4dProof Blog

ARCHICAD 21’s First “Work-Around”

June 22, 2017 Leave a Comment

To call this a work-around is a stretch, because this is really how you should be doing this from now on!

ARCHICAD21 is now available for download, and it is a very exciting version! Earlier today, a user asked if the latest installment allowed sections to read zone stamps. Sadly, it doesn’t. But I told the user that I would look into writing a new label tool that would label the zone of elements placed in the section. Then I remembered, this version of ARCHICAD already does that!

In the example below, I have a 3 zone sample model with furniture and other various parts placed that could be labeled.

Step 3: Select Label Tool, and Choose Text/Autotext Label

Step 4: Apply Label to Content in Section, Set Autotext to “Related Zone Name”

This label is now dynamically linked to content placed in that section. If the Zone Name changes in plan, the label will change content in section. If the content moves to a new zone, the room name will shift with it and reflect the new zones name. If the object is deleted, the label will be deleted. If the object is switched to a new object, but the zone name remains the same, the room name in section will remain unaffected.

I tested this out with all design tools in ARCHICAD 21, and was able to effectively label zones in the section using any placed element except floors (they do not recognize zone association), and walls (they only associate to the first placed zone they abut). Morphs, columns, beams, shells and objects all work very well for this “work-around”.

BIM Swiss Army Knife

April 24, 2017 Leave a Comment

I present a bit of an analogy to you. ARCHICAD can be your BIM Swiss Army Knife. With ARCHICAD, you can model buildings, site context, landscape, structure, mechanical, you can use it for visualization, construction documents, presentation, renderings, animation, sun studies, and even some basic energy studies. At the Las Vegas BIM Conference 2017, we even saw a construction admin using ARCHICAD as a PDF reader/writer for document coordination! It really does a lot for a single tool.

What can’t you do with a great multi-tool?

But like any good multi-tool, ARCHICAD can’t be expected to perform miracles. You wouldn’t try to whittle a masterpiece, wire an entire house, or endure a wilderness survival show with a Swiss Army knife. You may be able to, but that would just be crazy. It is equally crazy to expect our BIM tool to do everything we would ever need it to on an consistent level. We don’t try to use it as the sole tool for coordinating complex construction projects, we don’t use it for photorealistic renderings and animations, and it certainly will never replace other tools for tabulating energy performance forecasts.

What ARCHICAD does really well, better than most tools in fact, is it models and documents buildings. Everything else it is capable of is awesome, as long as expectations are tempered by the tools limitations. This is no different than the Swiss Army Knife. This tool is one of the best pocket sized (and pocket safe) wine bottle openers on the market. Everything else it can do is helpful, but not necessarily the best on the market. I have used these multi-tools to work on home wiring projects, fish preparation, and even gardening projects, but not on a professional scale. I have also used ARCHICAD for renderings, energy analysis, mechanical coordination and more; but not on every project, and not with the expectation that the output will be as good as that of people who’s entire focus is in those areas of AEC.

The real message here is, ARCHICAD is one tool in a BIM toolbox. It may be the most used and most useful, and it may even be the only one you go to. But it is still only one tool available. When you look at professional quality renderings, those are rarely produced directly from ARCHICAD, and at the very least involve significant post production. When you look at MEP/Structural coordination efforts of massive construction projects, those normally involve other tools such as Solibri. And the very BIM workflow involves IFC, DWG, and PDF coordination to allow for consultants to bring their tools to the project.

Use Your Tools, Don’t Fight Them

January 8, 2017 2 Comments

Recently, I read a great post by a colleague outlining improvements to his template. This article sparked a series of responses; the most surprising of which was a complaint about the line weights provided by his template. In the commenter’s complaint, he goes on to elaborate that we have lost sight of drafting conventions and drawing styles of days past.

“I think that the importance of line weights in making drawings clear is underrated”

He conjectures that Frank Ching’s detail drafting gives clarity that we do not see in any computer software; that “the importance of line weights in making drawings clear is underrated”. It is true, drawing standards have changed, maybe even slipped in recent years.

This all sounds commendable at first. We shouldn’t lose sight of our previous drawing standards and conventions. But we also shouldn’t blindly follow antiquated standards and conventions without an understanding of where they came from and why we need them now. I see time and again, attempts at getting ARCHICAD drawings to look like they were done with a different tool. Wether it is some forced marker reference, label configuration, dimension tick marks, leader shape, or even line weights; we need to work with our tool not agains it.

Most drafting conventions stem from days when everything was drawn by hand. This meant working towards final drawings while reducing or eliminating the excess work of “redoing” an entire drawing. Some of the conventions come from a need to eliminate redundancy, since these redundancies were manually reviewed and checked. Regardless of the origins of the convention, most do not really apply to our current tools.

I see so many architects and designers fighting their tools, attempting to get the markers to look the way they did when they used a pen/pencil or flat-CAD. So many custom texts typed, lines drawn, and fills added in a drawing to get markers, labels, or annotation to look they way they used to. Dimension strings become broken into an unnecessarily complicated configuration for different “tick styles”, and even text and splines used in place of labels for a very specific and unnecessary drafting convention.

A quick sketch for a remodel design option

Regardless of what your ARCHICAD pet peeve is, you need to learn to get past it, and learn to use your tools, rather than fight against them. Ultimately, clarity of drawings can not be the highest priority any more. Design is supposed to be about the built place, not a pretty image or even the technical drawings. Before we used virtual modeling tools, we were limited by our ability to sketch a single static view and draft contrived 2d documents to relay intent and design. Before we had CAD, we were limited by what we could painstakingly draw by hand. Now, we have a tool that enables us to visualize the reality of place, and we find ourselves fighting for a line weight or annotation convention, and ignoring the power of the tools we have. Our schedules can be fully automated, but we find ourselves fussing with the exact style and appearance of the schedule on the sheet.

I certainly mean no disrespect to some of the great architectural visualizers and documenters of the past. Their drawing and drafting is truly beautiful. But that is the past. Let us move forward, to focus on the beauty of a well constructed and managed BIM model. Let us admire the efficiency of drawing, listing, and labeling automation. Let us look for better ways to present our design and documents, beyond the antiquated 24×36 sheet of plans, sections, elevations, and details; and refocus on the incredible capabilities of our tools. Ultimately, we should be able to ignore the little quirks that don’t allow our drawings to look like the drawings of yore. Remember, the drawings are never as important as the ideas they represent, and drawings may not even be the best way to represent those ideas any more!

Speaking ARCHICAD

October 17, 2016 Leave a Comment

BIM and authoring tools have their own language. It is vital to speak a common language when working in a BIM workflow with consultants, both outside our practice and within our project teams. There are several great articles you can read on these concepts here and here. More specifically, it is important to speak a common language within your own practice, so that everyone understands what you are talking about when you discuss certain modeling methods, tools, processes and difficulties we may face. There is a great post on that here. Read those three posts, they have a lot of valuable content!

I want to speak more specifically about ARCHICAD though. If you are reading this, I will assume this is your tool of choice for architectural design and documentation. Using the correct vocabulary is so important when using any tool, especially when trying to troubleshoot or resolve an issue with your tool or process. Within ARCHICAD, there is a perfect example; Views and Viewpoints. Understanding the difference between these two terms can go a long way into conveying your problems to your software manager, project manager, technical support technician and even your design team. More than this, understanding the difference can go a long way to troubleshooting the problems you may face with ARCHICAD yourself.

Why aren’t my views showing correctly?

Why wont my markers link to the correct view?

These are the kinds of questions I see every week. They could easily be answered by understanding the difference between Views and Viewpoints. First off, we can look at the two as they relate to the navigator. The Viewpoints are the sources for all views, more commonly known as the Project Map content. Views, on the other hand, are directly related to the View Map. They are essentially Viewpoints with specific settings for Layers, Scale, Model View Settings, etc. If your view is not showing correctly, it is most likely because you are actually looking at a Viewpoint, and simply need to review how tab based navigation works in ARCHICAD 20.

Markers linking incorrectly can also be cleared up by understanding marker references. If you link your marker to the first placed drawing of a selected Viewpoint, you will potentially have different results or limited flexibility as compared to the first placed drawing of a selected View.

The lesson to learn here is simple; learn the tools and learn the language used in those tools. If we all speak the same language, we can all work together to find the solutions and processes that work best for all of us!