ArchiCAD Training (Best Practices Lesson 9-3)

Clone folders are a very powerful, but often misunderstood or ignored feature of the View Map. This lesson teaches how and why they are used, showing their flexibility as well as their limitations.

A clone folder is a special type of folder in the View Map that maintains Views for a chosen folder in the Project Map – most commonly Stories, Elevations, Sections, Details, Worksheets and Interior Elevations. Each view in the clone folder inherits the View Settings of the folder itself, thus maintaining a consistent “style”. For example, all Sections in the Sections clone folder will have the same layer combination, scale, model view options, etc. When a new section is drawn in the project, the clone folder will automatically add another View corresponding to the new source marker.

Clone folders are a time-saver for projects of any size, particularly for sections, details, and interior elevations, since there are many of these viewpoints created during the course of the project. The clone folders will “faithfully” create appropriate views for each of them without any prompting. Clone folders of Stories are particularly powerful for tall buildings, creating different styles of plan views (e.g. floor plan, ceiling plan, structural plan, etc.) for each story.

Each View in a Clone can have unique settings that override the general settings of the folder. This happens commonly in Details, which are set to varying scales, as well as the various plan clones, which will have different names than the stories.

CAUTION: Do not delete a View within a clone folder, as it will delete the entire folder! Instead, either switch to the Project Map and delete the unnecessary viewpoint (good for clearing out temporary sections or discarded detail windows), or simply rename the View to indicate it is not going to be used (for example, a Reflected Ceiling Plan view for the Foundation or Roof story).

I have written an article on Clone Folders which is a useful supplement to this video lesson. You may also download the article as a PDF from this link:

ArchiCAD’s Powerful Clone Folders (article)

Please post your comments and questions below.

Eric

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Best Practices Course – Week 9 Part 3 – © copyright 2012 by Eric Bobrow BEST PRACTICES COURSE – WEEK 9 – ArchiCAD’s Structure: The Navigator, Part 1 (Continued) PART 3 – Clone Folders

ArchiCAD Training: Clone Folders

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JonathanPelezzare
12 years ago

where can I learn about setting up user preference schemes and profiles?
Is there somewhere to go to find out what each bar for tool icons in the work environment is called? I am having trouble adding icons where I want them.
For instance, I have the main bar under the file, edit, view….drop down menus.
I would like to load this with shortcut icons for features that I use the most and am having trouble doing this.
- Eric Bobrow
  12 years ago
  
  Jonathan –
  
  For more info on the Work Environment controls, please refer to the ArchiCAD Reference Manual, available under the Help menu. You can also in many cases right-click inside a dialog box and choose the Help command, which will bring up the ArchiCAD Help system with information about the dialog box you are in.
  
  Unless you’ve modified your preferences already, the main Toolbar is called Standard, and you can add icons / commands to it if you wish. A better approach might be to create your own toolbar and then slip it in to the left of the Standard one (you can grab these toolbars and reposition them any time).
  
  The place where these toolbars are controlled is in the Options menu > Work Environment > Command Layout Schemes > Toolbars. In the far right area, you can choose which toolbar you want to build or edit; in the center area you can choose commands from either the Current menu structure, or use the popup to select “All commands by theme” or “All commands in alphabetical order”.
  
  Once you have created a new toolbar, you may turn it on or hide it using the Window > Palettes submenu. You may move the toolbars around using the small strip at the left side (or on the top, in some cases where a toolbar has been stretched to a different shape).
  
  Eric