Best Practices Course – Week 9 Part 1 – © copyright 2012 by Eric Bobrow

BEST PRACTICES COURSE – WEEK 9 – ArchiCAD’s Structure: The Navigator, Part 1 (Continued)

PART 1 – Layer Management

It’s important to place elements on the proper layer.  What sort of things can happen when you do that incorrectly?  What do you have to watch out for? Well, for example, on the floor plan, for construction document, we typically don’t have furniture.  So let me just show you what happens if I manually move it to the wrong thing.  I’ll go to the interior design, where I can maybe, let’s say, take this bed, and maybe this chair just arbitrarily, and let me, with them selected, they’re both objects, so I can change them both at the same time, let me change them to fixtures.  So if I go back to the first floor plan, we’ll see that the first floor plan looks good, except that it has these elements that should not show up on a construction document floor plan, because their movable furniture, they’re not part of the actual construction of the building. [:59]

So, basically, to make sure the elements are on the correct the layer, you can go through each one of your views on the view map, and say, when I go to the ceiling plan, what am I seeing?  Am I seeing the right information?  So there are two general types of errors that you’ll watch out for as you work with this.  One is, things that are missing, and the other is things that are showing incorrectly.  So as I said, if I go to the first floor plan here and I say, “Oh, I don’t want to see such and such on there.”  So there are two main questions.  Do I have a layer combination with the incorrect setting, in other words, is the floor plan showing furniture in general?  Whoops, I better go back to the layer dialog box and change the definition, so that the floor plan layer combination or whatever layer combination I’m working in is correct.  [2:11]

On the other hand, if it’s just scattered elements, not all of them, then those elements are probably placed incorrectly.  Now, how does an element get placed on the wrong layer?  Well, basically, if I’m in the object tool, and I have the object tool set to some layer, in this case it says ArchiCAD layer, which is not one that I want to use for construction documents, because ArchiCAD layer always visible. And we generally want to pick what type of element things belong to, what category.  So for example, if I’m going to be putting in a cabinet, I’ll have it set here, and I’ll be picking a cabinet object.  But if I decide to put in some piece of furniture, and I don’t remember to switch the layer before I place it, then it’s going to be on the wrong layer. [3:01]

Now, it’s not a problem, you can always switch elements to the correct layer afterward.  So for example, if I select this, I can switch it to another layer.  One thing that can make that a little bit awkward is that the layer that it should be on is not visible.  So for example, the floor plan layer combinations, furniture is not turned on, and therefore it’s hidden, and in the case of this particular template file, or sample file, the layer is locked.  And so we’re not even seeing the layer for furniture, which would normally be right after A Floor Fixtures.  [3:52]

So, what can we do?  Well, I would suggest that you take these elements temporarily and put them maybe on the ArchiCAD layer, where they’re going to be visible for any layer combination.  And then we switch to a layer combination such as the furniture plan, where they should be seen.  And you can see that globally, things have switched around.  But those two elements are still selected.  And now, with them still selected, I can switch and put them on the furniture layer.  You don’t see a visible change, but they’re now on the furniture layer.  And when I go back to the floor plan, they disappear, because they’re on a layer that is hidden.  So basically, in order to switch one layer to another, you need to select it and change the settings for the layer. [4:52]

If that layer is hidden, or locked, or both, then you may need to manually unlock that layer, or switch to a layer combination where that layer is available.  And if the element is on a layer that is turned on one layer combination but turned off in the one that it needs to be, then as an intermediate, you can switch it temporarily to the ArchiCAD layer, then switch layer combinations, and then switch the layer. [5:29]

Now, one other thing about switching element layers.  Let me select elements of different types.  For example, I’m going to go and select this wall, just to be arbitrary, and this text element, and this object that’s a refrigerator, and I think that’s probably good enough for now.  So these are three different types of elements.  You’ll notice that in the info box, it says all selected is three.  So there are three elements.  But that it’s showing the last element that was selected which was the refrigerator.  And it’s a layer is on the mechanical equipment. [6:23]

Now if I switch to the layer from mechanical to something else, and let’s say that I have a layer here for hiding elements.  So this is a special layer that is in MasterTemplate specifically for taking elements out of the current view.  When I do that, you’ll see only that one element disappears.  Now it says that there are only two elements selected, and the next one is text.  And so we’ve got text and we’ve got a wall, but text is the one that is showing.  The info box can only show information about one type of element at a time.  It will show, in this case, the “A” for text, and it can’t show both the “A” and the wall tool at the same time. [7:08]

So, if I change the layer here, it will only affect the elements that relate to that particular tool.  And in fact, if I go into the tool, if I click on the tool like this, you’ll see that there’s only one text element selected.  And if I were to change the setting, it would only affect that one element, not the wall as well.  Now, there is a powerful option that allows me to affect multiple elements of different types all at the same time.  And that is this little button here.  So we have the layer name here, and then we have next to it, a little shortcut that, if you hover your mouse over it, it will say “Edit Selection Set Dialogue”.

If I click on that, it brings up a command.  It tells me how many things I have of different element types, and allows me to switch multiple element types to a new layer.  For example, I’ll put them into the “hide” layer here.  I also potentially could change them all to a certain color.  I could make them all red, or something else.  And there’s some other little suboptions here.  But now, I’ll just say OK.  And that will affect both of them. Now I’m going to undo this, and just repeat, I’ll undo one more step, and we have all of these.  And I’m going to actually now select a bunch of more things and show you how this works. [8:36]

So, if I select a bunch of things like this, and I go here, and hide it, we’ll see only some of them disappear.  In fact, just the section marker that was there.  I’ll undo.  But if instead I click on this “Edit Selection Set”, you’ll see that there’s a bunch of different things, and I can put it onto the Hide layer in this case, and say OK.  And you see they all disappeared.  Now nothing is selected.  I’ll undo that.  So this “Edit Selection Set” is a very powerful option, is available from this little popup.  It’s also available under Edit, Element Settings, Edit Selection Set.  And it does have a keyboard shortcut, Shift+Command or CTRL key.  So this up arrow means Shift, the Shift key that you use for capital letters, and we have CTRL or Command, depending whether you’re on Mac or Windows, and the letter T.  Hold these two modifiers, Shift+Command, or or Shift+CTRL down, and the letter “T”, and you’ll get the same command. [9:46]

The placement of elements on the correct layer is a very important consideration to make sure that your drawings show what you need.  Obviously, if you have certain things showing on a drawing that is inappropriate, it can make the drawing look cluttered or hard to read.  And on the other hand, if you have elements that are missing, then you can have some more serious issues.  The placement of elements onto a specific layer, this is something that is well worth taking great care about.  And it can be simplified by using favorites.  So, in another lesson of the course, we took a look at favorites, and when you double click on a favorite in the Favorites palette, you not only quickly pick up the settings to put in, let’s say a bathtub or a specific wall type, but it also will have the correct layer that you saved with that favorite.  [10:53]

You can also use the Interactive Legends and eyedrop elements of certain types.  So in both of these cases, by making sure that those settings in the favorites, or in the Interactive Legends are correct, you’re going to avoid problems with placing elements on inappropriate layers.  Sometimes, of course, you’re going to put elements into your project that do not exist in your favorites or your Interactive Legends.  And one nice shortcut is to activate a relevant element.  In other words, if you’re putting in furniture, you pick up a furniture favorite, and then switch to a different furniture element.  Or if you’re putting in a plumbing fixture, or electrical, or landscape, again, pick up the settings of a similar element, and then switch, in the Object tool to the correct one.  And the layer, if you don’t modify it, will then be correct. So that can save you some time and effort, and make sure that you actually have it on the appropriate layer.