Best Practices Course – Week 6 Part 2 – © copyright 2012 by Eric Bobrow

BEST PRACTICES COURSE – WEEK 6 – Save Your Favorite Settings

PART 2 – Managing and Migrating Favorites

In this video lesson, we’re going to look at the Favorites Palette, and how you can migrate Favorites from one version of ArchiCAD to a later one.  We’re looking at the sample project in ArchiCAD 12, and I’ve set up some favorites here for Wall Types. You can see the ones that say “MT” for “MasterTemplate” wall types.  There’s a few different windows and doors, and a few objects just for purposes of study.  We have a cabinet, a bathtub, a plant, and a refrigerator.  Now, if I double click on let’s say refrigerator, you’ll see that the element here is “Refrigerator Side by Side 12.”  So it’s a version 12 refrigerator of course, and same thing with the plant, when I double click on that, its “Plant 02 12”.  [0:53]

So let’s say that we want to take these favorites into a project as we move forward into ArchiCAD 14. I’ll go ahead and use the pop up on the Favorites Palette to save these favorites, and when I save them, I can place this file wherever I like. I’ll go ahead and place it here, and give it the same name as I had earlier done, which is “AC12 Favorites”. I’ll save it and overwrite the earlier version of the file.  [1:28]

Now I’ll switch over to ArchiCAD 14, and in this 14 project, we have a blank project, untitled, that was based on the U.S. standard ArchiCAD template. What that means is it’s of course using the ArchiCAD 14 library. It also has different layer naming than the MasterTemplate one. So we’ll see what complications that causes.  [1:53]

In the Favorites Palette, you can see some wall types, but none of them that’s a MT, and we’ll see some objects such as cabinets, but we don’t have the plant or refrigerator. And so these are the original favorites. I’m going to go ahead and Load Favorites. And when I choose Load Favorites, I’ll pick the “AC12 Favorites” that I just saved and open them.  And it asks me, “Do I Want To Replace Or Merge To The Current Favororites List? If I say “Merge”, it will add them in, and so I will have both the old and new, or the previous set of favorites and the new ones that I’m bringing in. If I say “Replace”, I will only have the new ones.  [2:32]

That’s often what you want to do for clean results, but for training, I will use the “Merge” option.  Click on “Merge” and you can see instantly that the list has gotten much longer. I’ve got a combination of the original wall types and the MasterTemplate, or MT, wall types. We’ve got some windows and doors here, but notice that some of them are gray, such as the casement window or the entry door. That means that these parts do not exist in the currently loaded library, so they are inactive.  [3:04]

If I double click on them, on one of these ones that’s gray, it will not actually switch, to be ready to place in the favorites because it doesn’t have a door by that name.  So in order to work with older favorites, I’ll need to go to the File menu, and Libraries and Objects, Library Manager, and load in the earlier library.  So in addition to ArchiCAD Library 14, I’m going to go click on “Add”, go find “ArchiCAD Library 12”. [3:32]

Now in versions of ArchiCAD before 14, if I did something similar, it would allow me to load the other library, and then at the end of the loading process, it would say, “Oh, you’ve got a bunch of duplicates”, which generally wouldn’t cause too much problems, but isn’t a clean process. And so it’s not advisable in general, if you can avoid it. With version 14, Graphisoft made a big improvement, so when I say, “Choose”, it actually immediately notices that there’s a problem, that they’re loading two full ArchiCAD libraries at the same time. And it offers to switch to use the Migration Library.  [4:12]

So I’m going to click on that, and it then loads in the “12 Migration Library” and “13 Migration Library”. So now all of the parts that are in a project from 12 or favorites from 12 will be supported without having duplicates.  So I’ll say “OK”.  You can do this manually in other versions of ArchiCAD by loading in Subset or Migration Libraries yourself, but in 14 it actually does it for you, at least it offers that option to do it for you. [4:41]

Now, as soon as it’s finished, you’ll notice that, for example, casement window and entry door, these things are now available. It now has loaded those parts. Let me go ahead and, for example, pick up one of the objects. So I’ll go switch to the Object tool, and say that I’d like to put in a bathtub.  Actually, let me put in a refrigerator first.  So I’ll put in a refrigerator, and I’ll click.  And you can see that it has put in a refrigerator. And when I select it, and we open up the settings, we’ll see that it is a “Refrigerator Side by Side 12” here.  [5:28]

Now, if I wanted to switch this to use version 14 part, then what I would do is I would go manually find the part down in the “ArchiCAD 14” library here, and switch it. Now you may recall from a lesson from before, that there’s a quick way to do that. I can go to “Find Library Parts”.  Use this little popup at the top where it normally says “Folder View”, and type in “Refrige” or any part of the word, and it hit the Enter, or click the “Find” button, and you see that it’s showing me that there’s a few parts that have this in their name.  [6:07]

We’re currently working with “Refrigerator Side by Side 12” and I’m going to switch it to 14. But instead of just clicking directly, I am going to hold down the “Command” and “Option” keys on the Mac, or “CTRL” and “ALT” on Windows and that will give me the Syringe tool.  So when I have the syringe tool active by holding down those keys, I click the mouse while still holding down those keys, and it has switched to the “Side by Side 14”, and I say “OK “. And now you can see the part is actually using the 14 one. [6:43]

Now you may have noticed a slight change here.  If I undo this, you’ll see that the “F” actually changed it’s orientation, I’ll redo it. And you’ll see a couple of little changes. The proportions of the door changed a little bit, and the F flipped.  So if that is something that matters to me, I may want to look and correct that change, or I can just leave it alone and say, “Alright, that’s actually just fine with me.”  Now, I’ll select that part, and I’ll click once on refrigerator, and tell it that I’d like to update or redefine the refrigerator with the last selection.  [7:23]

That will actually update the favorites, and now when I double click on the refrigerator, it will be using the current version 14 one.  Now let me look at bathtub.  I’ll double click a bathtub here, and we’ll see that it actually says that the bathtub is on a missing layer. Sometimes you’ll see this layer pop up empty, I’ve seen that, or it may have the word “Missing”. So if I go ahead and try to put in the bathtub, it tells me that “The former layer of this tool has been deleted, please choose another layer.”  [7:56]

So I will say “Choose a Layer”. It allows me to go ahead and pick a layer here, just like normal, and I’ll pick say something like “A Floor Fixtures”, here, it could be whatever layer I want, and say “OK”. And we’ll see that now I’ve got this tub in there.  And that tub again is a Bathtub 12, so if I want to have the favorite actually refer, from here on out, to the version 14 one, I’ll need to switch this particular part that I’ve already placed from “Bathtub 12”.  Find Library Parts, type in “tub”, hit Enter, and I can then switch it to “Bathtub 14” by holding down the Syringe tool, Command+Option or CTRL+ALT, hold them down, click, and it switches, and say “OK”. [8:44]

Now if you’ll notice if your eye was really fast, that there was a different hotspot. There’s a red hotspot or magenta hotspot here.  If I undo, you’ll see that this is the “Bathtub 12”, if I redo, this is “Bathtub 14”. So it actually is a different part, because I can now move the drain. So the reason why Graphisoft actually changed the name of the part, or changed it so that it doesn’t find it automatically, is because this part is actually a little different, it’s smarter. [9:18]

Now I’ll contrast that, and we can of course go and select this, select “Bathtub”, and say that I’d like to “Redefine It With The Last Selection”. And it will now have, every time I use this favorite, it will put in a bathtub of this type, of version 14. Now when I double click on Plant, this one was from ArchiCAD 12, but it actually automatically switched the to “Plant 02 14”, because that plant object did not actually change. And I can simply click and place it. So it’s identical to the plant object that was in version 12, it just has a slightly different name. [9:56]

So let’s go to the wall tool and see a different type of update that we need to take care of. If I go to, let’s say a standard wall type, like this exterior 2×4 with stucco, and draw, you can see that it’s got some composite information here. And I can do that with a variety of these that might work. Let’s take this one here, and you can see this composite works fine, so these MasterTemplate favorites came through just fine. However, I’ll point out this one, and there are more than one like this. [10:38]

When I double click on it, and I go and draw it, it looks quite different.  It is not a composite. If I zoom in on it, you can see that it’s just a mono element, it has just a simple fill in there, even though the original one is an interior wall with gypsum board on both sides. The reason for that is that this composite definition does not exist in this file. In other words, the wall type wouldn’t show up in the Options menu, Element Attributes, Composites.  It just doesn’t exist in this file. [11:14]

So in fact, if I go to the wall settings, you’ll see that it says Cut Fill: “Missing”.  So let me go and fix that. I’ll switch back to ArchiCAD 12, and I’ll activate, in the Wall tool, the same favorite that I just had. So I’ll double click on this, and let me zoom in a little bit so we can see it. And I’ll draw that same wall type.  And you can see that it’s just a simple cavity wall with gypsum board on both sides.  Now I’m going to select this and copy it. [11:54]

And I’ll go back to ArchiCAD 14. And watch carefully. I am going to paste this in, and I’ll just paste it in to the current view, and move it over to the side a little bit, and click outside to confirm. So the wall now came in just fine with the composite definition, and if I shift my view at all, so that ArchiCAD refreshes its screen, I just zoomed in a tiny bit, you’ll notice that the wall right next to it which was pochéd actually now has the correct definition. [12:32]

So this wall, if I, the same one earlier it said it had a missing cut fill, now it’s brought in a MT wall, 2×8.  So basically, by pasting in a sample of that wall piece, the composite was added into the definitions. We would again see that under Options, Element Attributes, Composites.  [12:55]

So, whether you’re going to need to update favorites in this area, for walls or floors or roofs that have composites, is you’ll need to place one example of each one of these onto the plan, see if any of them have problems, like I did earlier, this particular one. And any that are not showing up properly, you’ll need to bring their definitions in from the earlier file. And a simple way to do that is to select one or more elements from the other file, bring them in here and paste them down, and when they get pasted, the definitions will come across with them.  You can also use Attribute Manager to bring in these definitions if you like, but copying and pasting works beautifully in this case.  [13:48]

So, in summary, to update all of the favorites, you can go ahead and, well initially, you’re going to save the favorites from the earlier file, later in ArchiCAD 14 or the version that you’re working in, you’re going to Load Favorites, and either Merge or Replace.  If you just do a replace, then you’ll have only the favorites that are being migrated, and it may be a little simpler to see what you have to clean up or check on.  [14:19]

After you’ve done that, the simplest thing to do is to place an example of one of each of those favorites down and look at it. If its a wall, or a floor, or a roof composite, if it came through just fine, if it looks like what you expect, you probably don’t have to do anything much.  If it comes in with a blank fill, then you’ll need to go and copy and paste in the sample piece in order to bring in that definition. [14:50]

For the objects, whether its doors, windows, or freestanding objects like cabinets or plants, you’ll need to place them down one at a time and then switch them manually to the new library part, perhaps using the Parameter Transfer method in the Library Part window, and then update the option, the one this says “Redefine With Last Selection” is often used.  Of course, before you are able to use those old library parts, even to place them on the plan, you’ll need to load the old library along with the new one, so that you have access to those parts. Otherwise they’ll be gray. [15:31]

And then as a final step, you can go, having converted everything, you can go to Libraries and Objects, Library Manager, and remove the additional library.  So for example, the 12 Migration Library and the 13 Migration Library, you might highlight these, and click the “X” to remove option in the Library Manager. And basically then get back down to only the current library. You’ll know you were in pretty good shape if none of the favorites that you’ve got listed turn gray, because if they do turn gray, that means that they’re using the older library and aren’t loaded in the current one.  [16:11]

Finally, after you’ve got all of the favorites updated, you can continue to work on this project, build your building, but if you want to make a sort of a reference copy of the favorites, you can again go to “Save Favorites”, create another .prf file, and this one now will be using only the latest version of the library, so it will be quite portable for any project file that you’re working in in the new version. [16:43]

So that is the way the you’re going to migrate your favorites from an earlier version of ArchiCAD to a later version, and update all of the library parts and bring in copies of attributes such as composite walls that would support the favorites or actually be referenced by the favorites.  So, I hope this was clear and look forward to getting your comments, please leave them down below in the area below this video, and we’ll be proceeding on to the next section of the course which will be on the interactive legends.  So, thanks for watching.