In this ArchiCAD training lesson we examine the basic structure, usage and settings of the Layout Book. This includes the creation of new Layout sheets, the numbering of layouts, organization into Subsets, basic use of Master Layouts for title blocks, etc.
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 and Download Notes... | Select+> |
---|---|
While you watch this ArchiCAD training video, the player controls will disappear. To make them reappear, move your mouse over the playing area. Pause and resume the video by clicking anywhere inside the playing area. This recording was made at a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels but is displayed in a smaller viewing area. While playing the video you may switch to full screen by clicking the little button at the far right of the controls. To return to the smaller size, hit the Escape key on your keyboard. You may download the video as an MP4 file from the Course Downloads page. After downloading, you may open file in QuickTime Player or any compatible media player to watch at full native resolution.
|
You may need to right-click the following links and select Save Link As to download the file to your computer
Click here to see the transcript of this ArchiCAD training lesson... | Select+> |
---|---|
Best Practices Course – Week 23 Part 1 – © copyright 2014 by Eric Bobrow BEST PRACTICES COURSE – WEEK 23-1 – Layout Book BasicsBEST PRACTICES COURSE – WEEK 23 Layout Book Drawing Options, Printing and Publishing – Part 1 – Layout Book Basics Welcome everyone to the ArchiCAD Best Practices training lesson for week 23. We have been going through the course outline here. Recent modules that we covered were a very extensive set on week 24, Attribute Management, which had to do with the definitions that you use for drawing and modeling things. We spent some time more recently on managing and optimizing live sections and elevations; so how you can get better quality drawings. [0:00:36] Now are going to look at the actual documentation process in terms of the layout book, the publisher and the project chooser. I have covered the basics of the layout book in the QuickStart course. I will be going back through it, so this will be for anyone who wants to start from the basics will actually get it but I will quickly be getting into some of the more intricate things you can do in the layout book. And then we’ll be moving on to the publisher, which basically allows you to take sets of drawings or sheets and save them in ways that other people can see. [0:01:16] So by publishing, you’re taking them out of the project and to the printed page or to digital form like PDF or DWG, etc. And project chooser is one part of this process which allows you to reference other files. For example, other ArchiCAD files, to place views from those files into the layout book or publish them. So we’ll be looking at those and starting out with the layout book here. So let’s switch over. We are now using ArchiCAD 18. I don’t think that much has changed in terms of the basics of the layout book. [0:02:02] However there is a whole new part of the layout tracking for revisions which we’re not going to cover in this section of the course. I’m going to focus on the things that are constant from ArchiCAD 10 on up through the current version. And then in a later lesson, we’ll be looking at some of the new features in ArchiCAD 18 including what is called “Revision Manager”. Alright so here we have a blank project. I’ll draw a box of walls and we’ll flip to the layout book and go to the first floor plan. And we can see that box of walls shows up. So anyone beyond the beginning level in ArchiCAD will totally understand what’s going on there, but just to make sure that the mechanics are shown, there is a drawing on the sheet. [0:02:55] This is an element in and of itself. You can see it’s one selected element. It has this icon of the drawing. The drawing is referring to a view of that floor plan. Now on the sheet here we can see here’s the drawing on the sheet. so we have, in terms of our layout book structure, we have an overall title for the project and we have one or usually way more than one sheet that will be numbered either automatically or manually. So that’s the basics is that we are placing one or more views of parts of the project onto the sheet and we have the sheet with an environment. [0:03:36] So going again very quickly through the basics, because I always like building from the basics and even if you are a veteran, you may find that there’s a few tricks here that you weren’t quite aware of. This sheet here is referring to – if I highlight it and look down below you’ll see in the properties, it has a name and number. It has a size, or actually what it is is not so much a size, it’s a master layout that is associated with this in this case 24×36, sort of a medium sized sheet for U.S. purposes. Again with the international one, I think A-0 is the largest, so it may be A-2 sheet or something like that. [0:04:21] It would be roughly the equivalent of 3’x2′. Now if I were to switch this to a different one, say 30×42, we’ll see that the same drawing now is on a different background, a different master here. So that’s the control of the master. The masters are listed down below in the layout book. If I double click on 24×36, you’ll see the background that we’re using. Of course it includes the Title Block. Now each one of these masters has a size, so here you see 3×2 or 30×42. You can see here’s 3’6″x2’6″; that’s 30″x42″. And so each one of these has a size, and of course it has something on there. [0:05:09] If I click, you can see this is a fill pattern or this is a piece of text. So basically whatever you see on the master layout is what’s going to be seen on the sheet. However there are some things that will update, so just very quickly going through that. For example, this is a first floor plan. It has a number A-2 and a “Sheet 2 of 7”. When I go to the next sheet, we have the roof plan, “A-3, 3 of 7”. You can obviously see the “A-3 and roof plan” here. And if I change that to “roof plans” – so I will just put an “S” – then you can see that as soon as I zoom in or out, this will update. So the name here is connected to the name of the layout. [0:05:58] So layout has certain properties just like views have properties, and some of the text is intelligent. So this is called “auto text”. And auto text can be used for a variety of purposes and can come from different parts of the context. In this case, the context is what sheet number and what sheet name are we seeing here. You’ll also see some other information. For example, the project name etc. that currently is set up – or we don’t have a name for the project because I started with a blank template. So this is some auto text that is on the master. [0:06:37] If I go to the master sheet, you can see its “auto text” here. If I double click on this and say I want to edit this text, you’ll notice that it all highlights in blue because it is a symbol. You’ll notice this A here, insert auto text, when I click on it, I could pick from any of a variety of auto text items. Obviously the project name is something that is seen in multiple places in the project on different sheets. And if we change that name, it should show up on every sheet. Some things like the sheet number, of course, change from sheet to sheet, but the project name would be constant; and some other things would as well. [0:07:18] These categories for auto text may change depending upon what version of ArchiCAD you have, but generally you’re going to have a number of different categories just simply to say, alright, well here’s the layouts. Here’s the layout name, number, etc. Or, here’s something about the system, which has to do with dates and times and things like that. So auto text basically will fill in text in a certain area. [0:07:46] As we go on a little further, we’ll see if I go into this text that there are actually different chunks of text. So this is one block with several different pieces. So we don’t have to create auto text as a single entity. It can be parts of what – in this case, it actually has the comma, and the space here are regular text. And the Contact, City, State, etc. are auto text items. Now technically the auto text for these items are not part of the system of the layout book per say, they’re just project information. I will cover it briefly here for those of you who are not as familiar. [0:08:35] This can be put in under the File menu, Info, Project Info. And this may look a little different depending on which ArchiCAD version you have, because there are some categories here. I’m not sure when the hierarchical categories started getting added, but that that was added at some point. I think originally this was just a long list. Each one of these, if I go to Project Name and put in something like “Smith Residence” here, it will show up as soon as I say OK. You’ll notice this little “…” . If I click on it, it allows me to put in a multi-line thing. Let’s say “Addition” or something like that. So now you can see that it displays it with it all on one line here, but actually it’s going to go on two lines. So when I say OK, you can see how it’s fit this in here. [0:09:29] So obviously we would want to in this case move these things down and adjust them on position. This is the master sheet, and if I go back to any sheet here, we will see that now here is the building and here is the information that I just adjusted. So every sheet will have that information adjusted. Now getting beyond that, let’s take a look at some of the other definitions that we will need to be aware of so you can have the full flexibility for understanding the system. This sheet here is – if we look here, it’s #1, #2, so it’s the second sheet in the list underneath this. That means that if I go down in here it says “Sheet 2”. [0:10:27] But it has a number, the A-2, which we can see reflected here. These numbers can be manually set or set based on a rule. So if I highlight the sheet and we go to the settings, we can see the settings for each particular sheet. Of course many sheets are going to have the same type of settings but maybe with a different name. First it will say floor plan; it will say elevations or whatever. The layout settings start with some things that might be on multiple layouts such as “Use automatic book and subset ID assignment.” [0:11:03] What is that means is it’s going to put the layout identification, in this case A-2, based on the book and subset ID assignment. What that means is there’s a layout book, which is essentially all the sheets put together. There’s the possibility of subsets like groups of sheets that are all the elevations or all of the detail drawings or some other group, or all the structural drawings. These can have their own numbering system. And this one is part of either a book at the top level or a subset of a book like a folder. And it has a numbering it’s based on that. [0:11:41] So we’ll look at how that numbering is defined, but right now it’s saying just wherever you are, just pick the right number based on the family that you’re in. I’m the second son or fourth son of this family, that sort of thing. Here’s our choice of the master layout. We already saw that we can manually change that in terms of right on the properties. But we can also of course define it here. The size is something that I think maybe – well, I can’t click on it. It’s dependent upon the master. And this may be some information that in fact wasn’t shown earlier and at some point Graphisoft figured that people want to see what size the sheet is. [0:12:28] Because you might have a sheet with a name like “E size” or a name that says “For Submittals” or some other purpose; and then just seeing the size might clarify if it’s in 8 1/2×11 or A-4 size. Then there’s the idea that each drawing within that sheet has a numbering sequence here. So you’ll notice on the right that where it says “first floor plan” and it has this little symbol of what indicates a plan drawing, that it has the “#1” next to it. That is because it’s saying the drawings on the sheet should be numbered with single digits as opposed to possibly multiple digits or letters, and it should start with number one. [0:13:15] Why would you ever want to start it from something other than one? Well maybe you have a set of drawings that are interior elevations and they go on for two or three sheets. So maybe on this second sheet you would want to start with “interior elevation group” or “drawing number 9” or something like that. So you can easily say for this particular sheet I want automatic numbering, but I’m going to tell it to start at a certain number. Of course if the previous sheet changes how many drawings you have on it you might have to manually update it, but all the drawings on the sheet will automatically adjust as needed. [0:13:49] Now this thing here called “Revision History” is a new feature in ArchiCAD 18. Again, we’re not going to look at that today. We will go into that when I do my training on new features of ArchiCAD 18. From what I understand, you basically have the opportunity to define revision dates. So you’ll be able to say this is a certain first concept set of drawings, this is a revision A or revision on a certain date. You will give it some type of ID. And it will actually then be able to help you to manage and publish or print specific revision layout sheets that are affected in the revision. [0:14:33] So there are a lot of things that are very relevant and very useful for large projects and maybe somewhat less necessary for the small projects. So let’s take a look at the numbering now that I’ve explained the concept here. And let’s see what happens if I were to move this sheet, which is the first floor plan. If I were to move it below the roof plan here, you’ll notice how as I drag it, it gives me shows me where it’s going to go with the blue line. You’ll notice now the first floor plan says A-3. Right now on my screen, it doesn’t say 3, because it has not refreshed. [0:15:13] I can either go to the View menu, Refresh, Rebuild – and you’ll see how that changed. Or the quick thing is I can just zoom in or out. So let me move this back to here. It’s now A-2. If I zoom in on it, it updates. So that’s a quick way to trigger a simple rebuild of data like that is just to zoom in or out a tiny bit. [0:15:41] Alright, so that’s numbering. You can see how it changed. Now how did they get the idea of A dash? If I go to the settings, again this is just saying “Use the automatic assignment based on either the book or the subset.” So this is the book that we are a part of. What is a book? Well this is the layout book. And the book is your project with sheets within it. You can have another level in between, sort of like folders, that are called subsets, which we’ll talk about momentarily. The book has properties or settings. It has a name of course like this, and actually the name here comes from “Smith Residence” – I guess that name came from the name of the project. Remember I changed that in the info section. [0:16:34] So I can’t actually edit that here. I can’t edit the text but I can edit it, if I wanted to, in the Project Info where that is being set. Now the book has some settings. There are some options here that may have to do with those revision histories or when things are printed. Right now we have not actually printed the current issue, so we haven’t issued a set of drawings. Again these are new in ArchiCAD 18 so I am a little unfamiliar with them. But let’s click on settings and we’ll see something that’s been around since ArchiCAD 10, and that is the idea that a book has a layout order; either flat, just one page after another or hierarchy of the tree view where things can be included in folders or subsets. [0:17:28] Now in the flat layout order, which is the simplest case, we have a prefix. So if all of these drawings in general are architectural and we want to identify them compare to the structural engineers drawings with A dash, that works nicely. If we have a very small set of drawings where we only need single digits because we’re going to do less than 10, then this works. Note that if you do a single set and you get up to 11, I’m not sure what it will do. But it probably won’t sort properly because one will be followed by 11 and then 2. Whereas if you do 01, 02, you will find that 09 is followed by 010 because of the way it sorts. [0:18:10] So you have some choices here. You can also start it at a certain number. This allows you to have a project that has certain drawings that are part of another larger set of submissions. So you can number it based on whatever is appropriate. Here is this again, this issue history, which we are not going to look at today – the new Revision Manager and all of these revisions. So if you’re in an earlier version of ArchiCAD before 18 you won’t see these two, you’ll just essentially see this stuff here. Now if I were to take out the dash here, you’ll notice that it changes here. I could of course put something like a dot, “A.” and you can see how that changes. [0:18:53] Let me do this as double digits with a dot. So you can see the preview. When I say OK, notice that all of these update. So essentially you can set the structure that you prefer very quickly and see these almost instantly give you the results that you need. Now I’m going to switch over to another instance of ArchiCAD. Here is our famous sample project. And in the sample project, this is from MasterTemplate for those of you who may be unacquainted with it. This is a little building that we provide with MasterTemplate to just show how certain things are set up. So in the layout book we’ll see that we have a small project example set. And you can see something like what you would expect where there is a title sheet and some sheets with notes and specifications; and here’s the floor plans. And all of these drawings going up to 15 are numbered sequentially. [0:20:00] So that is essentially what we had, but instead of that being the only thing in the project, it is a subset. This is the small project example set. So basically in MasterTemplate we have two versions set up. You would not use both in the same project. One is a small project, and you can have any number, it could be five, ten or twenty-five drawings but in sequence. Then the other is a set of subsets, grouping plans together and grouping elevations together, etc. [0:20:32] So this subset, if we go to the settings for it, we’ll see that it has a very similar thing. It actually breaks it up into the prefix and the ID here. The prefix can be inherited, because you might have a group of A drawings for architectural and S drawings for structural or MEP or things like that. But you can also manually do it. Let’s see, I guess this is coming from the upper levels. So either you use it or you don’t use it, but you can’t edit it. But we could of course put in anything we want here. So if we wanted to have A dot or something like that, now you can see that it’s combining two of those, A’s and 2 dots there. [0:21:24] But this allows it to pick up from the upper level and then add a prefix. So we’ll see how this works when we get into the other items. But this essentially is set up so that this group are numbered much like we had on the other simple file. This is a subset, it’s the same thing. How would you create a subset? You basically down on the bottom of the layout book have the option to do the settings for the layout or a subset. We have “New Layout”, and here we have “New Master Layouts” that would go in the lower group here. Or we have a “New Subset”, which looks like a little folder with a number on it. And when we do that, it says, “What do you want to call it?” [0:22:09] And here are the settings we were just looking at. So let’s look at say exterior elevations. Here is the subset that has some settings that are going to use the prefix from the upper levels. Now why did this upper level say “A-4.”? Where did that come from? Well, this particular one came from the book settings. And the book settings say that we’re going to use a hierarchy, meaning that there are folders or subsets within it, and we’re going to number the subsets based on A and 1, 2, 3, 4. So you can see A, 1, 2, 3, 4 etc. [0:23:00] Now it’s interesting, here we have the 10, 11. These are showing up nicely here. We’ll take a look and see if that’s being done manually or automatically. When it’s automatic, if we move these things around they will renumber. When it’s manual you can just say, “I want to call this the A-12 section.” Alright, so here we have this numbering. So each subset will automatically have that show up. If I were to move the sections above the exterior elevations and move it up here – by the way, notice that I can put it within another one or I can put it between two of them. If I put it between, notice now the sections are A-4 and exterior elevations are A-5. And if I reverse this back again, then the exterior elevations are A-4. [0:23:56] So again, just like you would expect, when you move these around they renumber, and the sheet will renumber as well. So if I go to look at the building elevations, here’s the A-401. if I move this to a different position here, like that, then as soon as I refresh the screen by zooming in or out or using the Rebuild command, that will update that particular sheet. Let’s just put this back here. You’ll notice I can actually drag the subsets within each other. So maybe it wouldn’t make sense to have the elevations within the sections, but sometimes you will have groups here. So I will just put this within. And now it has a rather odd numbering. It’s part of the A-4 subset. [0:24:45] And in addition within it, it’s got a number based just like the other sheets. And within this now we have A-4, 04, 01 building elevations. if I refresh the screen here you can see what’s happening. So if you have a really complex project with lots of stories and lots of buildings or just lots of disciplines then you can have a rather extensive hierarchy of subsets within subsets and control that. Let me just move this back up and out of it. You’ll notice as I move this you can see the little bubble and line and the highlight that this would go inside A-3. If I move it to the left a little bit, that bubble and line shows its going under A-3. [0:25:39] So there’s a subtle difference. Here it’s under and here it’s inside. If wanted to be under, if I wanted it to be independent, now it shows up as a separate subset. And if I zoom in on this, you’ll see how it adjusts as we would expect. So that’s the basics of numbering. Essentially, you might have something where maybe you haven’t created or you haven’t done the details. And you know it’s going to be in there or let’s say here’s “architectural details” and here’s dorm window stuff and maybe you haven’t created that. If I highlight this and go to settings, you’ll notice this says “Use a prefix and ID of upper levels.” [0:26:26] If I know that I want this to be a certain thing, like all of my details are always the A-9 set or A-DTL or something like that, I can turn that off. And let’s just call it “A-DTL.” just to be arbitrary. So I just said I want to call it this. So whether it’s a number or not, I can tell it what I want it to be. So it’s not automatically going to do it. And this actually put it at the prefix here. So this is going to be the name, the settings, for the ID of items within this. And here, if I wanted to make this consistent with that little thought, I can manually do it. [0:27:18] So it doesn’t have to be in sequence, it can be any number. Sometimes you might actually make cartoon sets of drawings and want to name the elevations “A-400” series, but you may not have done the A-300 or the A-200 series for site stuff. So you don’t want to do it automatically, you just want to manually name this based on my standards that the A-400 series is always the elevation. So you can manually name it. But it is convenient certainly to use the automatic one in many cases. If I say OK, you can see how that’s going there. And I don’t really like that. Let’s just go here. By the way we can also change it here. So this would be A-8. And when we do it here, this will be a manual one. Here is where I can change it to be automatic so it will the update if I move this around. And again, that affects the top level. And within this lower section, I can say that I want to inherit these things. [0:28:28] So now it’s all linked to the top level, picking that up and adding a dot as a separator. And now it’s going to be a simple thing there. If we go down to here to the A-10 and we go to “Settings”, this is going A-10 here, so it is showing that. So I guess in this case it looks like it is properly sorting numerically. So nine is followed by ten, as opposed to one followed by ten. I wasn’t 100% sure of that in terms of the automatic numbering system here. Okay, so those are some of the basics. [0:29:15] If we look here at some options that are used in the MasterTemplate sample project, we have within here this sheet is – where did it go? Well, it turns out it’s what we’d call in the U.S. a letter sized sheet, 8 1/2×11. I forget what you call it in international use; it would be a similar size. Basically, if I zoom out a little bit here and go to another sheet, you can see that it is a tiny sheet compare. So each sheet can have its own master. You can see here’s one MT for MasterTemplate, letter – because that’s what we call it in the U.S., letter size for writing letters. So it’s vertical as opposed to landscape, which would be this way here. [0:30:09] So each sheet in the layout book can potentially be a different size. That may become an issue when you’re printing a whole bunch of sheets to a plotter. That is a logistic issue just for printing. You may want to print out the sheets that are one size in one batch and print out other ones like this type of thing on a different printer. But within the layout book, you can easily coordinate the numbers, you can coordinate references, you can have all of these things on whatever size sheet you want. If you are going to be saving these layouts digitally in PDF format, it is possible in Acrobat or in Reader for PDFs to have multiple sheet sizes. [0:31:01] It’s not as commonly done as just having the PDF file with multiple sheets of the same size, but it is technically very possible for multiple sheets or different sheets in the PDF to have different sizes. Now if we look here at some other purposes that you can do that are just illustrated for example in MasterTemplate, this submittal sheet has some basic information that is picked up from the project name. So I haven’t gone into the info area to set up the project name, so it has this placeholder. And the project number – also probably would be a short identifier rather than a long one – had not been filled in. [0:31:50] But you can see it has some basic information; the project name, once you fill it in, will show up here as well as on the bigger sheets. Now this is something that you can put anything on here. Obviously it’s just a small piece of paper that you could put a detail drawing, a scanned sketch, almost anything you wanted on that as one or more drawings. But here’s another one where we have a building department application. So what is this? This is a placeholder for sheets that you might use to submit for permit. I’m sure you are familiar with these things here. This will fill in as soon as we fill in the info fields. It will start to fill in all of this information. so if you put in something about the site area or the zoning in the info section, it will show up here as well as maybe on the title sheet of the project and other things. [0:32:45] And you can create multiple layout sheets that could be this small, letter size and drop in PDFs. So if you think about how in many cases, forms that you used to have to type or fill in by hand now can be done digitally and saved as a PDF. You can place the PDF in here and then you have a record and can even print out directly from within the project layout book. So it’s a convenient way of managing that information that otherwise might just be in a separate binder or folder on your hard drive or on the server, and certainly might be harder to keep track of all of that. [0:33:34] Let’s see if there are any questions. I’ve just gone for a good half an hour non-stop, so let me know if you have any questions. So Dave writes, “Eric, can you describe the drawing default settings and how that should be set up?” Good point, thank you. I’ll do that. Tom Downer says, “For structural using S-1, etc. do I need to use hierarchy?” Okay, both excellent questions. Rick Skorick says, “The … and the info panel was new to me. Thanks.” Excellent. Ken Andrews, “I use multiple masters for each state for my architectural registrations.” Good suggestion. So keep them coming, because you are reminding me of some of the things that really should be covered here, whether it’s your question or comment, like a nice feature that you’re using, then I can explain it to everyone. [0:34:48] So let me go in sequence. Dave Norman says, “Eric, can you describe the drawing default settings and how they should be set up?” If I select the drawing here and then go to the drawing settings, we’re going to see that the drawing on the sheet has a lot of information that you can control. Just like walls or windows or any element this is the settings for this particular element. And if I cancel out of this and have nothing selected, I can go to the drawing settings here and double click. And here’s the default settings. [0:35:31] So what are these settings controlling? There is something about the identifier of the drawing. Is it going to be number based on the way the layout thinks about things, or is it going to be numbered by what view it came from? So remember that these are drawings typically coming from views within your project, and the views have some type of identifier. Or am I just going to give it a custom name here that I can type in? So a drawing can be set up in any of those variety of forms. And there are options for the ID sequence. So we’ll be looking at all of these things here in the context of real drawings, and then we’ll look at the default settings that I would recommend that would be most commonly useful. [0:36:17] So whatever you set in here is going to affect the next time you add a drawing to a sheet. And I guess I should certainly demonstrate how we drag a drawing onto the sheet as part of this overview of drawings and the layout book. So let’s jump back to the other project where there are a bunch of drawings and things to look at. And let’s look at floor plans here. So this is a sheet here that has a bunch of plans on it. It happens to be two stories but also a demo plan and a new and demo variation here. [0:36:58] Now as I open this triangle next to it, you’ll see that all of these drawings are listed. And interestingly we have number one, number two, number 2. So two of these are number two, and then there is three, four, and five. Notice this one that says “floor plan keynotes” is number two. If I double click on it, it’s this area here. And by the way if you double click on a drawing reference in the layout book it will highlight that drawing on the sheet. So you can see which one is which. If I double click on this one, you’ll see which one is which. [0:37:35] Now these were all in order except it seemed to duplicate the number two. Why’s that? If I double click on it, it’s not really a drawing. It’s a place where certain notes are put. So even though technically it’s a drawing on a sheet, we decided that this would not be numbered – I mean, it has a number, but it wouldn’t affect the real drawing. So when we are referencing drawing one, drawing two, drawing three, it would ignore this. So how does that happen? If I go to the settings for this drawing we’ll see that there’s a check box that says “Include drawing in ID sequence.” So here it numbered it. [0:38:15] We could ignore that, and in fact we’re not going to be talking about that. This is drawing number two, were just ignoring that. But most of these, when I highlight the settings, it says “Include drawing in ID sequence.” So that means if you want that drawing to take a number that’s unique, so the next drawing after it will continue on in the sequence, then you want include it. On the other hand, if it’s a special thing that you placed on there that you don’t want to consider in the numbering, then you uncheck that. [0:38:48] So that’s one little sophisticated feature that you’ll find useful from time to time. If we look at something like the elevation sheet, we’re going to see that these are not even numbered properly. It says “111111111”. Let’s just see the settings here. All of these don’t include that, so these would not be numbered. That’s why we’re not actually seeing – south elevation, east, we’re not seeing numbers. So obviously, that’s one style where you, in terms of these elevations, just give them a name and are not referencing the number of the drawing on a sheet. Other times you may want to be referencing which drawing is on the sheet, particularly when you have a detail drawing call out or some other reference from one drawing or sheet to another. [0:39:44] Now if I did want to number all of these, I can select all of these perhaps and go to Settings and say I would like to include the drawing in the ID sequence. I say OK, and guess what? Now they become one, two, three, four, five. The title may or may not show that. The title is something that is part of the setting for a drawing of course, and we will be getting into that as well. But this is now automatically taking that numbering. And if I move these things around, the numbers will change. But if I just take this one, and we’ll zoom out a little bit, double click on this “key plan”. So what is this? This is a small drawing showing the footprint of the building and the numbers. [0:40:32] And now we can see these building elevations. This one says “A-401”. So it’s drawing one on that sheet. This is A-402. Interesting that these both have the same number. So at this point there is a little confusion here, two of these have the same number. But in general, what this should do is give you a quick reference if you wanted to look at that elevation. Which one are they? I think what’s going on here is that this is referencing A-4.01, which is this sheet of elevations here. And in this sample project we have duplicate sets. Here is a set of four elevations on a sheet, and here is another drawing where we only have two elevations on the sheet because we’re showing the hierarchy where we might have multiple different sheets for elevations, multiple different sheets for sections, each grouped. [0:41:36] So it gets a little confusing, because this key plan doesn’t know which one to reference. And in the sample project it’s a little confused. But the basic idea here, if I go back to this one, is that this key plan shouldn’t really be numbered by itself. We are not going to put a number under here. This is drawing three on the sheet. We were just using it as a graphic explanation. So what I ideally want to do is say “Don’t include the drawing in this sequence.” Say OK. And now although it’s sitting in there, the other drawings get numbered sequentially. So that certainly is a common reason to do that. [0:42:14] This particular key plan, what makes it different than, let’s say a floor plan? If I zoom in on it, well it’s obviously very tiny. So it’s at a very small scale. It also is showing just a very simple view of the footprint. In other words, we’re not seeing windows or doors. We’re just seeing the walls of this building. So how is that created in terms of a drawing? Well if I open up its settings, if I right click on this and say “Drawing Selection Settings”, we’ll see that this is at a rather small scale. It’s set at 1 inch equals 20 feet, that is 1 to 240, so a very small scale that is just large enough to be legible for this purpose. [0:43:01] It refers to a view up here, which is a key plan view. And without going into details, that key plan view uses a layer combination that turns off all of the objects, fixtures, furniture, all the text, all the dimensions. It turns all of that off and just has the walls. And that view also has a model view option that turns off windows and doors. So it basically says, just show the walls without windows and doors. And it makes a footprint for the building without any detail. [0:43:35] So this is an example of drawing settings that are rather different. If we look at the drawing settings just a little bit further in addition to what view it came from and what scale, we’ll also see things like the title. “No title”. That means there’s nothing underneath that that identifies it, because essentially we don’t want to refer. This is drawing three on the sheet; we just want it to be an explanation on the sheet, just like some text and things. Whereas if we look at this elevation drawing and we look at its drawing settings – hmm. We have a little bit of an issue here migrating this project from 17 to 18. [0:44:20] That’s interesting. I’m not quite sure what the issue is. I’m just going to say continue here. So here is our little title underneath it. And it’s basically choosing a particular style and certain settings for that. So obviously you are going have a common style for many of your drawings on the sheet with a certain way that the title is going to be put underneath it or in relationship to it. We’ll look at some more of the details of that. But basically, this is something that you can turn on or off for any particular drawing and also set up in the default. I think I’m getting, let’s say a little deep in drawing settings. [0:45:09] I think what I want to do Dave is return to this question when I can really look at all the settings for drawings. Meanwhile, I’ll just take some other questions that relate to the layout book and the layout sheet structures. I’m going to put that aside for a moment. in general, I will just say that if you have the default settings for the drawing set properly, when you drag a view onto a sheet, let’s say this first floor plan onto a sheet, it will show up on the sheet with the right title, scale and settings. [0:45:48] So it basically will show the way you want. so setting up the default, just like when you set up the default for a wall, what is the next wall going to look like or what is the next drawing going to look like? So you’d want to have that set up. Okay so let’s return back to the questions that relate more to the overview of the layout book and the layouts themselves. Tom Downer asks, “For structural, using S-1 etc. do I need to use hierarchy?” You’ll notice in the sample project, we don’t have an S set. So how would we create that? Let’s say categorically, one option is that you have a bunch of structural sheets. Maybe the structural engineer has sent you some of the DWG files and said, “Here are my drawings and my calcs. Just put them into your set.” So you want to create a set of sheets and place their DWG files on it. [0:47:02] Or maybe you’re doing your own structural drawings and you’re creating that. So what you do is go and create a new subset. And let’s say that the ID is going to start with an “S-” And we’ll call this “Structural” here. Maybe we’ll just do an “S” here. And we are going to say within this. “S.”, that’s fine. Let’s experiment with this. So I’ll say “Create it”. Where did that go? It went up here. I happened to have this highlighted and it put it in there. Maybe that doesn’t make sense. Let me just put it down here after the detail drawings and before the presentation plans. I will just slip it in there, or maybe I will drop it in at the end of the set here like that. [0:48:09] Alright, so I’ve just given it a name. Now you’ll notice there’s no triangle next to it. If I want to create the first structural sheet, I’d click on this one here, “New layout”. It will say, “What do you want to call it?” and I will call it “Structural plans” here. We choose a sheet size, etc. and it’s going to pick up in this case the numbering based on what it’s part of. So since I have this highlighted, it will create a sheet within the structural subset and pick up that information. And of course we can choose how the IDs are going to be for the drawings on the sheet. [0:48:49] So now you can see there are structural plans. In fact it appeared at the bottom of the list. I am going to drag it into the structural subset, and now you can see it’s numbered “S.1”. So I could say, “Well all of these are really two digit ones.” So if I forgot that, let me go to the settings here and make it two digits so that it’s consistent. And the dot is what I have. So now it says “S.01 structural plans”. If I highlight this and double click on it, I have a blank sheet that I can place either DWG or my own views that are structural plans. [0:49:31] And then if I wanted to have structural sections or something like that, I can add another layout. We’ll call this – these are the numbers of the drawings on the sheet, which may only be single digits. The actual sheet will have the “S.02” designation. So essentially, by just saying I want to group a set of sheets together and give them an overall title and a prefix, it’s very quick to create that. Now what’s another variation? If you had an engineer sending you DWG’s, you could do that, and they could be just the contents here. And you could have your own title block. On the other hand, they might send you DWG said has a title block, and then you would want to have a master that is similar but does not have a title block, because they’re including it. [0:50:37] So how would we do that? Here we have the title block that is “MT standard 24×36”. Let’s go and find that. Here’s our masters. Click on the triangle. Here is the “MT standard 24×36”. Here’s what it is. Well I want to create another copy of this that is blank. So we haven’t talked yet about creating a new master. There is the option here of creating a new master layout. And we’ll just call this “Structural Blank”, so it doesn’t have a title block because it’s bringing this in. What size is the sheet? Here is where you can choose the sheet size. And we’ll spend a little bit more time on coordinating sheet sizes with your printer and plotter. [0:51:30] What was it, 24×36, which would be D size here. And there is some automatic sizing for what’s printable or not in the way drawings are numbered. But in this case we are saying we’re putting in a sheet image from the structural engineer and we just want a blank background. So we say “Create” and now you can see here is a blank background here. And if I go to this structural plan and in fact both of these, and change it to use that structural blank background, you’ll notice how it just subtly changed so that each of these is ready to put a sheet image on there and it won’t have a title block. So that’s how simple that is. [0:52:16] Another thing you can do is drag these masters around. So if you wanted to put this down lower, it doesn’t change anything by moving it around down lower. Maybe you put the ones that you’re using near the top and you have some spare ones that you’re not using down below. But if you drag it and you hold down the Option key on the Mac or the Ctrl key on Windows, notice this little plus sign shows up. So when I drag it and have that Option or Ctrl key held down, you’ll notice that there’s now another one which could be right below it. And it just as a little suffix of the number one. So if I double click here and here, they are both the same. [0:53:01] I could go in and say this one is going to be “MT structural” here. And let me take off the one. So now it has a different identifier. And maybe we’re going to have something – I don’t know what we would do here. I’ll just put in the word “structural” on here. So I will eyedrop this text and go in just to identify it. So I’ve now just put some text on here that is a little different than the other one. If I go to this sheet, this is the standard one. This is the one that says “structural”, and that’s the only difference. If I now go to this sheet, if I wanted to, instead of having a blank one I could pick this one here that’s the standard one but has the word “structural”. [0:54:00] So we can create a copy of a title block and modify it a little bit or a lot by simply dragging a master to a new position while holding down the Option or Ctrl key and having a plus sign. Remember it looks like this when I’m dragging it and I have that held down. When I let go of the key or if I don’t have the key held down then it won’t complete the operation. But those are the two ways you can create a new master. One is to drag a copy any another is to create a new master using this button here and then manually set all of the settings in terms of the size of the sheet, etc. And then start from scratch putting things on here. [0:54:47] Alright, hopefully that answers Tom’s question. [0:55:25] Rick Skorick mentioned that “the “…” on the info panel was new to me.” So again, where was that? That was in the File, Info, Project Info. And here, this is the name, this little “…”. This allows you to put in multiple lines for anything that would require it. Now Ken Andrews has a very good point, “I use multiple masters for each state for my architectural registrations.” So here we have a place for your seal. Some states would require a wet seal, but if you can get away with having it pre-printed onto the sheet or printed at the same time as the other background, then of course you can put a graphic in there. Or you can put in part of it and sign or something like that. But for each state obviously it’s going to have different registration numbers or would just be a rather different seal. So by having, let’s say here is the Georgia seal and here is the background that has the Tennessee seal. And here’s the background that has the Florida seal or something like that. [0:56:32] So you can basically copy your layout and just have a part of it be the seal. So that’s a good point Ken. Now one thing I will point out here is when I double click on the master, you’ll notice how it turns black; whereas when I’m on any of the sheets, it’s red. The fact that it’s red is just a visual clue to the fact that this information here is on the master. Notice that when I try to select it, it says, “This is the master item. To edit, open the master layout.” The color of this is arbitrary. It will never print in that color. It’s just to give you a visual clue that this is the background as opposed to the active sheet. You can change the color if you prefer under the Options menu, Work Environment. And I think this is maybe Onscreen Options, Use uniform color for master items on layouts. And there’s the red. So if I change that to blue then the background will be blue. Or I can make it a gray. [0:57:47] So that is where that is set. This is your work environment, so it will affect all projects. But this is only onscreen; it won’t affect how it prints. One thing I will point out is we’re in the layout book here. And if I open up the layers – so if I go to the Document menu, Layers, Layer Settings or just simply type Command+L or Ctrl+L, it will open up the layer settings. But you’ll notice it has the words “layout book” here. You’ll notice this is rather odd. It only has the ArchiCAD layer on and a handful of layers. In the layout book you can have all of the layers on or off. It doesn’t matter as much, or let’s say it’s different than your model environment, because in fact here we are saying the walls – here, interior and exterior are on. [0:58:53] Roofs are off and yet look behind me and you can see here are some roofs, they are showing. Why is that? Because we’re not seeing the roof layer, we’re seeing a drawing. The drawing has certain layers turned on, but the drawing itself right now is on the ArchiCAD layer. So each element that you place onto the layout has a layer. Each drawing has a layer, and on a master, all of the lines and texts and other things are on layers. And here actually is a text block; this is just a simple text block here where you could put texts directly onto the sheet for keynotes for elevations or things like that. So all of these are on a layer. [0:59:46] The general guide would be that you should put all of the items – unless you have a special reason otherwise – you should put all of the items on the ArchiCAD layer. So you should be familiar with the fact that the ArchiCAD layer is the only layer that you cannot turn on or off. I can’t lock it, I can’t change the eyeball, it’s always on. So if you put these elements on the ArchiCAD layer, they will always show up whenever this sheet is brought to the front or whenever you print this sheet. So in the large majority of cases, what you’re laying out on a sheet is going to have one version that you print out. And if you print that sheet in a submission, it’s going to have all the data on it. [1:00:42] And you don’t turn on and off different things. However, here are a few things you might put on another layer. For example, let’s say you don’t put your seal on it until the project reaches a certain point for submission. You don’t want to have any liability; you don’t want the drawings to be taken anywhere. So maybe you put the seal graphic on another layer. And you have that layer turned off until you’re ready to do it. There could be other things that maybe are variations of schemes. Scheme one, scheme two. Potentially the same layout sheet could be printed with two different forms. And even having the drawings that are for scheme one be shown on one version or another. Maybe you really want two different layouts for those schemes, but this would be an option. [1:01:37] Now the interesting thing is, as I pointed out in the layers, all of these layers are off when I open this up. But when I go back to the floor plan or any drawing, like the first floor plan, and I open up the layers you’ll see that it’s rather different. All of the layers that you would expect for the walls and furniture and fixtures are the way you would expect. And if I switch directly to the sheet and then open up the layers, you’ll see that it’s different. So the layout book layers exist in a separate world from the layers of the model view. [1:02:21] They use the same layer names; and the same layer combinations are technically still available. But essentially, your project has a set of layers that are active for the layout book and they stay that way unless you change it. So a common thing for the layout book is to have all layers visible and unlocked. When I do this, notice that it changed slightly because there happens to be some parts of the master that are really relevant for a certain type of sheet where we’re doing a grid; E1 or E3 as opposed to numbering. [1:03:08] So this is something that if you were going to use that format, then you would want to have that layer on there. Let’s see what layer that’s on. If I go to centered sheet here, we’ll see that this is on a layer called “Y Special Layout Sheet and Explanatory Notes.2D”. So in MasterTemplate this has a complex name, although it should be pretty easy to understand. It’s special information on the layout sheet. Explanatory notes is another type of thing. And basically if you turn that on, you’ve got some guides here. [1:03:41] Maybe you want that printed, maybe you don’t. Maybe it’s just there while you’re laying things out so that you can sort of see what’s going on, and then you turn it off. But basically, if I turn that layer off, “Special Layout Sheet and Explanatory Notes” will disappear. Guess what? Here’s that “Registration Stamp” layer that I was talking about. If you want to have that turned off so that the registration stamp doesn’t show until a later point in the project when you turn it on, then that is a great way to manage layers for overall layout book and for the project phasing. For concept drawings, you don’t have it on, and when you’re ready to submit to the city then you have that turned on there. [1:04:32] Alright. Ken Brooks, “I have an AMT question. I noticed that somehow one of the section markers is independent while others are auto rebuild. Can the independent be changed to auto rebuild?” Let’s address that in the next lesson, so next week. But briefly, it appears you have orphaned or taken away the parent or the source for that section. So the drawing is still there or the marker is still there, but it no longer has a reference in your view map. So would have to essentially reconstitute or place again that section marker, the source view. So we’ll take a look at that. [1:05:22] Ken also asked – this is something from a while back – “What if you wanted to title it ‘Key Plan’?” I think you are referring to the key plan drawing. You can certainly put a title on it and just have a title style that maybe doesn’t have a number. So we’ll be looking at the different options for drawing titles in the next lesson. Ken Andrews says, “I use a layer for my seals which can be turned on or off for certain purposes.” Absolutely, that’s what I’ve been talking about. Ken says, “Eric you’ve taught me well.” Okay, good. Steve Nichol writes, “Can you create more than one ArchiCAD layer, both of which can’t be turned off?” No. There’s only one unique layer called the “ArchiCAD” layer and I think it’s very similar in function to the zero layer in AutoCAD. It basically has a name that cannot be changed and it cannot be hidden or locked. Anything that you put on that layer will be visible and will not be locked by the layer. [1:06:25] So it’s a very special purpose. It also means you technically could start a project with only that one layer and add more layers later. You have to have at least one layer for the project. And they just set that up as a sacred layer. Alright so I think we’ve gone a little over an hour. I think this is a good point to stop. I’ll be continuing on next week for more details on the layout book and layouts. And we’ll be focusing a lot in the next lesson on drawing settings, all the different options that can affect drawings that you may find useful. Drawing titles, so do you want to have a title or reference underneath it and what should it look like? [1:07:16] How can you make the drawings look different ways? For example, when you want to make an electrical plan and you want to have the walls be a light gray so that the electrical elements pop out. Or you want to have a plan that is a background through another plan where one drawing is a background to another. Those are done often with pen sets, so you are changing the way that pens are represented. There are a lot of different things that we will look at for controlling drawings on sheets and managing that process. [1:07:48] So let’s see, final comments. Colon Healy says, “In version 17, when I select all layers, it has no effect. When I click on “Show All Layers” nothing happens. Is this a glitch?” I’m not sure what you mean. If you select all of the layers in the layout book or in a layer dialog and use the eyeball to turn them on and make them visible, they will be on when you return to whatever view you’re in. But remember that in the layout book, things are typically only on a handful of layers like the ArchiCAD layer and maybe a registration stamp layer. [1:08:26] In the model view, in the view that you came from – the floor plan or section or whatever – that has its own layers. It’s possible you may be changing the layers in the layout book but not affecting the view. The other thing that I saw in your project yesterday Colin is that – at least in one of the plan views that I was looking at – the layer combination for the view is set to “Custom”. So that meant that changing the definition for floor plan view – if you want an extra layer turned on or these extra layers turned off – because your view was set to use custom layers, it didn’t change. I had actually changed your view to use a layer combination. Then it would be managed. So when you see the recording of that that, that will make more sense. [1:09:24] Steve Nichol says, “Good stuff as usual. I’m currently weak on the layout book stuff. Review is very useful.” Good, I am glad. Bob George, “Have you shown how to duplicate masters in this lesson?” Yes, I did. I will do a quick recap. Colin Healy was saying, “I’m talking about model views.” So model views, these are two things that can be confused. There’s the view settings which include layers and then there’s model view options which include, are we showing it as a ceiling plan or site plan with different types of detail. [1:10:02] Let me give a recap for Bob George about duplicating masters. Dave Norman, “For the next lesson an overview of auto and manual numbering for sections, details and interior elevations would be very helpful.” I will make a note of that. Just to finish up, Bob says, “Have you shown how to duplicate masters in this lesson?” Yes. If I have a master here, and I drag this down into another position, it just moves. So here is the standard one that I was dragging. If I drag it down and hold down the Option key or Ctrl key on Windows you’ll notice the plus sign. When I let go, we now have a duplicate of it. Here is the one, here is the other. The name can be changed. We’ll call it “Bob” there. There is the name. And the contents of it can be changed. So let me get rid of this and that. [1:10:57] And now here is something that’s very similar to this one. When I double click on it, here’s your new “Bob” one. So it can be totally different. I can start out as a duplicate so you can modify whatever you want. So hopefully that answers that. Okay, thank you all for joining me today. Please add any additional comments or questions to the page down below this recorded video. This has been Eric Bobrow, thanks for watching. [END OF AUDIO 1:11:27] |
Please post your comments and questions below.
Eric
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Hi Eric,
Thank you for another great lesson.
I want ask a question that is a little off topic but nevertheless comes out of this video; at about the 39 minute-mark you are looking at a sheet of elevations and the fill in the mesh is different from one view of the model to another – why is this so? Fills and pens and other presentation attributes (that differentiate an amateurish finished product from something that has a real polished look to it) are what I, as an ArchiCAD student, am struggling with the most.
Cheers,
Andrew