July – December 2012

These are the archived coaching sessions from July through December 2012.

Morph tool; ssue with the transparency setting in elevations; 3d documents; Ideas for creating 3d planting e.g. hedges; Issue with scaling when bringing in a DWG. into ArchiCAD

In the layout book menu, is there a way of putting master sheets in a sub-set folder?; Eric shows how to get back to a standard palette set up; Using the organizer to bring in a layout or view from another project into your current project; The best practice for group, ungroup, autogroup and suspend groups; Magic wand settings; Can you delete layouts that are part of a clone folder without losing the rest of the clone layouts; How to find and replace text in a drawing; How do you create a sketch rendered view that will automatically appear in a layout set; What is the best way to demolish a roof plane or slope and proceed with alteration by adding the roof of an extension or addition; How do you change a penset in a layout; Can a 3d document be a hidden line drawing rather than a shaded drawing; Demonstration of the editing plane that appears in the 3d window of ArchiCAD 15 and 16

Follow up to the question on the 19th July coaching call about 3d documents being hidden line rather than shaded; The pivot line on a roof; Composite fills; Issue with solid element operations on roofs; Problem with intersecting composite walls; What is the difference between a metal door and a commercial metal door; Setting up a workflow when the given dimensions are the egress width and the drawn element is the door width

Rendering tip (Creating a rendering that has the appearance of a pencil drawing); Problem with ArchiCAD doing unpredictable things; Navigator disappearing; Door schedules; Is there a way to link ArchiCAD and its Artlantis file; How to convert a 3ds model to gdl with its materials; Drawing an Hexagonal floor plan and roof

Question on the stair tool; Question on the stair tool; How to make a railing guard on a ramp slope; How to resize an image to a known dimension; How to set up background images of a proposed site that you want to place the model in; Issue with lines showing where complex profile intersects other pieces. An example being a moulded complex profile bottom of a wall, with an ordainary wall put on top of it; How to change the colour/color of windows from the default colour/colors; Caller wasn’t happy with the ArchiCAD library for trees and shrubs and wanted some advice on what options he had; Caller wasn’t happy with the ArchiCAD library for trees and shrubs and wanted some advice on what options he had; The two options you have when deleting section markers that you have used as a temporary drawing aid and you no longer have a use for

Problems with lighting in 3d views; Fills dramatically increasing the file size of pdf’s and exported dwg’s; Questioner asks how to create a pdf publisher set, and wants to know is the set static, or will it change as the model changes; What is the difference between real folder structure and flat file structure; How do you transfer composite walls in a file or an old template to a new template; Wall end tool (found under more in the tool box); Eric explains what multi-plane roofs can and can’t do; How to create a recess in a wall with an arched top, without letting it cut itself right through the wall

How to change the colour/color of a roof; How to make the roof show a tile profile (in this case a spanish tile profile); How to use steelwork in drawings – domestic and comercial; Very quick demonstration of the ridge tile object; Plan view in layouts is revolved from the original plan view. Is there a way for text and dimensions to re-orient?; Where should complex profiles begin and end; Producing 2d shadow studies on elevations of adjoining buildings

Setting up a camera and doing a simple rendering; Find and Select; Eyedropper tool; Masking the background around text names; Masking the background of zones; How to save/export a 3ds file with textures and at the correct scale; Roof object showing dashed line on floor plan view. And the caller would like to know if he can show it as a solid line for ceiling plan. Basically, he wants to know can he show two different types of roof linetypes in plan views; How to create your own personalized architectural window that has tracery. This example just has shaped mullions, but the process for creating tracery is basically the same; How to place a detail that comes from a manufacturer (dwg. format) onto a layout; How to place a detail that comes from a manufacturer (dwg. format) onto a layout

ArchiCAD updates; Internet marketing course; The specifics of exporting to dwg. format; How to draw a barrel vault roof that is continuous and not segmented; How to draw a barrel vault roof that is continuous and not segmented; How to draw a barrel vault roof that is continuous and not segmented; Caller having trouble editing a custom drawing title; Discussion about creating your building with very intricate construction details (built into the model itself) in 3d using complex profiles. These details would then show up everywhere accross the project. (MUST SEE)

Historic building has chimneys built (merging) into the wall, and the architect wants control on what lines show on the plan; Showing the walls of a building in different colours/colors on the plan; for highlighting the buildings different time periods; How to switch off (pop up) error messages (e.g. a boundary line crossing itself); Problem with the information from “Zones” not showing up in the schedule; ArchiCAD migration library; Creating a view; Un-wanted red lines showing on screen (trimming body); How to save and insert a custom made panel in a curtain wall; What is the difference between saving a custom part as a new object vs save selection as; Problem with renovation override styles in the renovation tool

Can the renovation filter be used when generating 3d?; Is it possible to show the text and information from zones in section views? And also is it possible when using the massing tool to show something representing color in the section view?; How to show the first floor plan on the site plan; How to download a map from Google Maps and put it into a drawing as a location map. And how to open multiple layouts and flip inbetween them; How to download a map from Google Maps and put it into a drawing as a location map. And how to open multiple layouts and flip inbetween them; Eric discusses layers and stories, and talks about best practice issues; Eric discusses layers and stories, and talks about best practice issues; If anybody needs to send a large file (up to 50mb) “yousendit.com” will do this for you for free. And they will also allow you to send files above 50mb for a small fee; How do you create stairs?

Preparing questions for coaching calls; Eric explains what he personally did, to show new and existing, before the renovation filter became available in ArchiCAD 15; The caller had inadvertently loaded an ArchiCAD library twice, thus causing many duplicates to appear. Eric shows the caller how to load in a library the correct way; Eric demonstrates the renovation filter. And he also discusses the notes in the master template reference manual regarding renovations; Why you should change the name of a view in the project map and not the view map; The caller had created a complex profile wall, and the fills assigned to this wall weren’t showing up when he created a section view of the wall. Eric also talks about how you set up the pen type and thickness for skins in composites; Complex foundation design has adjacent foundation not cleaning up as the caller wants; How to place a sloped plane over a window; Grid of intersecting columns and beams not intersecting correctly; Creating a custom door panel in a curtain wall; How to set back a window frame into a wall; How to control the speed of a movie flythrough; Confusion between the project map and the view map

How to turn on/off the grid snap points. If you have objects like walls snapping to the grid squares unexpectedly, then this is probably the reason why; Matching two different pen sets across two projects; Eric describes what the acronym IFC means and what it is used for; Cleaning out registry listings related to ArchiCAD; Opening up old files on a recent ArchiCAD release; Problem activating multi-plane geometry in the roof default settings; If you have a multi-plane roof, and you want to add to the roof with a gable how do you do that? Is it possible to do wood framing in ArchiCAD, or do I need to buy a third-party addon? Cursor not moving at right angles when shift key pressed down; ArchiCAD 16 users – problems moving objects vertically and horizontally in 3d; A building with different finishes running along each internal room wall of the same external wall, was showing a joint line everytime the wall’s finish changed (on the external wall side); Quick discussion on whether it is best to have your reference line inside or outside the wall

Best practice workflow for turning a 2d hand drawing of a roof (and all its details) into a 3d model and detailed section; Explanation of 3d cutting planes; How to show the composite material fills in the 3d window; How to make changes to elevation markers (storey heights); Creating a graphic for a title block that will be used in every master’s sheet; How to merge files in attribute manager with creating duplicates

Fills not showing up in ArchiCAD project; The renovation filter settings not showing in 3d window; Walls not cleaning up properly; A single plane roof is placed on story 3, and the caller wants the projection outline to show on story 2; How to create a curtain wall corner detail that has a butt (glass joined) corner with no frame. And very quick explanation on how to put a curtain wall in another wall e.g. brick wall shop front; Is it best to use layers to organize building elements such as columns and beams, rather than have them on a separate story; How to turn off the 3d grid in ArchiCAD 15 and above; What are the differences between drafting, cover, and cut fills? And how to get a vectorial fill to not show in plan, but to show in section

Modeling buildings with split levels; Can you and should you create a seperate story for a split level; Creating a foundation and how to manipulate the story level settings for the created foundation; Creating a complex profile of a foundation wall; Bringing in a dwg. survey into ArchiCAD; Setting up the surveyor’s dwg mesh in ArchiCAD, regarding stories to sea level (caller wants to be able to do spot elevations on the survey directly – without using math)

How the renovation palette would work with a loft conversion. And an explanation of “dimensions” and “working units”; Explanation of the zone tool, and how to find volumes of rooms; Creating a schedule for zones; Printing out Zones; How to make an exterior corner trim; How to slope the previously created external wall trim so water drains off it; Adjusting a straight curtain wall to fit up to its sloping curtain wall roof; Changing the spacing on stair balusters; Question on schedules; Changing the amount ArchiCAD rounds off to in dimensions

How to best use objects created by manufacturer’s in ArchiCAD; What is an IFC; How to get rid of IFC triangulation lines and the advantage of changing IFC objects into morphs; The translator settings when bringing in DWG files; How to bring in Sketch Up drawing files into ArchiCAD; How to open up another instance of ArchiCAD; Using the renovation palette to show changes made to a project; Problems offsetting a contour line (corrupted polyline); How to eliminate duplicates in a project