Best Practices Course – Week 24 Part 2 – © copyright 2014 by Eric Bobrow

BEST PRACTICES COURSE – WEEK 24-2 – Detail Process Optimization

Welcome everyone to the Best Practices course ArchiCAD training lesson for Week 24 Detail Drawings. We’ll be continuing on. Last session we looked at the basics of detail drawings. Now we are going to be extending that a little further with some of the options that we have for referencing them, placeholders, updating them, rescaling and replacing. So some of these things. And I think in this session we will look at the use of a legend or template for details. In the U.S. we have MSA Detailer or the detailer section of the Object library that has some interesting tools. We’ll be looking at how you can speed up the creation of your details with 2D components rather than just doing everything with lines and fills and things like that. [0:00:56]

By the way, last week’s session is posted already here on the basics of detail drawings. If you haven’t reviewed that, then I suggest that you take a look at that video because it went pretty well. We covered a lot of ground and even went further than just the basics in terms of the Detail Drawing tool. Okay, you will see here I have the MasterTemplate 18 sample project. Actually, another tiny bit of news is that I finally got the U.S. version of MasterTemplate for ArchiCAD 18 finished up and posted today. I have sent out a notice to people who have already purchased it, and I will be announcing it to people who might be interested in upgrading or purchasing MasterTemplate. [0:01:52]

As you probably know, if you are in the Best Practices course, I often use MasterTemplate as an example file to demonstrate things and particularly the sample project. It just gives me a groundwork for putting things in context. Okay, so this particular file has now been fully upgraded to work with ArchiCAD 18. Let’s just do a quick review to start out. I will go to a section and place a detail drawing here. I will go and say that I want to put a detail drawing in this section. I will go to the Detail tool and make sure I have the geometry. In this case, a simple, rectangular crop will work. [0:02:43]

I am going to create a new detail point. That gives me the opportunity to name it. I will name it “Eave Detail” here. I will possibly give it a number. The numbers are going to help you organize your details in the project map. Having done that, I can also choose what layer it’s going to be on. If it’s on the ArchiCAD layer, it’s going to be seen every time this particular section is brought up, which probably is okay, but you may want to put it on some other layer. For example, we have a special layer for things that are unique annotation for plans, sections, and elevations in MasterTemplate. This allows me to potentially hide some of those annotations and just look at the model in the section or elevation and not see the annotation. If it’s on the ArchiCAD layer, then that wouldn’t be the case. [0:03:41]

Let’s say I am doing a callout here. I will click two points to create the rectangle, click a third point to create the elbow for this. And you can see again the reference marker is placed in here. It is a rounded rectangular cutout or cropping area. If I deselect it, then we are not seeing that cropping area. That will become important later on, because what we need to do is sometimes be able to see that to edit it. Now I am going to right click on this and say “Open Detail Drawing”. We are now looking at that context at a scale initially twice as large as the source view. I am going to change this to something like one and a half [inches] to a foot here or one to eight. [0:04:28]

That blows it up. I can go ahead and clean up some of the things I don’t need like the boundary or the gridline here, and start reworking it. That’s the basics of creating a new detail drawing. And again, just a quick reference: if I go to the architectural details sheet here and I go back to this particular detail view, the view will show up in the detail clone folder if we have a clone folder for details here in the project. If it’s a clone folder, it uses some default settings such as one inch to a foot, which is the settings for the clone folder. [0:05:14]

In this case I decided that I wanted it to be at one and a half. So I am going to change the scale here to one and a half. That now allows me to put this detail into a particular grid area. It’s rather large. Let’s just drag this around so that it fits in two cells rather than quite as many. Maybe I need to crop it down a little bit like this so now it’s not overlapping that. Let me get the division. Now again, the title here, if I want a title, which would be common, then I would want to choose here the particular title like this. This can be moved around and I can also eyedrop any other detail like this one and inject it into this detail, and that will – oh, that changed the scale. We didn’t want that. [0:06:10]

Let’s eyedrop this one and inject it into here. One of the things that did was it put the title in the standard location relative to the grid there. And I might need to change the boundary because it probably said, “Go out as far as it needs to”, and we may need to crop this a little to avoid having it go beyond the boundary there. So that’s the basics of placing in a detail on a sheet. You can annotate this and see the annotation show up at the larger scale on the sheet. [0:06:47]

Now what are some of the things that you may need to do that we haven’t covered so far? One thing is we might want to call out this detail from more than one location. We did look at that a little bit last time. Let’s just go to a different section here. So this is A section, let’s go to B section. So here is a different section. Maybe this one doesn’t have a compatible one here. Let’s say that it’s going to be this area here, it’s going to be a similar callout. Instead of creating a new detail, we will place a linked marker here. The linked marker will either refer to a viewpoint like a detail itself that we just created, like this one, or it can refer to – and generally it’s better to refer to – a first drawing of the selected viewpoint. That means that it will point at that detail, but it will reference the drawing that I just placed on the sheet. [0:07:53]

When I do that, now it’s a linked marker. I can go ahead and do a callout like that. Now it’s showing – let me move this around and use one of these editing things in the pet palette will allow me to reposition the callout like this. So this one allows me to move the elbow. This one allows me to move the whole thing. It’s odd in terms of this would normally be just a part of it. And if we do use this, you can see it did move the whole thing. It didn’t move the cropping rectangle. So this one is moving it around in space, this one is moving just the elbow. I guess there are some subtle differences in what that does. [0:08:46]

Again, the reference here, or in the previous one we would want to go and make sure in general that we don’t show the name. That’s there at the beginning before you place it. It’s nice to see what you have named it, but afterwards we may want it to just reference the sheet here. So this is now linked to the same one. If I open the detail drawing here, and go back to that section and say “Go to Drawing” then it will go to the drawing on the sheet. So that’s the basics of a callout that is similar. [0:09:24]

We might actually have a callout that is a little different. If we go to the Roof plan here, this is an eave detail. I am not sure which part of the roof it is, but clearly you will sometimes take a detail drawing and want to place a linked marker, but you are not going to want to use the same type of marker, because it’s not going to be a bubble. It’s just going to be pointing at it. So let me leave this again as pointing to the last one we had chosen here. Of course, I can manually do that. Initially I will go and say “Unlock Layer” here. This particular layer is turned off in this view. [0:10:12]

So this particular detail callout, I want to change the marker style. Let’s go in here. Instead of being the built-in detail marker, I might want to do it as a detail part marker here. This will then create something that is referencing that. We may want to move this dot over so that it’s there. We may want to move the whole thing over so that it’s going in like that. Now you can see that I have something that as soon as I change the settings here for not showing the name, it will have that number and it will be referring to this particular section. There are a variety of styles for a detail marker that you can use. This might be something that you put on a plan for referencing and eave or foundation detail or something that is essentially defined in another view but is being referenced for convenience in this view. [0:11:18]

Now let’s look at something else. If we were to do the placeholders, which I was referring to, then let’s go down to the foundation plan and say that we wanted to have a foundation detail here but we didn’t have this defined. I will go to the Detail tool and say “Place Unlinked Marker” here. I will go and place this here. So now this is a callout that needs to be linked at some point. I can go around the entire project and put these in. At some point, I may have created it from another view or I have imported a drawing onto a layout sheet. I can select this and say that I would like to link it. It’s not a source marker, but I could tell it to link to a particular drawing. [0:12:13]

So we may or may not have a viewpoint defined. That would be a detail drawing within the project map. But I may have a drawing on a sheet. And that one, I can select drawings on a sheet. And let’s go down to the architectural details, and here is the source detail. This is one that happens to be a foundation one. It’s named here – not related to foundation, but just a source of other details. I am going to say OK. This now, again, I want to turn off the name here and just have the callout. If I go to that drawing, then we are going to see it’s pointing at this particular foundation detail. [0:12:59]

In fact, let’s just go in this particular project and rename this drawing. Now the name of this drawing, “Example Source Detail”, if we look on the sheet at this example source detail – and either I have this selected or the same item in the navigator in the layout book, I can go to the drawing settings and you can see that the name came from the view, “Example Source View”. So I could make it custom and then edit it manually like this, and just put in whatever I want, or better would be to go to the name of the view. So where is this view? [0:13:45]

This is in the clone folder for details. Here is that “Example Source Detail”, and I can edit that. And then it would show up here as well as in the layout as the title of that drawing. Now if I go to the settings of that view, you will notice that its name, while I could make it custom and change it, actually came from the project map. So in fact, to reduce confusion, I recommend you go to in this case the source, which would be the detail viewpoint. When I open it up, you can see here is that viewpoint there. This particular viewpoint has a name, and I could just call this “Foundation Detail”. [0:14:39]

So now I have changed it here. It changes in the view map, and it changes in the layout book. If I go back to the sheet, you can see how it’s changed. So that’s generally how you want to do it is name the detail in the viewpoint in the project map when you create it or after you have created it, you can do it either way. This is actually connected to the marker. If I right click on this and say “Find Linked Markers”, it says that this detail was placed on the foundation story or that there is a marker linked to it and it also is linked here. So we could go and select it. [0:15:30]

If I go and select it here, there is the original callout. Actually, this one is a linked marker as well. So this is linked to it, and it’s not actually the source of that original drawing. Let’s go back to the – we had this foundation detail, find linked markers. And we go to the foundation one here, that’s the one that I just created. So in fact, in this case, neither one of them was the source of that. So where did that come from? Well if you think about it, this is really a typical foundation detail that could apply to many different projects, and in fact, was put in here in this example project for demonstration purposes. It doesn’t come from the actual model. [0:16:27]

Obviously, we want to coordinate the model with this. So, this particular detail, if we were to create that from scratch or bring it in and make it perfect, then we could easily go and have references, put callouts wherever it’s appropriate, and that’s what we just demonstrated. Now if I right click on this, you can see “Open Source View” will open the actual drawing. Now what is the source for this? Notice it says “Independent with Markers”. So this is very useful information. This is a detail in our project map. It’s an independent one as opposed to one that was created from a source. [0:17:25]

Here you see “Eave Detail”. Remember I created a new detail viewpoint and used the detail tool to create a rectangle around the eave. And it created a drawing that I could start to annotate. So that’s a drawing detail. Independent details are created by right clicking in the detail folder in the project map and saying “New Independent Detail”. You then have the opportunity to give it a reference ID and a name. And it will then show up in the list here and have a blank workspace. It won’t have a copy of anything that you are looking at because it’s an independent detail. [0:18:03]

Once you do that, you can then bring in information such as from a previous detail from another project or manufacturer or a hybrid. For example, you can draw some things, copy some things, import DWG things into it, and create that new detail. An independent detail is something that is very useful. You can use it when it’s appropriate and have other details called out directly from a section or some particular view. [0:18:45]

Let’s see if there are any questions on what I have gone through so far. It was a quick review of the basics from last time and starting to go a little further. So let’s see if there are any questions. Okay, so I think it’s clear so far.

Now suppose we created something form a standard detail or a drawing like the eave detail here. Now this eave detail, let’s say that we wanted to start putting some more information and edit it. This stuff here is actually a group placed in the section. I am not quite sure – this is from the sample project – how the installation would best be depicted. But I am going to delete that to give us a cleaner representation. Sometimes you do need to go and delete some things like this line here. This is part of a group here. Let’s suspend groups here so we can select just this one line and take that out. [0:20:16]

Some of the things that you may need to do are to clean up by removing things. Suspending the groups may be necessary for that. You may also want to consolidate certain things. Now, I am not an architect. I think most of you know that. Occasionally, people believe that because I speak the language pretty well that I am an architect. But I am not, so I am not going to attempt to be realistic about the detail drawing here. But I will show some of the technical aspects of cleaning this up. [0:20:50]

So let’s say this line here, which is the floor line, this is the story line, let’s remove that if that’s not relevant. I am seeing this line, and we have these lines here. Now clearly there is some complex relationships that should be retained there. Sometimes you may need to pull things back and clean some lines that you didn’t model as cleanly as the detail would require. So you need to go and edit these things, delete extraneous things and get it good for the basics. [0:21:30]

Now you will also see for example, this is a fill. It’s white against the yellow background. Here is another fill, and they overlap each other. Sometimes editing these things can get messy. There is a really wonderful tool introduced in maybe ArchiCAD 12 or 13 that is called “Fill Consolidation” and another one that is called “Line Consolidation”. I can go to the Edit menu, Reshape, Line Work and Fill Consolidation are available but they are gray, because I need to select what I want to edit. I can select a part of it, or I can select all of it if I want to work on it as a whole. [0:22:13]

So I will go the Edit menu, Reshape, Fill Consolidation is something here. Right now we have sixty-eight fills. You can see in the top menu info box that there are a whole bunch of fills. I can trim overlapping fills, I can merge identical adjoining fills. So if two fills are touching each other and they really are the same style, it can merge them. There are some additional settings here, whether it’s going to pay attention to the layer if we wanted to maybe keep things separate if they have different layers. There are some different options here. [0:22:54]

The default option generally works well at least for me in demonstration purposes, but you may need to tweak the default here. Once I say OK, you will see it cleaned up a tiny bit. It still says sixty-eight, so it didn’t reduce the number of fills but there are times in certain contexts where we will end up with fewer fills because certain things have been merged. But now you see this is one fill here and this one is another one, and they adjoin each other as opposed to overlapping. So that could make it easier to clean up. [0:23:32]

Now let’s take this here, I think that’s from something in the background that we don’t necessarily want to see. Similarly, I can to and select these elements and go to Reshape, Linework Consolidation. And this will allow us to take duplicates and replace them. Sometimes depending on how things are modeled, you may have things on top of each other. And it may get a little awkward editing, so deleting the duplicates would be good. You can also take, if something is a poly line, you can explode it so it becomes simple lines, and that may be a little easier to edit. [0:24:13]

Other options here that you may or may not want to check in terms of you can check something saying I want to ignore the layer and put all the lines, even if they are on different layers, onto the ArchiCAD layer for example. Here you have some options for how connecting lines will be treated. For example, these two lines touch each other. And essentially, here is the first one and the second one, they will become a single line. Of course, they will be in one linear relationship. In other words, not forming a corner or an angle. [0:25:00]

This is just to show you that maybe they came from different planes in space. But we are looking in a way that they look like they are in the same connection. So you could simplify that. If they overlap each other like this, then they would potentially get merged. So there are different options in the consolidation wizard. The first time you go through this it will ask you all of these things. And you can make your decisions. The next time, it will just have a summary and allow you to do the same thing again. So once you have your preference set, you can use that summary very quickly but also go in if you want to and revise those settings. [0:25:46]

So here these are overlapping lines, depending on whether they are the same type or not. As you see, “Deleted Duplicate”, so the four of them. There were sixty five here. Four of them were deleted, two were merged, and three overlap, etc. Now, if we want to, we can say the next time use a simple setting that just summarizes it, as opposed to going through the extended questionnaire. I will say “Close” and you can see it says fifty three. So it took out twelve lines. [0:26:25]

Now it’s not so much that there are fewer lines. ArchiCAD is not going to slow down based on sixty-five lines versus fifty-three. It’s just the editing, if you have overlapping lines and you try to move or shorten or delete something and there is another line there, or you are selecting one thing but it actually selects something else that is overlapping. So ultimately, consolidation is a good initial step for working on any detail drawing that comes from the model. You do have to be a little bit careful here. I can see that there is a line here. I am not quite sure how this line here-this also must be this fill. [0:27:11]

Anyway, I can see the lines still coming up, but it’s a faint. Maybe there are some things where I want to take this line and bring it to the front there. Now you can see we have that common color. If I go back to Onscreen View Options, True Line Weight, we are going to see something more precise. Now here, for example, the model was not using the new features in ArchiCAD 17 and later that allow these intersections to clean up. I am just going to assume that maybe the drywall here would go up to the framing here and the ceiling would be put in afterward. And therefore, this line here, if I pull this back, should go to there. [0:28:00]

Or perhaps in some cases you might just want to get it simple so it’s wrapping around. Obviously, I can start cleaning these things up now that I have the basic work cleaned up, it’s going to show and be easier to edit. Sometimes you are going to be putting in some things. It looks like again this particular – let’s just say “Bring to Front”. That’s interesting. I didn’t really want that fill to bring to the front – let me undo that – because the lines come with it. So there are some tricky things that you need to work with when you are trying to manage what is on top of what. But overall, you have a good starting point and you know it’s in direct relationship to the model that you made. By the way, this looks like a fill up above, maybe from the wall behind this. I will just delete that. You don’t need that particular piece there. [0:29:08]

Now the next thing I am going to show you is how you might use certain objects to add information into the detail drawing. So I go to the Object tool. Most objects in general are going to have 3D representations. We can’t really put these 3D objects into a detail drawing, because the detail drawing is all 2D. You will notice that all the 3D elements are actually gray, because even if there were walls and roofs and things like that, they are now converted into their graphic equivalents of lines and fills. [0:29:44]

But the Object tool still exists because some objects are 2D. In particular, in the U.S. version under the “00 General”, there are a variety of 2D symbols. I especially want to bring your attention to the “Detailer Library 18”. So the Detailer Library was originally created by an architect named Michael Sotero, and he created an add-on product for ArchiCAD called “MSA Detailer” [which stands for] Michael Sotero Architect Detailer. Graphisoft purchased the rights for that back in ArchiCAD 7; so a long, long time ago, and has carried it forward since then. [0:30:21]

Frankly, without too much changes. It was a pretty robust resource, and they have updated it a little bit here and there. Now if we go to something like wood shape – let’s see, here is wood trim. So these are shapes here. Maybe we have a crown moulding here. Let’s just say there is a crown moulding in here. We might want to actually model that, so that it would show up in the detail, but there are going to be things that you don’t model that you simply want to put into the detail. [0:30:58]

So let’s just pick a crown moulding here. It has no 3D representation. It’s purely a 2D element, and it has some options for what pens are going to be used. Let’s just put it in my the default and say OK. Actually, let’s just change the layer from landscape. That wouldn’t make much sense. I can put it into the ArchiCAD layer saying that it’s always going to be seen in this detail or I could be more specific about this is mouldings high cornice, things like that. I could be very specific about it. In general, most details are going to be seen in a single way on a single sheet. [0:31:38]

It doesn’t matter, as long as that layer is visible. But occasionally you may have a detail where you are showing it at two different scales, and certain details you want to show in one view but not another. So then the layers would become more important. I will click to place this in. It’s obviously facing the wrong way, so I will go and mirror this, like that. And I will drag this into position. Let’s see, drag it over until it touches here and drag it up vertically there. And now we have a crown moulding to put in there. So that is an example of yes, we could have drawn lines and fills to create this, but that was a pre-made component that made sense. [0:32:31]

Let’s go into the Object tool. We could have steel shapes, if you are putting in structural steel. We can have masonry units in certain wall sections or you may want to work with this. Let’s just pick this – let’s see. I have picked a CMU here, and there is an option for what its view is. Actually, some of these objects can be put in different orientations. Let’s do a joist hanger. That’s a good example. If I click on this, you can see the preview indicates this view plus some other stuff, because I could choose to put in this 2D information in another orientation. So it’s a 3D element, it does not have 3D representation. [0:33:37]

But we can choose which view is the most appropriate view for this. So I guess maybe it’s going to be something like that in this view, and I might actually merge here before I put it in. So it probably doesn’t fit into this design here, but if I wanted to pop that in, I can pop it in directly into position. You will notice that the hotspot that was highlighted is where it went in. When I clicked, this is what was put in. Sometimes you may want to put it in from a different hotspot. So if I just go ahead and pop it in here, you can see that the click point is the point where it got inserted. [0:34:28]

We still have all of these same hotspots, but I chose which one I wanted to use. So that’s an important thing about any object, but particularly when you are working with these detail objects, is you want to line it up in such a way that it snaps into position, and it will save you time. Let’s go into the Detail Library. I am trying to remember where the 2 x elements are. These are all trim. Here it’s under “Wood”, that’s right. For some reason, I get confused, and maybe you have as well. If you are looking for something that is just dimensional lumber, for plate or joist or things like that, it’s actually under the wood section, but not under the sub-folder “Trim”. It’s just under the main wood section. [0:35:40]

Here is an interesting one. It says “The board sides”. These are set up for U.S. Standard. So if you are a metric user, I don’t know if Graphisoft has a similar part in the standard library for you. You can do “Custom” here, and we can actually type in the size here. And if you were working with this library in another country and needed to do it metrically, your dimensions would show up metrically here. So by choosing “Custom” you would be able to put in your own dimensions for this lumber. [0:36:17]

Now I am going to pick one of the standard ones, let’s say a 2×4. Then I am going to choose whether it’s single or possibly double. So there are different options like this. I can rotate this around using the rotate arrow or type in a new angle like that. And I can choose which point I would like to pop it in by. Let me choose that and say OK. I will pop it in here. Now obviously we already had some framing in that section, but essentially that is what that was done. This stuff right now is just lines, and it could have been put in as lines in the original section or it could have been put in using that object. [0:37:00]

Sometimes, in a section, you are going to want to use these tools just as well for elements that should be seen at the scale of the section. Then they will come across as objects into the detail. Then there will be things that you will only put in the detail, perhaps rebar or flashing or other types of components. We can use objects from the library, and you might find that you create objects yourself that you are going to use in your detail So if you have created a library of objects, you may want to install that library and have it available for your project. [0:37:47]

Now let’s look at this particular object here, not that it’s a great example, but it does have some little holes indicated. It has a fair amount of detail. Let’s say that we drafted that manually. Let me simulate this by dragging a copy over here and change the settings just to be an end view here. So it’s going to be a little more complicated. So let’s say that we had drawn this. Let me simulate that by doing the “Explode into Current View”. So I have that selected, I am going to explode it. I don’t need the original element here. I just want the linework here. [0:38:48]

So let’s say that I had drawn this manually in the context of some detail. I realized that I wanted to put it into other details. Well, I could either create an object from it or the simplest thing is to go to the Edit menu and Group it. Right now groups are suspended. And let’s ungroup this. So here is what it would be when we started. It would just be a bunch of lines and maybe those are circles in there. I am not sure. But these elements here, I am going to go to the Edit menu and group them. You can see the handles change. If I have groups active rather than suspended, then when I select it, I can easily grab this. [0:39:39]

I can move it around or of course drag a copy. Copy it from one detail drawing to another. So this is simplest way to create new parts is to take anything that you have drawn in one detail, select it, and of course you may have to carefully select it out of the one that it’s in. maybe you dragged a copy of the detail drawing off to the side or copy it over into a worksheet or something like that. And then break things apart. So do a little bit of editing and get them separated. Then group it. So this, if I were to copy this, and now I wanted to pop this into another detail. Let’s go to the foundation detail here. I can paste it in. [0:40:28]

I can move this around and put it into position. So if it was relevant to another detail here, I could do that. Now this is a group, so it doesn’t h ave any ability to be numbered or scheduled or things like that, but it works quite well for just copying and pasting. So one thing you might want to do is collect a bunch of these elements in a convenient location so you can access them. We could also go to the extent of making this a library part. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about whether groups were active. Half the time I work with groups suspended anyway, and I go to select this and it only selects one line out of it. So I have to go and turn groups on. [0:41:21]

Let’s say that we wanted to turn this into a library part. It’s very simple in ArchiCAD in recent versions. Go to the File menu with these selected, Libaries and Objects, Save Selection As…, Object. It might be slightly different in earlier versions of ArchiCAD. It may be “Save Selection As…” and then you choose whether it’s going to be an object or something else like a door or window. But here it directly goes to Object. We’ll call this “Joist Hanger 1”. It will go into the embedded library. That means that it will be available in this project, but I can also go ahead and store it somewhere on the hard drive [0:42:04]

This would be the way ArchiCAD worked before version 13 when embedded libraries became available But let’s create this. I will say “Save” and there are some options here for the pens. These were different colors, these are the pens that are currently in use. There are some other options that I have gone into in the section on creating library parts. Let’s say OK, and now this object exists in the library. It actually is loaded up and ready to go. I can just drop it in. Maybe the last object that I put in was at 90° so I have to put it back to zero. [0:42:43]

Now it’s going to be something that would be like this. Now one advantage of the group here is that one can snap parts there in this library part here. In fact, the only handles are on the boundaries, the bounding box, and the center. So if we wanted this to be as convenient in terms of snapping, what we would want to do is after creating it, select it, go the File menu, Libaries and Objects, Open Object. This brings up the object here. Let’s see, the object 2D symbol here. This gets a little bit beyond what I wanted to demonstrate here. I do go into this in the section on creating custom library parts. What you would want to do is essentially create a version of this that is a 2D symbol that has hotspots added in to make it convenient for snapping. So you can refer to week 21 where I have a section on adding custom hotspots to a library part. [0:44:07]

Okay, so here we have a library part, here we have a group of elements. We might want to be able to use these as well as other frequently used ones in a variety of detail drawings. So where could we place it in the project or in a template to speed up the work? Well, we are in MasterTemplate Sample Project right now here. And let’s go to our project map and look at worksheets. And you will see that there is something called “Detailing Library Parts”. Let’s open that up. Look here. So these are selected elements. You may recognize some of them like the joist hanger. [0:44:57]

These are selected elements from the detailer library. Now this was created by Graphisoft years ago. And we have just maintained it inside of MasterTemplate. These are all just components – I will turn off groups here – again that are using that same library part that we were working with. But if I wanted to pop these in, such as the masonry, I can go eyedrop this block here. Notice that I got it from the lower left corner. And let’s go to that foundation detail here. Let’s say that I wanted to pop it in. it didn’t pop in the same place. Let’s go back to that detailing library parts and eyedrop here. [0:46:00]

I am on the bottom right corner. And let’s go back to the foundation detail and click here. There it went in. I am not sure what went wrong a minute ago, but that’s the idea that you can actually go find these things. They are laid out in a worksheet, and I can go and very quickly go back and forth. It’s a little awkward, because I am in this detail here and the worksheet is up here. But one thing you can do potentially is you can share the screen. If you have a large enough screen you can do that. In order to do that, this is a detail window. And the other one, if I go to the Detailing Library Parts is a worksheet. Right now you will notice that the front most window switched even though the layout book is still there. [0:26:25]

The front most window switched. What I would want to do to simplify this is go to the Options, Work Environment, and go to – it may be More Options here. “When opening a view or a layout from a menu by double clicking in navigator, do I prefer to open in an existing window?” That’s what happened here. I had a detail window open and I went to another 2D worksheet and it opened it in the same window. Or do I prefer to open in a new window? Now it doesn’t affect the floor plan. You can’t have the first and second floor both open in separate windows. In 3D there is only one 3D view. [0:47:41]

Bur for details, worksheets, sections, and elevations, if you have this preference changed, I can go and say work on the foundation detail here. And these are now two separate ones. And I could arrange this so I have whatever shape I want, zoom in on this, and I can go and eyedrop this one and go back here and paste it in. eyedrop something else, what would be useful here? I will eyedrop this and pop that in here. So you basically can go back and forth and pretty quickly build up a detail from components. So these components here are in a worksheet, and it’s set up in MasterTemplate for convenience. [0:49:40]

You can do that in any project or set it up in your template, which makes the most sense. So whatever effort you put into for taking Graphisoft library parts or your own library parts, you can set up in a worksheet and have quick access to them. Now these are all objects, which allows me to eyedrop them. In other words, I can eyedrop an element like this here and go back and paste in that element or click to place it. But if it wasn’t an object, then I would need to copy and paste it. So remember, this is an object here, but this is a group. [0:49:25]

And you can see how with groups turned off it doesn’t work so well. Let’s go and select this here. I am going to copy it. And let’s say I wanted to make it available in here or the reverse. I am going to paste it. So I am going to do Command+C or Ctrl+C and Command+V or Ctrl+V. So I have just taken this group, and I can drag it over wherever I’d like to group it. This is an object that I can eyedrop. This is a set of lines and fills that I can select and copy and then paste. So it’s a slightly different workflow, but the same idea. [0:50:04]

It’s a symbol that we want to bring in to more quickly load up an actual detail drawing. Another possibility is instead of having these in two separate windows is we go and have this window open and right click on the worksheet that you have for these elements and say “Show as Trace Reference”. And now you can see they are in the background here. You can see they are quite extensive. That may or may not work depending on the layout. So what I might do in this case is open up the trace and reference palette and use the option to drag the reference to a convenient location. [0:50:59]

So using this option here now I can have this in one window. Maybe hide that palette if I want. Now I can just go and eyedrop elements here and drop them in. eyedrop an element here, click on other elements here and pop them in. So this is very convenient is to have it as a background. It’s just a little awkward because I have to scroll over to get access to some of these other parts. If it was in a separate window, I could go and have the window zoomed into the area that I want. There are some trade-offs here, but this is a really convenient way to do it. [0:51:48]

I remember when I first saw this demonstrated, there was a gentleman I think from Orcutt Winslow, which is a very prominent ArchiCAD firm in Arizona. They are a fairly large firm. I think they were one hundred people. I am not sure what size they are now. But the gentleman who was describing it – I think it might be Russ Sanders, he described it as “ice fishing”. So if you think about the color here, depending on what color you make your trace and reference. I can make it gray – no, that’s too light. Let’s do a blue here and make it fainter. [0:52:33]

It’s like they are underneath the surface, underneath the ice, and yet you can still see them. You can see this is your real drawing, and you can go and “ice fish” and eyedrop something here and pop it into your model and eyedrop these. By the way, if you are relatively new to ArchiCAD, the eyedropper, of course you can get access from these icons here, but I am using the Option key on the Mac or the Alt key on Windows to bring up the eyedropper right on the fly, and that allows me to pick up those settings. [0:53:06]

This is I think a very powerful way to approach creating detail drawings. There were some comments from the last half hour. Bob George asked, “At “Marker” under the Detail tool, there is a part marker choice. This feature includes a small plus sign. What is the function of that plus sign? There is also a cropping box in that feature that mystifies me.” [0:53:40]

Okay, so we want to talk about the cropping box and take a look at those options in the detail part marker. Ken Andrews says, “It’s under wood”, so I guess you were helping me out with where the 2x lumber was located. Okay, thank you. Tom Downer asks, “Is there a good reason not to delete all fills in a detail, fix and add linework and then just add fills as needed?” [0:54:04]

You know, that could be a very good strategy. You would want to be careful that there are some fills that are used to represent things like earth or concrete. Obviously, this is a fill that is very important. It indicates that we have concrete and this is earth. But there are some other fills that actually are not even in this object. So if we go back to the other Eave detail, all of these fills really are not saying much. They are clear. The only thing that there is this one for gypsum board that might be important, and there’s another one down here. So what we could do is select all fills, so just Command+A to select all fills. [0:55:07]

Then Shift+click to deselect this one. I am in the Fill tool. Command+A selects all fills. And if I Shift+click to deselect, it’s part of a group. Oh here – I want to suspend groups. Now deselect this one, deslect that one if there are some things for concrete and other stuff that we might want to get rid of. I will hit the Delete key. Well, because I had the groups active when I started, it selected all the linework too. Let’s just say Select All Fills, with the exception of this one, that one, and that one, and delete. And now it looks much the same, but we still have the fills here for the gypsum and that. [0:56:05]

So that certainly could be a good starting point for creating a detail. Thank you Tom. It would certainly depend on how many fills are giving you useful graphic information versus just being white things that cover up lines behind them perhaps. So it’s up to you, but that might be a good starting point.

Ken Andrews says, “I always do that with the fills on all my details.” Okay. So there you have it. Question asked by Tom, answered by Ken. It’s a good idea, so go ahead and delete all those fills except for ones that have a specific use. And even then of course you could always put in fills afterward.

Colin says, “They are grouped.” Thank you, yes, I figured that out. [0:57:00]

Bill Ellinger asked, “Eric, how do you change the scale or the size of a detail component you have put in the sheet detail?” Okay. In terms of the scale or size, this right now is just a 2D thing. This is the object. So these objects here, in some cases, there are different variations. So this is a 2×10, this is a 2×14. These are different dimensions here. So some of these you might eyedrop them to get into the right area. Then when you open up the object settings, pick a different one that is similar but is the same idea, just different. Another possibility is, in some cases, we may see the – steel shapes. I think here, there are some general ones; here is the L shape. [0:58:04]

Instead of having a lot of different L shapes, it has a popup that allows you to choose different types of L shapes. So you can pick from the popup. These are carefully loaded from the U.S. Steel Tables. So these are standard steel sizes that in general could be used in buildings without special order or that are easily available. So if you are looking at any of these standard steel shapes in the U.S., you can work with that. In some cases, you would pick a different version of the part. In other cases, you might pick or change the parameter for the size. [0:58:48]

And in yet other ones – let’s see. This one doesn’t have a custom one in there. But there are some where – obviously we had the lumber here and it did have some sizing, but then we also had “custom” where we could manually type in. so depending on what it is, you might find that you can grab something useful but it’s not quite the right size, then you change it to “Custom”. Or if worse comes to worse, you can always take what they have, put it in, and explode it. Then just use it as a quick way to get the shape you need by re-drafting it after exploding it. [0:59:26]

Let’s see, I think Bob had that question. Let’s look at that. The Detail Part Marker choice. So let’s go back to where the detail is called out. I am in a section here, and here is “Detail callout” here. And let’s go to the option. So this is the built-in detail marker. There are a few different things here. So here is one called “Detail Part Marker”. It has some type of a heading, a line, and it looks like a little flag at the end. You said, “This feature includes a small plus sign, what is the function of that plus sign?” I am not sure where the plus sign is that you are referring to. [1:00:23]

We have options for the reference ID and the second text row. We are going to say No, don’t show the name, just add the number. And second text row we will want to show this. For some reason this is no longer thinking that it’s referring to a drawing. So this is a part marker, and this allows you to put in a reference for a detail but it’s not actually pointing to the detail drawing. This is still referencing a drawing, but this detail part marker does not allow you to chose the referenced drawing in here. You can see this is gray. [1:01:11]

So that is different. Let me just put it in and say OK. You can make a callout with some text that you manually put in, but it doesn’t understand that. If I go back to where it was, you will see that as long as this is put in the first place drawing of the viewpoint. Maybe the issue was that something got messed up here. Maybe this was referring to that. Say “Don’t show the name”. And let’s switch it now to the detail part marker here. It’s still referencing that. [1:01:51]

And now it does have that option. So I guess for some reason it didn’t have the reference here. Now by the way, this is an interesting option that I forgot to mention. When you are creating a detail, remember how I drew a rectangle to copy the construction elements into the detail? You can choose to only copy over the construction elements; walls, slabs, beams, etc., and not copy over 2D stuff like text, dimensions, or even other markers. So that way you are starting with a detail drawing that only has the building elements, not the annotation elements. [1:02:40]

So if that is checked off when you create a detial, then it will be simpler. If you don’t have that checked off, it will copy some of the built-in referencing. Where this probably gets to be more important is when you are creating a worksheet which has a similar option. Let’s say you had a kitchen plan, and there were some gridlines passing through it or some text notes that were in at the standard scale for the kitchen, and you are doing an enlarged kitchen drawing, then when you do the worksheet, if you uncheck this then it will include all the 2D annotation that was already in the kitchen. [1:03:23]

You can move it around or delete the things you don’t want, but you’ll be bringing in the stuff that applies. So this says, “Only bring in the construction elements if it’s unchecked.” Then when you are creating a new one or refresh that detail, then if it’s unchecked it will bring things in like section markers or grid markers or text or dimensions, and copy them in there. We now can see this is referencing the drawing on the sheet, however, the arrangement here, if I go – I need to edit this here. Pop that in. let’s rotate this around. [1:04:17]

Now you will notice as I did that it was rotating this rectangle. So what is this rectangle? That is the cropping area for this detail. Remember, I drew a rectangle around here and that is what got copied. So you have to be a little careful with this and probably this isn’t the right type of marker to do in this context, but I just wanted to show this here. Let me undo back. Obviously the changes I did earlier did not affect that, but when I said “Rotate”, I rotated the whole thing. [1:04:57]

Now let’s look at if we did just want to rotate the marker, the marker angle could be rotated here. Let’s say 45, and there we go. So the cropping rectangle didn’t change, but I typed in a value and that value is actually available here. So I could say 55 or something like that, and now we are getting this to be something that would make sense if we were to put it in here. [1:05:28]

Bob says, “The plus appears on the sheet when you place it on the plan sheet.” I am not sure what you are referring to. So when I place it, you are talking about the detail onto a layout sheet? Is that what you mean? Or are you talking about when this source drawing, in this case, the section or it could be the plan, is placed on a layout sheet, is there a plus somewhere showing up. So let me know what you mean by that. [1:06:06]

He says, “Now it’s not there. I’m not talking about the layout sheet.” Send me a screenshot, I can look at that before our next session. So I think we are a little over the hour mark. I think this is a good point to finish up. Let’s do a quick review of what we covered and what remains to be covered. We went quickly over how you call out a detail and place it on a sheet. We went into how you can when you are creating a detail how you can place an unlinked marker and then link it later. You can also place a linked marker and choose what you want to link it to here. The main options would be linking it to just a detail drawing viewpoint that already exists, or a drawing that is already placed onto a sheet. [1:06:58]

If you don’t have a viewpoint, if that drawing was just imported, such as a standard or manufacturer detail, then there may not be a viewpoint so you would just want to point to that particular drawing on the layout. If you do have a viewpoint, which you have created from calling out part of your model, or a new independent detail, then a common thing is to refer to the first drawing of the viewpoint. That allows you to get the marker to say where that drawing appears, but it’s linked to the viewpoint so you can also go and right click and say “Show detail” if you want to tweak it a bit. [1:07:39]

In the same way, you can also have the first drawing of the selected view. The difference between viewpoint and view: viewpoints are in the project map. They are sources for views. Views are in the view map. They are versions of a viewpoint at a particular scale and with other settings. So if you think about possibly a detail drawing that exists that you work on. It might have more than one version, and in one view, it might have one scale and certain layers. In another view, it might have different layers and/or scale. So that is why at least this is available for referencing. [1:08:25]

Essentially, it’s what is going to give you the most useful information in the annotation. What is going to actually automatically link to the right thing so that if you reorganize, it stays connected. Because essentially that is what you want is for it to fill in for you and stay connected if you ever change your layout book in any way. Okay. Those are the basics there. [1:08:54]

We also spent a fair amount of time just looking at building a detail and using some pre-made components. We were in the foundation detail here and I added in some components. These obviously don’t fit into the detail, but just give you the idea. These are things that are components, whether it was something that was drawn on from scratch and turned into an object or some of the ones in the library here. This is for example a component here. This is also in the detailer library. This is an anchor bolt. If we go in here, the anchor bolt does have some options. You can change the length. [1:09:34]

So if I were to make this 18” it’s going to go down deeper, and I say OK, and you can see how it penetrates that space. Let’s undo it, and you can see what happens here. So they are going to speed up your work. This is also a base moulding that has been placed in here as an object, whereas other things may be just lines. And of course, you have your dimensions and other annotation that are going to show up. [1:10:04]

So in our next session, we will be looking at some tools for laying out details neatly. For example, you will notice all of these text items are in line here. You can use a template for laying these out so that details that are stacked on top of each other on a sheet will all have a common place where those text items line up as well as in some cases some of the dimension elements might line up. So when you have a grid of details it may make your sheet look a bit more tidy by doing that. So we will be looking at some of the tools for setting up details for standard sizes and making sure those line up nicely. [1:10:57]

We will also be talking about detail libraries and how you can organize your details for re-use. And in fact, what I would like to ask is if any of you have set up a detail library file, if you have a file with sheets of standard details that you would be willing to share with me just for training purposes, in other words, I am not going to give your details to anybody else, but I would love to get a few samples between now and Thursday that I can reference. And I will pick whichever ones are most useful for training purposes. [1:11:41]

If you want, I can give you credit on the call and thank you. If not, you can just allow me to use it but not use your name, that’s fine too. Just send me a file by Dropbox with a description, or you can email me to check with me before you send anything. I would love to have some samples. Some of you I am sure have done some great work in organizing your details into libraries or having standard reference files with your standard details, and I am sure many of you have projects with nice pages full of details. [1:12:21]

So some of that stuff would be really useful for me to have up onscreen for the next lesson. So please make a note and send it to me as soon as possible, because that will give me more time to prepare for Thursday’s lesson. I see we have a last question typed in from Ken Andrews, “Annotation size, they are constant size no matter what scale.” Okay, so I am assuming Ken that you might be asking about the fact that this text here is at 7 pt text, and that means that it’s going to be a certain size on paper. When I look at that sheet, it’s a certain size in relationship to that paper. [1:13:09]

And when I have something at perhaps a different scale or no scale at all and it’s annotated, how does it match? Obviously, this is bigger text, because it’s not “greeking”. Here I have to zoom in a little bit more to be able to see this. Basically, when you have your drawing at a certain scale, maybe one inch to a foot or one to ten or whatever scale is appropriate, when you put in text, for the most part – this also goes with line weights and in some cases bubbles, the size of callouts and tick marks. These are set in terms of the size that they will appear on paper. [1:13:53]

It’s important that you set your detail drawings early on to the scale that is going to work. It’s not that you can’t change the scale, but if you set it to the scale it’s going to be early on, then when you are putting in the text with your standards – whatever size you like text in general to be for notes like this – then you will be able to adjust these and see them how it’s going to print out on paper. On the other hand, if you do this and change the scale – if you decide you want it to be bigger – then the text will change its relationship. In this case, it probably wouldn’t be much of a problem. [1:14:33]

The drawing would get bigger, because it would be at a larger scale. So instead of one to twelve it would be at one to eight or fifty percent bigger. And the text would stay the same size on paper, which means that the text items would get further apart. That would most likely work pretty well. Obviously if you are doing the reverse, you are taking something that is set at three inches to a foot which is one to four and taking it down to one and a half inches to a foot which is one to eight, then the drawing is going to get smaller and your text is going to get more crowded. [1:15:09]

So then you may have more adjustments. But the bottom line is whatever we are seeing on this paper, we want to be able to see here. If we have this set at the proper scale, rather than – let me make it much bigger here. I made it much bigger, and now you can see the text looks too small. At least I would guess the text was too small. Yet, it is going to print out nicely. It’s just that the drawing becomes huge on the sheet. Obviously bigger than it needs to be. [1:15:45]

So you will want to set the scale to the right size that is going to make sense, and you can see how the text annotation lays out. And the original size here, if I put this back, this is the size that it was and you can see how these things are lined up nicely. So we will finish up for now. Please add any follow up comments or questions on the page down below this video. Don’t forget, if you have some nice detail drawing libraries or files with nice sheets of detail drawings, I would love to get them for demonstration purposes. I will not distribute them, I promise, so please send them to me. This has been Eric Bobrow, thanks for watching.

[END OF AUDIO 1:16:39]