Best Practices Course – Week 8 Part 2 – © copyright 2012 by Eric Bobrow

BEST PRACTICES COURSE – WEEK 8 – ArchiCAD’s Structure: The Navigator, Part 1

PART 2 – Intro to View Settings

Hello, this is Eric Bobrow, and in this lesson we’re going to be looking at layers and views.  We’re using the View Map because it gives greater control than the Project Map.  That was in the previous lesson.  But what defines a view?  Here we are looking at this project.  And we’ve got certain layers turned on and certain context.  And let’s say that this is a view that we’d like to return to, possibly to to put it onto a layout sheet as a drawing, or because this is a good mode for working in for doing some design work. [:38]

I simply will go and click on this button here in the View Map that says Save Current View.  This button is available whenever we have the View Map active, which is this one, rather then the Project Map.  You’ll see how the buttons here look different when I’m in the View Map. We have this button available called Save Current View.  Click on that.  It then immediately shows the view settings and the current state of the world.  In other words, what layers are turned on, scale, etcetera.  And we’re going to be looking at the definition of this and explaining it in some detail. [1:16]

So right now, I’ll just say that it brings this up, and you can simply say Create, and there’s a new view.  You can see that it’s been highlighted on the right side.  It went, in this case, since I have highlighted the folder, it went to the bottom of the folder.  Now, in other versions of ArchiCAD, for example ArchiCAD 10, 11, 12, I think it would go near the top of the list, and shove all of the other ones down.  I think at some point in ArchiCAD 13 or 14, Graphisoft changed it so  it shows up at the bottom of the list.  Now with this view highlighted, we can see some of it’s properties, so a little short summary of some of the properties.  And if we want to look at them in detail, we can click on the Settings button and see the same information again.  [2:03]

Perhaps we can change the layer combination if we want. Say, really I wanted to show the electrical information here with the furniture. And perhaps I can change the name from the Project Map name, which would be the name of the viewpoint. In this case, the story, which is called the first floor here in the U.S.  For the main entry floor. Or I can change this to a custom name.  And for example call it “My New View”.  So I’m giving it a special name.  I’ll say OK, and we’ll see that some of the information has changed.  We’re seeing different elements drawn, and the name has changed here in the View Map, and it’s also changed down below.  [2:50]

So in fact, I can change the name here and say this was electrical I believe. And so I can change this.  And as I change it here, it will change up above.  Now, the number one here is inherited from the viewpoint. In this case the stories are indicated.  If I go back here, you see each story, and the current story has a number. And in the international version, the main floor or ground floor would be zero. Here in the U.S. it’s one.  But regardless, it does have a number, and that number is going to be inherited here.  But if I want, I can delete it and say, “No I don’t really want a number.”  And you can see the name just becomes displayed without a number. [3:39]

So that’s really optional. It is something that can be used for alphabetic sorting in certain cases, this ID number.  Particularly for details and worksheets where we’re going to create perhaps quite a few.  Now, once I’ve got one particular drawing or view created, if I have any view selected, and I say I’d like to create a new one here, and say Create, it will put this right above or below.  In version 14, it puts it right below the view that was previously highlighted.  Whereas I think in earlier versions of ArchiCAD, it may have put it above the view that was highlighted.  In any event, it will show up there, and we can edit it as I showed you just a minute ago. [4:32]

Now there is a button here that allows us to delete views.  When I tell it to delete views, it does give us a warning saying that this is not undoable.  So be careful.  Now deleting a view does not delete the elements in that view, it doesn’t delete the actual walls or objects, but it does delete the definition that says, “Show This Viewpoint”.  Perhaps the story or the section or whatever with certain layers and certain context.  So there’s a little bit of work that goes into defining a view, and you’re going to lose that if you delete it.  And of course in this case, not a problem.  I just delete it, and I’ll delete the other one that I created as well.  [5:13]

Now there’s an extra warning here that says “This View Is Part Of A Clone”.  It’s clone will also be deleted.  I’ll be explaining Clone Folders in a separate lesson of the course, and I’ll explain what this means.  But basically, there are folders that you see here that have a normal simple icon, and it’s not a problem.  We can just go ahead and delete the view like this.  But views that are defined like this here, that have a special symbol, and there’s some variations like that, these are called Clone Folders.  And if you delete any view within one of them, it will actually delete the folder, the definition for that view style.  So be careful if you get that warning, if you’re inside a Clone, because you’ll actually delete multiple views all at the same time.  Not necessarily a good idea. [6:09]

Now, let’s take a look at the View settings.  So I’ll double click on the Interior Design here, and this will return the view to the settings that are part of this.  And you can see here is our brief summary.  And let’s look at the settings of a View.  Now that view has an ID.  In this case, it has a blank ID.  In other words, I’m not using the Project Map information, and I’m not going custom here. I had it as blank, or we can just do none. And the view has a name, which could be inherited from the Project Map, or it could be custom.  And it does have a source which is the viewpoint in the Project Map.  You’ll notice that this is not editable.  Once you create a view, it’s linked to a particular viewpoint. And you can’t actually move it to refer to a different viewpoint.  That’s one limitation when you create a view, it’s always linked to a particular viewpoint in the Project Map. [7:10]

Now in general, there are a number of things that are the primary focus points of a view.  For example, the layer combination.  And we’ll be looking at layer combinations in detail in this section, but they determine what is shown. So layers have to do with what you see.  Scale has to do with how big or small the elements are in relationship to being printed on paper, and in relationship to certain elements defined by paper size, such as certain markers or pen weights that are defined by how big they are going to be on paper.  The structure display, which was added into I think ArchiCAD 11 or 12, is an option to show only part of the walls, or part of the structural elements, rather than the entire element.  The pen set has to do with the colors and weights of the pens that elements are being drawn with, and while we may end up with just one or two or three pen sets that we use regularly, there can be as many different variations as you might find useful for presentation or for working with imported drawings for example. [8:26]

Model View Options, these have to do with how things are seen.  In other words, if something is seem, like a wall, is it seen with a lot of detail, such as all of the component skins or parts, the sheathing, or cladding as well as the structure with hatching and fill patterns, or is it shown in just a simple shaded or poched view.  Or just an empty view with two parallel lines for example.  So Model View Options affect that, as well as things like how the doors and windows are shown.  For example on a ceiling plan, we’re going to have the doors and windows show quite differently than they do on a floor plan.  So these are the most primary settings that are part of a view.  And we’ll be spending a lot of time in this lessons on layers. And we’ll be looking at the other ones in some other lessons later in the course. [9:21]

Some secondary settings that aren’t changed as frequently would have to do with floor plan Cut Plane settings.  And this has to do with what height above the current story.  Here is 4 feet, that is typical in the U.S., but 1 meter, or 1.2 meters might be something for international use.  And this has to do with where we see the doors and windows.  And you can vary this, for example, for a clear story plan or for different split level conditions. Dimensions, there again may be a number of different variations that you use in a project.  And this has to do with the level of accuracy and style that the dimension annotation is shown on a planned drawing.  Or on any drawing.  [10:09]

The zooming, we’re going to take a look at in a follow-up lesson, but basically each view can record a particular location in the viewpoint. A particular zoom, or perhaps ignore the zoom.  And you can create views not only for plans and sections, but you can also, and in other draftable views, but you can also create views that record 3D positions and orientations and styles.  And we’ll be looking at that later on in the course, but this can record particular information about the 3D view.  So that’s a very brief introduction to the view settings. We’re going to now start looking at layers and layer combinations, because they are arguably the most important part of the view settings, since they control what we see, as opposed to how we see it.

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