not related to the roof. You can change the panel angle to match the roof angle. | 0:34:15 |
Door and window schedules, zone to columns and empty openings. | You can select a door on your schedule and click on it it will show you the door on plan. If you go to Scheme Settings on your schedule. Look at its criteria and make sure it is correct. Look at all the library parts and choose to exclude what you don’t want to show. You can add criteria for the ID and you can exclude specific elements by naming them and choosing to show all but that. You can show which zone a door relates to in its schedule because it is related to the zone it opens in to. You can change this in the door settings/parameter/parameters for listing/door belongs to the zone into which it opens/turn this on or off. You can add Location to your schedule as a field as opposed to the zone to. | 0:40:33 |
Elevation levels on section are not showing on the plumbing sheets when published. | Look at the masters to see what the difference is between the different sheets. Look at the pdf of the plumbing plan. | 1:00:33 |
Finishes not matching when some are imported from SketchUp. | Look at videos in week 21 for this process. Once you have this imported element it will come in as an object. You might be able to change its size and other things as a whole, but if you want to change individual things about it you can convert it to a morph. Before that however, in the Object Settings>Model uncheck “Use Object’s Surfaces”. This will use the surface you choose. This will make the stove all match your other surfaces. If you convert it to a morph you can change individual surface materials. If the morph is has custom faces you need to check the box at the bottom of the Selection Settings window “Apply changes to custom faces/edges too”. Then change your surface material. You can choose to hide specific edges to clean up a morph and match it to the rest of your materials. Converting a complex object to a morph can take some time, but then you can find and select elements that have the same surface and change them all to the surface you want to match. | 1:10:38 |
Is it possible to change the grain direction of a surface? | Go to Objects>Element Attributes>Surface Settings and go to your surface then the rendering engine you are using and change the angle of the texture. | 1:32:00 |
How to clean up your library. | Go to Library Manager and look at Active Libraries and Objects. Click the eye button to see what duplicates you have. Then delete the duplicates. Reload library and apply all the changes. | 1:33:15 |
Is there a quick way to create a terrain around a model using something like GoogleEarth? | Open GoogleEarth and type in your project address. You can import a specific terrain model enough to show basic terrain. It creates a mesh in your project. Also in recent versions of AC you can to to Options>Project Preferences>Project Location. Here you can put in your location and orientation to north. In this window you can import an XML file or you can select “show in Google Maps” and look at the satelite model. You can then save the graphic as a pdf and then open it in AC. Then you can stretch and crop it as needed in AC or if you need it larger, zoom in Google Maps first then save as PDF. This is in plan view. To do this in 3D you need to go to 3D in your file then create a slab to match your terrain in plan, then go to 3D to see the plane. Then give it a texture map by using a jpeg or tiff. Open the pdf in Acrobat and select the area on the map you need and save as a jpeg. Then in AC go to Element Attributes>Surfaces and create a New surface and then add a texture to it by searching for your jpeg that you just saved. You need to set the size by measuring in your floor plan for this. Then select the slab and give it a top surface with your new surface. Then go to Design>Align 3D texture to align your slab image to your model by setting the origin at the corner of your slab. Google Earth is a download and an ad-on that you can use to import terrain. This is to be updated in the future. | 1:49:45 |
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