Best Practices Course – Week 20 Part 4 – © copyright 2014 by Eric Bobrow

BEST PRACTICES COURSE – WEEK 20 Managing Attributes, Project Preferences, Work Environment – Part 4 – Model View Options

Welcome everyone to the ArchiCAD Best Practices training lesson. Today we’ll be focusing on Model View Options. This is another part of week 20 where we are looking at things that affect the way your project looks. These are not elements themselves; they are controls for the elements. So we will take a quick look at the concept here and then I’ll look at it in the context of a project. [0:00:32]

Model view options are a way of controlling how you see your project. You can have styles that would relate to, for example, construction documents which would be your main drawings that you are going to print out. Or an alternate style; perhaps the ceiling plan where the walls are shown with parallel lines and the doors and windows are shown quite differently. You might have other styles for presentation views where maybe the walls are filled in solid and you are not showing all of the skins. [0:01:05]

Perhaps yet other ones where with the site, you might have less detail, just showing at what would be the building in a simplified form at a small scale.  Now what are the controls that we see in Model View Options? When we open up the dialog for Model View Options, we will see these presets, the same ones we saw in the menu. Each one of them, as I click, you will see some subtle changes down below here. So each one may have some changes. [0:01:39]

Let’s look at construction documents. With construction documents, it’s set up in this file to show the entire beam as opposed to just the reference axis. So you can see when I click on this it gives me a preview of how a beam might appear when I have that option. Or this would the other change here. As soon as I make any change, it will de-select the active preset and create a custom one at the top. The custom allows you to go ahead and make whatever changes you like. We’ll be exploring what that looks like in terms of your model. But once you have decided it’s something you want to keep, you can store it and give it a name. And it will then show up in this list. [0:02:30]

Let’s go back to the basic overview of construction documents. It shows the beams in a certain way. It shows the columns in a certain way. All of these settings relate to the way we want to look at the model. Now if we take a quick look at reflected ceiling plan, we will see a lot of differences. For example, the ceiling plan will show the opening of the door only, not the door swing. It will show similar for the window. It will also hide the markers that we would see for identifying the doors and windows. [0:03:07]

These are some of the dramatic changes that would take place when we switch manually between one model view option and another. In addition to the construction elements, which refer to beams, columns and walls and then windows and doors within them – and I guess skylights are included here – we also have some general controls over fills. So when we are working with Construction Documents, we are showing walls with their natural fills, we are not overriding it. [0:03:45]

As soon as I say ‘Override’ it will go to ‘Custom’ here, and it allows me to see the separator lines, but not actually see all of the fills. Or, if I turn that off, now I have an option for showing just two parallel lines. So it’s the same wall, but it’s going to look different. If I go to Reflected Ceiling plan, it’s actually the setting that is used, whereas in Construction Documents, obviously we have it not overriding it. If override is unchecked, then it’s basically using the full details of what you set up in the element. [0:04:24]

If it’s overridden, then we are changing the way it appears. Now you will notice in Construction Documents, all of these are set to not override with the one exception of the zone fills. So zones, as you probably are aware, will define areas, rooms, or other bounded areas on a plan. They can have a stamp, which would be an identifier name; possibly information like the room number or the area or what finish materials are being used. But in Construction Documents, this preset in the standard U.S. template says “Don’t show the colors.” [0:05:09]

If I turn this off, you will see it’s showing colors and possibly some line work in this little preview of the fill. Now when would we actually see this? If we go to the presentation, you can see here is an option where it is showing the zone fills in a different way, where here are the drafting ones. So these are all different options. And in fact, it looks like none of them for the zones; just leave them alone in this particular case. So zones always have some variation rather than showing the stamp plus the color plus a hatch if there is one there. [0:05:49]

So all of these are presets that are in the standard template, and you can choose them at any time. Let’s just draw the most basic shape to explore this. Right now, we are in the Model View Options for Construction Documents, and we are seeing the walls with some definition, we are seeing the window and doors with all their detail, and the window and door markers. I can switch my Model View Options from this Quick Options menu. By the way, if you are new to ArchiCAD and you are not sure where I got the Quick Options menu, it can be turned on and off with this icon that is third from the left at the bottom left of the plan window. Or actually any window that is draftable, like a section, elevation or detail window. [0:06:50]

If I click, it turns it off. If I click it turns it on. You can also resize it and move it around like any palette. I like putting it in the bottom corner here, so it is convenient under the View Map. Now if I switch from the Model View Options to Reflected Ceiling plan, we see how it instantly changes the appearance of the walls, doors, and windows. Or if I pick something like the site context. So we can manually change the Model View Options at any time. The model hasn’t changed; it’s just our view of it. [0:07:27]

Now each view in the View Map records a particular Model View Option. So when I double-click here on the drafting one, we can see that it’s showing it with most of the detail, but not the fill. If I go to the schematic design, it’s doing a little bit more of a presentation drawing with solid fills for the walls and no markers for the doors or windows. And if we go to the floor plan here, we are going to use construction document one which would have all the information you would put into a construction document. So these are some presets here. If we want to have let’s say the reflected ceiling plan available as a view, we can switch to this and save the new view. So I will just give it a name, “Custom”, and we’ll call it “First Floor RCP” for Reflected Ceiling Plan. [0:08:26]

And you can see that it has the Model View Options set up here under the View Definition. So at this point, I have just created an alternate view here. Right now it’s not part of a clone folder, it’s just a view of this one particular story. And when I double-click on the floor plan view, we see it one way, and double-click on “First Floor RCP” and we see it a different way. So that’s the basics of Model View Options. They change the way the model appears primarily on plan, although there are some effects that will be seen in other views as well. [0:09:07]

Now let’s take a look at a project file and just see a little bit more how this works. So I will go in and open up the sample project for MasterTemplate. so here is the sample project, and we will see as we go through each one of these clone folders, we see a different style of view. So the clone folder has a setting, just like all views in the view map that includes a reference to the Model View Options. So when we have a clone folder set for a particular model view option, all views within it will adapt and use that option. [0:09:59]

Now one of the things we haven’t looked at – let’s just put it back to first floor plan here – is that doors and windows as you know are sometimes depicted in elevations with opening lines to indicate which way the swing is. It’s obvious where the swing is on the floor plan, but not necessarily in a view. So if I go down to the elevations here, and go to the east elevation, in this elevation right now we are not seeing the door and window swings. That is an option that is available, but in this case, is not turned on. Let’s look at how the Model View Options can control that, because this is actually one of the features that is subtle about the Model View Options. [0:11:00]

Not everyone knows that it exists. So if I go to the Document menu, Set Model View, Model View Options, and then look at the settings here, you will notice that in addition to the options for construction elements and the fill display, which we talked about earlier, there are a couple more panels down below here. In MasterTemplate, we have a zone stamp that has some really interesting options. We aren’t going to look at that right now, we’re going to look at the ones that are general for ArchiCAD library parts. Now this panel was added in at around ArchiCAD 13. So if you are on an older version, like 10, 11, or 12, this may not exist. [0:11:44]

But I think around 13 Graphisoft added this. And what it does is it allows you to have some global control. For example, do you want to show the opening lines in 3D projections for doors, windows, and skylights? Right now, in the Construction Document view in MasterTemplate, it has this turned off. Let’s turn this on manually and have a custom view here. And then let’s see how this is going to be depicted. There are some choices here for doors and windows separately and skylights as well. There is the possibility of changing the line orientation. [0:12:28]

So in some parts of the world, the door swings and openable windows would be shown with the lines in a particular view; a particular side coming from the handle. And some that are coming from the hinges. It’s interesting that those conventions are absolutely opposite in different parts of the world and Graphisoft puts in this control here, because they can’t really make a decision about what you would prefer. [0:12:55]

I am going to say OK – and remember, this is a custom change here – and you can see now how these appear. So as a custom change, that means that if I go to another elevation, let’s say this one, it does now show up because as soon as I double click on this other elevation, it reinstates the model view option that was set up without those. By the way, this extra stuff here is from MasterTemplate. these are the elements that you can eyedrop. This is one of the interactive legends. So just to demonstrate, if I hover over this and eyedrop it and then go and click, you can see I have just put in a figure here. [0:13:44]

Or, if I hover over the tree and click, I can put in a tree. And I can select this tree somewhere here and drag this to a convenient location if I want. So these elements here are in MasterTemplate as a time-saver. Let me just turn off the virtual trace that was showing those a quick reference. Now as I mentioned, when I switched, it reinstated the normal Model View Options presets. But if I wanted to change that saying IN want all elevations to use that, then I would go under the Document menu, Set Model View, Model View Options and make the change like this. [0:14:34]

Then, having verified that I have made all the changes I want, I would go and store this. I believe in most versions of ArchiCAD, if not all, you can overwrite and it will automatically bring up this option to store it on top of the earlier one or choose an overwrite. Or of course I could just change the name to have it as a new option. I could make this a new option like this, with “opening lines” or I could overwrite it. Now I have created this as a variation and I am going to say OK. I made the change, stored it by name, and now I could say that I would like to make the settings for this particular elevation use the new model view options. [0:15:34]

Now when I go back to this other elevation it won’t have it, because it’s going to reinstate the original one, but this one will retain it because it’s set up in the view settings. If I wanted to affect all elevations here, so that the style for elevations uses this, then I would go in just like any other time you want to update the views and say I would like to make all of these in this clone folder and any other that I create new – meaning any elevations that I might place on the plan – these would use this new Model View Option. Say OK. And now having done that, if I go to any one of these, here is the east elevation that we had. It’s going to update. I go to south, and again, each time it’s going to do that. [0:16:25]

Now the opening lines have different styles. In this case, when we have double hung windows, it’s showing differently. And this may be different in your ArchiCAD version in terms of what Graphisoft provides. Or if you have some add-on components, such as from Cadimage Door and Window Builder. Some of these options may look different, but there is basically a control for the appearance of certain model elements that is available under the Model View Options. So this started in ArchiCAD 13, and probably a lot of people don’t know about it. [0:17:02]

Now other things that you may find useful here are that if you have a very complex building and you have a lot of sinks, you may find that getting a 3D model will slow down. You could say, “Hide the taps in 3D”. So that means that for a particular view that you use – for 3D large scale of an entire hospital let’s say – you might still want to show the cabinets so you can cut into the building or walk through it and still see every bathroom with a sink cabinet, but hide the tap, because the tap has a lot of polygons. [0:17:45]

Similarly, we may find that door handles of certain types have a lot of polygons, and you may choose to have a simplified view where you are walking through the building and you are not having it calculate the door handles. So this is an option here, and same with certain types of furniture knobs. Some knobs would be very simple, just rectangular with few polygons. But if they are a dome or round ball shape, each knob could have quite a few polygons. It’s fine if you have 5, 10, or 20 of these. But if you have hundreds or thousands, then ArchiCAD could bog down, and this is a quick way to change that. [0:18:29]

Now in addition, we have some options for symbols. So lamps, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning symbols can be realistic or shown in other styles. So not all parts have this set up. But we may find when we are doing let’s say a reflected ceiling plan that we want to have the symbol for the lamps be a certain style that is different. And here is MEP Systems plan. That goes back to realistic, but it could very well be set up to use the electric one. We can force this, and I am going to show you what that looks like so you understand. I will go back to the floor plan and let’s go to the Lighting and Reflected Ceiling Plan. [0:19:22]

We will see this particular light, if I look at it, it has a particular symbol here. We could tell it that we want to – let’s see, is it under here? Here is Object, Lamp Settings, 2D Representation. Okay, so here – and this is an example of one of the parts that does this – it’s been programmed by Graphisoft to either be manually set by one of these options or to give way and use what’s in the Model View Options settings. So in this way, it can change if I switch. Let’s switch this to realistic, and you can see how it looks different. [0:20:20]

Remember, this is one here that was identical to the one over here. This is the realistic view. If I switch to say the Floor Plan view – okay, that was the layer combination. Sorry about that. Let’s see, if I switch our Model View Options down here to plans, you can see that all of them switch to this. So if that layer is turned on then this plan will look a certain realistic way, whereas if that layer is turned on and we have it on a ceiling plan, then these ones that are following the Model View Options will update. So again, it allows you to set up a preference for certain types of elements to change their appearance depending on the plan. [0:21:23]

So it’s the same lamp of course, but this one is more symbolic. It has the letter “L”; it’s bigger and easier to see, whereas this is a more realistic representation. Now that is realistic, and we have another one that is electric symbol which is different yet again from the one here. I am going to guess that this is the one based on the RCP symbol. So that would be locked in like this, whereas these other ones would be changing because they are set up to follow the model view options. [0:22:02]

So in general, if we look at other parts, here we have a florescent lamp. And we go to the 2D representation, and again in the Model View Options settings it says to use the ‘Ceiling’ option. But if I change it to ‘Realistic’, you can see how it looks quite different. So we can force it to be a different style or we can have it follow the Model View Options. Elements in the library are able to do this. Graphisoft has generally gone through the electrical components that are in the objects as well as the lamp tool that would relate to this. So this would be an option that only affects certain elements and gives them a flexibility that otherwise would be missing. [0:22:56]

So if we go back to the Document menu, Set Model View, Model View Options – by the way, this first choice here opens up the dialog, whereas these other choices just switch much like in the Quick Options down in the bottom right. And if you have a really long list of them then you may not be able to see all of them. It may not display it, so you may have to go to this “More Model View Options”, and then switch. And in fact, you can see that there are other options here that were not in the main list. So it just shows perhaps the first ten. [0:22:31]

We can actually see all of them from the Quick Options here. So let’s go and look at a few more subtle things here. We’ve talked about hiding these details of 3D elements. We’ve looked at different ways of seeing the lamps and HVAC symbols. This is something: show minimal space of furnishings and doors. I haven’t really worked with this much at all. But I know in some cases, you may want to see how much clearance is necessary around certain objects or doors. So certain objects or doors may have the option to show this and you may use this for design purposes or certain types of drawings. [0:24:23]

Let’s say OK and let’s go to the furniture plan here, where we would see some of the furniture elements. Here’s the furniture plan folder here. In this, if I go and manually turn on in the Model View Options the ‘Minimal Space’, then you can see there is a bunch of extra stuff showing. Now what is this Minimal Space? If I select this cabinet here, you can see it has a boundary saying, “You really shouldn’t put anything in front of this, because that’s where the person has to stand.” Or, “The toilet here has certain minimal space requirements.” Let me drag a copy of it out so we can see this. [0:25:28]

So when ‘Minimal Space’ is turned on, it’s saying that it requires that much space. Now as a designer you would understand this inherently. But sometimes it’s useful to have this set up visually. And while this has never been looked at in this particular model, you may want to fine tune it. If I open up the “Toilet Symbol” here and we look at ‘Minimal Space’ as an option, we can see that there are options for setting up how much space is needed on each side. I can say I only need 1′ on this side and 1′ in front. This would not be sufficient for wheelchair access and things like that, so it’s of limited usefulness. But definitely you can customize this for your diagram or presentation. [0:26:30]

So you can make some decisions about what you need to maintain and present it or see it as you are designing. And then you can turn this off by manually turning it off in the Model View Options, picking another Model View, or double clicking another view that uses a model view that is not set here. So that is a little bit about the minimal space and how it’s going to be depicted there. Now the subtle things about the opening line. We talked about some options in terms of whether the opening lines are showing solid or dashed or dotted. And in terms of a line shape in 2D – so this is something that I have never done. But if you wanted, let’s just go to the plan view here. [0:27:24]

I now have this standard model view for the plan. But if I go back and go change the line shape to ‘Straight’ for the doors, you may prefer perhaps to have it something like this. Maybe you prefer this on a small-scale drawing like a site plan where everything is really small. So the curves make it less legible. So that is an option that you could set up for certain drawings that require it or perhaps that is your preference in general. The same thing for doors or windows that have a swing and have a curved or straight segment. [0:28:19]

And here is where you also choose the pen that you are using for the opening line. In the U.S. version, the default is to use Pen 6, which is a fairly thin line in a light blue color. You can change it and say that you want to make your doors gray like this. So if we do this, you can see how that has changed to the gray as opposed to the normal construction document view where we have this in the blue and curved. So that is how that works. So let’s see if there are any questions for what I have gone over so far. [0:29:05]

I see Don Schlining says, “Minimal Space option is good for showing accessibility requirements for wheelchairs and walkers.” Absolutely. So it will help you design better and it also could be part of a presentation drawing or at least be something that you turn on while having design discussions.

Let’s see. Dror Ram, this is the first time I have seen your name on here, so welcome. “How do I show furniture and plumbing dashed on an RCP?” That’s a good question and I don’t know if I have a good answer. So if I go to the Reflected Ceiling Plan here, we have the upper cabinet here showing as dashed. And in fact, the appearance of this – let’s see. 2D representation, that’s the appearance of it. It does say “Solid Line”. So this is showing the element here. Let’s switch between this RCP and First Floor Plan. [0:30:26]

You can see that actually this symbol here, the upper cabinet, is dashed on both options. And I am trying to see what makes it dashed here. Here it is. Okay, so this is an override for the symbol to say that all of the lines here should be dashed. So this is forcing it to be dashed at all times. If I make this solid here, we will see it’s solid here and of course this one becomes solid. So this doesn’t appear to have any option for changing when we go to a ceiling plan. Now when we switch views to the ceiling plan, you will notice that the lower cabinets disappeared. [0:31:17]

They are of course less relevant, as are things like the refrigerator and things like that. When you are doing a ceiling plan, you are focusing more on the elements that are up near the ceiling. So those are our main controls for ceiling plan is what layers are turned on, then we can make certain things dashed. We do have the option for certain objects to change their appearance. But it looks like other objects, like cabinets, do not have the option to show different ways on different drawings. If we go down here into the bathroom, we aren’t even showing the toilet fixture, the plumbing. [0:32:10]

If I go back to the first floor plan, and we just look at an option here, does it have an option for the appearance that relates to this? It has an option for ‘Scale Sensitive’, so we could have a simpler symbol when we have a smaller scale and a more complex or detailed symbol when we have a larger or enlarged scale. But it doesn’t have any option related to the ceilings. So I would have to say that’s something that most people haven’t found an issue with. I have rarely gotten a question like that. In theory, it would be a nice option to extend the flexibility of ArchiCAD and it’s not built into the standard library parts. [0:33:04]

So let me go on with just a few other little bits, because we’ve pretty much covered what I expected to cover with Model Views. As I mentioned, the model view affects what we see in plan. Does it affect anything in elevation? Well we did look at how an elevation here will use whatever is the setting. And that can affect – oh, and here’s that toilet I just added sitting outside the building. So it has some options that will affect things like the door and window swings and possibly doorknobs. If we have this door and in 3D it should have a knob. Well, let’s just look here at the door panel. There is a handle outside, let’s turn this on and put a handle on it. [0:34:05]

I am not sure which side we are seeing, so I will put a handle on both sides and say OK. And there is that handle. So we can actually control, again through the Model View Options, we could have a model view option that did not have the door handles showing. So that would mean that it disappears. And of course, if we have lots and lots of doors in a hospital, then that could make a big difference. These are the things that we might conventionally use to control elevations. But I believe that – just to demonstrate – if we switched to a Reflected Ceiling Plan, what will happen here is that the doors and windows disappear. [0:35:04]

So what actually is happening in the Model View Options, when we switch to the Reflected Ceiling Plan, is that the doors and windows in this case are only showing the opening. So what it does is it temporarily suspends the visibility of the object. So we have a cutout for the door or window, but we don’t have the actual symbol in either a plan, section, elevation or 3D view. Rarely would we use that in 3D or elevation, but it can be useful from time to time. [0:35:52]

By the way, I didn’t mention here, if we want to hide a single door or window or all of them entirely on the floor plan, we can do that. Maybe you are doing a subdivision and you want to have a lot of plans for buildings shown at a small scale. Maybe you only want to show the footprint of the buildings and not the doors and windows. So that would hide it entirely as opposed to the one for Reflected Ceiling Plan. And I guess there are other variations here. If we have a structural one, I think that a structural plans, at least in this file, show the linework here. [0:36:40]

But I know occasionally I have had people ask me how to show the door and window openings but not any lines. So this would be another option that you could explore there. So I think we have looked at all the options here pretty thoroughly. Under the ‘Fill Display’, you can experiment with this for getting the walls to show in a particular style. This interacts with another option which is the option for ‘Partial Structure Display’. So let’s take a look at how that relates to this. [0:37:21]

So if I go to the normal plan representation and we go back to the plan, we are seeing of course all the information about the walls in here. now if I switch this to let’s say the ceiling plan, then we are going to see we have the ceiling plan set up to hide the door swings but it’s still showing all of the door skins there. Now there is the option of showing the ‘Entire Model’ or the Core Only’. Then you can see that it’s simplifying the representation of the wall to show only the core. Now this is a complex profile here, so it’s a little hard to tell. But you can tell the difference here as I switch from ‘Core Only’ to ‘Entire Model’ how it’s putting the cladding on there.  [0:38:30]

It might be a little easier to see this also if I put this into hairline, turning off true line weight. Then we can see the difference as we switch to ‘Core Only’, or in between, there’s ‘Without Finishes’. In this case, the plywood sheathing here will show, but would not show the entire model which would have the stucco and gyp board showing. So the ‘Partial Structure Display’ is a control that is just like the Model View Options, it’s available for setting within a view. And it’s quite similar in the sense that it changes the way elements in the model appear. It has a very specialized purpose, and that is to be used structural drawings or exports to structural drawings for structural consultants. [0:39:31]

It is very special-purpose and it has its own control, but it performs a very similar function in terms of saying that we want to change the way the walls look. The walls still have their cladding, they still have all that information, but temporarily we only want to see certain element information here. and just to finish this brief mention of it, if you say, “Core of load-bearing elements only”, then ArchiCAD will look at the walls to see if they have been tagged as load-bearing. That is something that you have to manually do. ArchiCAD doesn’t know that certain walls are thicker and are structural and other walls are thinner and maybe not reaching the ceiling. [0:40:19]

It won’t make any decisions for you, you have to tag it. So I will demonstrate. If we switch this to “Core of load-bearing elements only”, you can see that this wall and this wall are showing up, but these interior walls in this area disappeared. If I say “Core Only” they do appear, because I said to show the core of all the walls. Now let’s see, in this particular sample file if I say “Core of load-bearing elements only”, you can see that these walls here have been designated under ‘Tags and Categories’ – if we open this up – as load-bearing elements. You can see that is where you control it is under the ‘Tags and Categories’. [0:41:11]

We will be spending a bit more time on structural drawings and export to structural consultants in a later lesson, but I thought this was relevant to our current discussion, so I wanted to bring that up. Now another thing that comes up from time to time – and I will put this back to our standard plan view – is the idea that we are in one file, and we have made some changes to the Model View Options. How can we get this to another file? Now in the last lesson, we looked at Attribute Manager. And we can transfer definitions of many things, including composites, building materials, surfaces, hatch patterns or line types through Attribute Manager. [0:42:10]

But Model View Options are not part of the Attribute Manager. They are a part of this particular project, and any changes I make here do not affect another project, but they can be exported and imported. So there is an option to export this and take this particular definition with all the controls down below and save it as a special type of file with an ‘.xml’ ending. So you don’t have to worry about that, but xml is a standard format for text files that carry data. In this case, if you opened it up, you would see some things that you might be able to understand that it’s talking about. Fills, construction elements, things like that. but mostly it’s programming talk. [0:43:02]

You don’t have to understand it or open it. All you do is save it and then in another file, you import, and you can bring this in. now this particular folder called ‘Model View Options’ is available. It appears to be something set up by ArchiCAD in the library for my username on this computer. Normally I don’t go in there, but this is where it’s making it visible. So if I did save it there, I could probably find it again when I have another file open. But I could save it to my desktop or some other location. So this would allow you to define, redefine, or add new model view options and export. Then in another file or your template perhaps import them. [0:43:58]

We do have the option to rename things. So I can go in here and rename it or delete these. Be careful, because if you rename something, it will show in all the dialogs properly but – and let’s just demonstrate this. I am going to rename this to put a “2” at the end. So I am renaming this. It doesn’t change what we are looking at here. you can see down in the popup menu it appears just fine. but if I look at the settings of any particular view, we will see that it says the old model view option is missing. We can, of course, switch to choose the new one, but this can cause issues down the line. [0:44:54]

So here is what you need to know. If you decide to change a model view option name, you will need to go through all the views that refer to that model view option and manually tell them to use the new name, because otherwise it’s going to say “Missing”. Technically what happens is it still remembers all the settings, so it will function pretty well. But in addition to changing the name you also change some settings about it – you decided to put the door swings or opening lines in the elevation – it would not affect any view that used the old one. So it wouldn’t be linked. [0:45:37]

So in general, if you do change the name, go through every view or clone folder and separate independent view and switch it from the missing one to the new name. Then they will be relinked and any changes you make to the definition will show up. In fact, that is an important thing to realize is that any of these views that use this Model View Option will adjust. You probably took it for granted that when I did that change for the elevation. I said that I wanted to show the opening lines for the doors and windows in the elevations. [0:46:15]

It affected all of those elevations. Actually, I changed it to a different Model View Option. But if I had changed it to the definition and overwritten the original one, then they all would have updated because they are linked to it. So that is the rules you need to remember with linking is this is handled through the name and not through an index number. Therefore you have to manually go and reconnect this if you are going to change the name. [0:46:49]

Now if I go back and change it back, not realizing that it was going to cause a problem, I could go back here and rename this and get rid of that “2”. And with it back to its original name, if I go into the settings, it’s happy. it recognizes that name. so that is at least an option, if you inadvertently changed the name, you can put it back. So that is I think all of the general rules for Model View Options in terms of selecting them manually, associating them with views, going into the Model View Options, making changes and possibly storing it. [0:47:31]

So if we did say that in the plan, section, elevation – I want to make all views that have this setting show the opening lines in here, I can go and store this and overwrite that here. and now all views will update there. So that’s how simple that is. Now I do have one thing that I passed over briefly which is, this particular library part called Total Zone. This is included or bundled with MasterTemplate. It’s created by a company called Master Script. It’s a very sharp fellow named Jeroen de Bruin. So Total Zone has some interesting options. I am not going to spend much time showing all of the things that it can do, but I will mention a few things just to show you that that the features within the Model View Options can extend even further when someone takes advantage of it. [0:48:42]

So if we are in the plan section and elevation, right now it says that the zone stamp is going to show in a certain style, like on a floor plan. When we switch for example to Reflected Ceiling Plan, you can see how this switches to a different setting. Now what this does it is affects the offset and the angle. And that means that on a ceiling plan, where you might have different information and want to have the note saying that the room name in a different location, you can with this zone stamp move it on a ceiling plan to a different location and it will remember that. And when we switch back to the floor plan here, it will switch its location. [0:49:29]

So that is nice. In addition, under the Room Finished Plan when we are saying we want to do a drawing showing room finishes, we can say that the same zone stamp, which has information about the finishes is going to show the name of the room, the number, and the finishes here. whereas on the floor plan, it will only show the name. so those are two examples of smart things that are put into Total Zone. You put down a single zone for an area and in one drawing it will look one way, in terms of maybe a simple name. in another drawing, it will have some more options showing, for example, the room finishes. [0:50:12]

So this is something that any GDL developer can put in, but not too many have taken advantage of it. Jeroen is a really smart guy and he realized that that was one of the things that a normal zone stamp doesn’t do, and that you can actually have some issues in terms of how you want to show it. Normally, you would pick one; however in this case you can pick variations and make it look different on different drawings there. [0:50:43]

If I actually switch this to Room Finished Plan, you will see that this zone shows with the room finishes. And when I switch this to a Ceiling Plan, the same zone actually is in a different position. It’s right here. and when I switch it to a floor plan, it’s in that original position. I have it overlaid. I am going to drag this – or let me move it here to this position. So you will see that there’s a zone and there’s text. This is in the sample project. I wanted to show how both could be used here. if we switch to the Room Finished Plan, you will see how it’s yet in a different position with the room finishes. The text stayed the same. [0:51:44]

So that might be a little confusing, but hopefully some of you will understand the potential power of what I just demonstrated there. So let’s see if there are any final questions about the Model View Options here. while you are thinking about questions, the Model View Options for any particular template or file can be different. so the international template may have some different settings than the U.S. one but the concept of course is the same. And you might have your own preferred Model View Options compared to some offices. It’s retained within the original project and inherited from the template. So whatever you set up in the template will be used when you start a new project. [0:52:38]

Let’s see if there are any final questions before we finish up today’s session. I see a few general Thank yous, it looks like you had all your questions answered. If you have any follow-up questions or comments, please add them to the page down below this recorded video. This has been Eric Bobrow, thanks for watching.

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