2020 | 012 – Controlling Views, Layers & Elements

Welcome, everyone, to the ARCHICAD Best Practices 2020 course.  Today is Wednesday, February 20^th, 2019.  Let me know that you can hear me and see me – see my screen, etc., and seeing Scott saying, “Where is everyone?”  Gestur is saying, “Hi, I’m here.”  So, feel free to type into the Slack workspace to let everyone know that you’re in attendance.  [0:00:37]

If you haven’t been using Slack, please go to bobrow.com/slack, and that will give you the opportunity to put in your email address, and within a couple of minutes, you’ll be connected up into the ARCHICAD training Slack workspace.  So, I’m experimenting a little bit with the audio because we had a bit of feedback from a couple of people saying that there was a little bit of an echo, so I have actually put my microphone up above me.  You can see here, and I’ve just carefully arranged it so it’s out of frame.  So, let me know how the sound is.  [0:01:27]

I often have it down below, but it may be that it works better this way.  This is something that we’re all familiar with, in terms of movies.  They often have a boom mic that’s just up above the actors.  So, Scott says, “Always sounded good on your end.”  Christian, “No echo today.”  Alright, so it sounds good.  We’ll try this.  [0:01:53]

OK, so what are we doing today?  So, today we’re going to be looking at more of the controls for our work environment to optimize your process.  We’ll be focusing on controlling views, layers, and elements in ways that generally will just make it easier to get things done.  Now, as a high-level overview, this whole first section of the course has been focused on organizational foundations.  [0:02:34]

So, how do you organize your work space, your project, and your way of approaching ARCHICAD’s structure – file structure, in a way that’s going to really make sure your projects can be done efficiently?  After we finish this, and of course, there’s never really an end to learning that process, but after we finish our focus on that, we’ll be moving into what I’ve just started to term the Operational Workflow.  So, in other words, how do you actually build and model your project through the various work phases – conceptual design, design development and documentation, and presentation?  [0:03:20]

We’ll be getting into more of the actual doing as opposed to just studying something that already exists and talking about the options.  So, it’ll be interesting.  That will probably happen in the next week or so.  We’ll be covering these controls today.  I do have a lesson sort of planned out conceptually for going over attributes.  There will be a very detailed section on defining attributes such as your wall composites and complex profiles and fills and surfaces and things like that.  [0:04:02]

That will be later, but I want to spend probably the next lesson looking at the dependencies – in other words, when you have a fill, it is used in surfaces, and once you have a fill and a surface, you can define a building material because building materials use those, and then the building materials are used either as a whole for elements when you have a simple wall or a slab or a roof or as part of a composite or complex profile.  So, we will be looking at that organizational structure so that as we go and start building elements in the model in the following weeks, we’ll be having that understanding as a foundation.  [0:04:55]

Getting back to today’s lesson, we’re going to be looking at manipulations that are commonly done on the fly for layers and views and ways that you can optimize and speed up that process and clearing up some confusions about controls for locking that I think often get people thrown off and ways that you can work with views that have changed in recent versions of ARCHICAD.  So, in ARCHICAD 20 and above, we now have the tab bar at the top of the screen or the top of the working window, which facilitates jumping from one area of ARCHICAD to another, and it has some additional controls that are very powerful, if you understand how they work.  [0:05:48]

So, let’s start out with on-the-fly layer manipulation, and again, feel free to add comments in here to the 2020 channel.  If you have just come into Slack and you’re a little confused, and you’re in the General channel like this, you can go to Channels here and click 2020, and you’ll be in this area.  So, I’ll move this off-screen and proceed.  [0:06:19]

So, here we have our project for demonstration purposes.  Sometimes, you want to be able to turn off certain layers and be able to see certain things more clearly or in isolation.  So, there are different ways that you can do that.  For example, if I open up the Layer settings by doing Command+L or Ctrl+L, we can quickly turn on or off layers.  So, for example, if we don’t want to see our section markers cutting through the building, we can turn that off.  [0:07:02]

If we don’t want to see the grid lines, we can scroll down to S-grid here and turn that off.  Now, when I do that, we’ll see that those elements disappear.  Now, we realize that we want to hide something else, like the dimensions, to make it clear, I can right-click on a dimension and say Layers, Hide Layer.  So, both of these manipulations here are ones that are very fast, but they do have some management issues.  [0:07:32]

If you realize, “Oh, wait a second, that hid some elements that I do need to see,” there’s no undo for right-click layer hide.  Now, you can always turn it back on, but you have to figure out what layer it was and go into the Layer settings to do that.  Now, when we have a view – if I double-click on a view, of course, it restores it to all of the settings of that view, including the layer combination.  [0:07:59]

We can, at any time, go to the layer combinations from the popup.  This is a very powerful thing, so if I want to switch from the floor plan, where it’s got the markers and the dimensions and the grids and all of that, to a simpler view.  Maybe I want to go to ComDoc furniture.  So, this would be a furniture plan where different things are turned on.  Obviously, that brings up the movable furniture, which may or may not be of interest to you at any given time, but the pop-up menu here, in the Quick Layers or the quick options strip at the bottom of the screen, is extremely useful.  [0:08:39]

Now, in earlier versions of ARCHICAD, there was a small palette called the Quick Options palette that you could open or close.  It was often docked underneath the Navigator, and it had somewhat similar options to the ones that are at the bottom of the screen.  These have gotten a little bit more extensive.  For example, we can click on one of the icons here, and it will open up the dialog box for layer settings, or click on one for pens, and it will open up the Pen settings.  So, each one of these has a pop-up menu and an icon that opens up the settings.  [0:09:17]

So, that’s quick reorientation for those of you who maybe haven’t quite picked up on all of the options that are down there.  Now, one of my favorite things to do is to demonstrate and use the Quick Layer palette.  So, that is available in a keyboard or a toolbar shortcut – Quick Layers here.  That brought up this palette here.  If you don’t have this in your toolbar, and I think the international version does not have it as a standard part of their toolbar, then you can always go to Window, Palettes, and you can open or close Quick Layers.  [0:09:57]

Now, the Quick Layers palette allows you to go and say, “Alright, well let’s say I didn’t want to show the stairs here.”  So, these are little steps, and the interior stairs might be on the same layer.  I can go and maybe select the stairs and furniture or a few items here and then say I’d like to hide them.  So, this is going to hide the layer that these selected items are on.  You can see that they disappear from view.  Maybe I want to hide the room name, so we can hide that.  [0:10:30]

Now, the power of doing that, compared to right-click, Hide Layer, is that you can undo.  You can undo back here one step – possibly more than one step.  So, this Undo and Redo is a very powerful way of just quickly turning on and off layers on the fly with more control.  So, in general, use your views first, if they are convenient.  Use your layer combinations second as a way to just quickly get a coherent set of layer visibility established.  [0:11:07]

Right-click to hide elements on a layer.  Occasionally, it’s just a quick and dirty way to do it, but I generally like having the Quick Layers palette open because it allows you to undo and go back to where you were.  Now, the Quick Layers has some additional options.  Just make sure that you understand.  Suppose that you wanted to get property lines showing or something like that, to see the setbacks, and you went to the Layer settings, and you’re saying, “Which one is it?  Is it the See Site Property Lines, or maybe there’s something under some other Layer thing, like the mesh terrain.”  [0:11:51]

You may not quite know which layer to get or just may not want to be having to look through a long layer list.  So, what you can do is use this toggle here that will flip what’s visible and what’s not.  So, now you can see it’s actually hidden the walls.  It’s hidden the interior furniture and all the other stuff that was showing, and it’s showing the layers that were hidden, and let’s say that this was the property line layer here.  [0:12:20]

So, I can, and this is a limits layer here, but I can see there’s probably some property boundary layer there. That’s the mesh.  Let’s hit the Tab key, and we’ll see where we’d be in the property or boundary layer.  Maybe this one that I had selected is good.  Let me go here and hide that layer, and maybe just for good measure, to demonstrate this more easily, I’ll select – let’s see.  This is some notes here.  Let’s go to the tree objects here, just to show how this works.  [0:12:56]

I’ll hide them.  Now, they disappeared from this current view, and maybe this tree here’s on a different layer.  Now, why am I doing that?  Because possibly, when I flip back, I will see what I need.  So, here, now when I flip this back, I’m seeing the floor plan with certain layers, and clearly this layer with the roof is not what I want.  Let me hide that.  So, we can flip back and forth, and maybe this layer with the mesh is not what I want either.  [0:13:32]

So, we can flip back and forth. I don’t think that demonstration was quite clear enough, but what you can do is when you flip back and forth and say, “Well, what I really want are maybe these contour lines,” just to make an example here.  I’ll hide them.  They disappear from this current view, and then I’ll flip it back, and now I have the building with some of the surrounding context.  [0:14:00]

So, the idea here is that we can flip to the other view of the hidden elements, select one or more elements that we would like to see in a working view, and then you can flip back.  Having hidden them, they’re now in the group that you’re showing here.  So, at this point, I have a custom set of layers, and if I wanted to save this as a view – let’s say that this was something that would allow me to work on the shape of the building in the context of some of the landscaping around.  [0:14:39]

Maybe I don’t want all of the site plan to be showing. I want to even be able to see some of the interior fitout along with that, so this is a special context that we just want for a period of time.  We can create a custom layer combination.  So, I’ll go into Command+L here, and I’ll create a new layer combination based on what we’re currently looking at, and let’s just say this is a temp site layer.  [0:15:10]

OK, so I can do this.  If I want to have this float up to the top so it’s just easy to say, I can put an asterisk or a star here.  That will make it float up to the top.  You can see how these show up here, and now there’s Temp Site Layers.  So, this is now a layer combination that exists, and I can bring it up at any time, just like that.  [0:15:36]

So, as you define layers just for your custom purposes, this can be a very powerful way to manage it using combination of the Quick Layers and other manual layer manipulations.  Now, in Quick Layers, we also have some options for changing the locking of layers.  We’ll look at that in context after I demonstrate something about how locking layers can be managed.  [0:16:08]

So, there are some additional things.  We can also say to select certain things, like if I just wanted to be able to see the furniture and maybe just select a few items in here.  This is an interesting option here. We can select an exterior wall, and interior wall, and furniture, and then say to hide other layers, and now this is going to show only the elements that are on those layers.  So, this allows you to hide things that aren’t selected.  [0:16:44]

So, there’s combinations here.  You can also lock things that weren’t selected if you wanted to leave them visible but not actually move them around.  So, I encourage you to experiment with this.  It’s fairly intuitive with the little pop-ups here.  I think I demonstrated the most common things that I use for this purpose.  Now, I’m going to go back to this here.  Now, I see Andrej says, “It’s good to have a shortcut for Quick Layers.”  [0:17:18]

So, I use this shortcut here all the time.  If you want to create a keyboard shortcut – just a quick reminder.  We can go to Options, Work Environment, and do Keyboard Shortcuts, and when we have keyboard shortcuts, we can look at the list of commands that are in the current menu or just look them up in alphabetical order.  [0:17:43]

Now, I know that the current menu structure is under Window, Palettes, so now I can flip under Window, and Palettes, and scroll down.  Here is the Show/Hide Quick Layers.  So, I’m going to click here to say that I’d like to define a shortcut for it.  Now, if I do Q for Quick Layers, that is being used for something else.  If I do Shift+Q, that’s another one.  If I do, let’s say, Shift+Option+Q, that’s not.  So, I’m basically just experimenting with different combinations of modifier keys, like the Shift key is a modifier key in normal typing.  It gives you a capital letter.  [0:18:27]

The Ctrl or Command key gives you certain keyboard shortcuts.  Here, I picked Shift and Option, which would be Alt on a PC keyboard, and I’ll try that.  Let’s say Assign, and say OK.  So, now, if I use Shift+Option+Q, you can see it disappears, and Shift+Option+Q comes up.  So, keyboard shortcut to bring that up. I like having ones that have the first letter that is easy to remember, and usually some simple combination of Shift and something else to bring that up.  [0:19:12]

OK, now let’s see what I’ve got here in my outline here.  Alright, so we’re going to look at some options for going to 3D, and probably most of you are familiar with these, but there are some variations that I think are less frequently used that are powerful.  So, if I go to the 3D window here, we’ll see that the 3D window – if I double-click on it, actually, it will restore the view that was last set up, and you can see this as AXO overall 3D All, and it is the name of the view here, and in fact, this view here – when I go back to it, it says First Floor Plan (1^st floor.)  [0:20:06]

So, you can see First Floor Plan is the name of the view.  That’s the first part here, and 1^st floor is the source of the view. That’s the view point.  Remember that everything in ARCHICAD that we’re looking at or working with is a view point on the project.  The view points include stories, sections, elevations, 3D, etc., and each one of these view points can be viewed in a variety of different settings or context – different layers, etc.  [0:20:34]

So, the source is a general view point, and the name of the view, if you have defined a tab with that view, then it will show up.  Now, if I draw a marquee here like this, the most common thing for a marquee, when you use it for 3D controls, is to right-click or use the keyboard shortcut to say to show selection or marquee in 3D.  So, if I select individual elements, or I have a marquee, then I can easily go to 3D and see what this looks like.  [0:21:16]

Now, the issue here is that I’m looking at that chunk of the building, but I’m not seeing all the layers that were on here because it was using only the layers that were visible on the floor plan. This can be somewhat annoying, in terms of going back and forth, and I haven’t really come up with a perfect solution for that. There are a few ways to approach it.  One is to simply bring that up and then switch your layer combination from what was on the floor plan, which was inherited from that right-click, Show what is currently active on the floor plan in 3D.  [0:21:55]

We can switch it to Model, Building Only, or Building and Site.  OK, so now we’re seeing the roof information added in.  Now, another way that we can do that is if I double-click on this tab, it’s going to bring it back to the original view that was opened up, as you can see with this name.  Now, if I go to the floor plan here, we’re still seeing the same information, but I can go right-click in the tab and say to get last settings.  [0:22:29]

What this will do is it will pick up the settings from the last tab that was open, which in this case was 3D, and the main control – the main change right now that we’ll see is that it will change the layers.  So, now we’re looking at the model in the same place, but we’ve now got all the layers that are required to see the 3D properly. Now, if I use the keyboard shortcut or right-click and say Show Selection Marquee in 3D, you can see that it’s bringing this up. It’s kept the settings for the view, which included the layers, and the marquee was defined on the plan.  [0:23:11]

Now, we can move around in this view, and we can define new views here if we want, but let’s just see a couple of variations that are less-frequently used.  One is we can right-click on here and say Show All in 3D.  So, now I can sort of see this in that context, and then at any point, I can go back and say to Show Stored Selection Marquee in 3D, and it’s going to go back to this.  So, sometimes that’s really useful to just look at things, see what’s going on, and then go Show All, and Show Stored Selection there.  [0:23:51]

Now, another thing that I don’t think most people realize is that you can go and, for example, say that we didn’t want to see some of the elements in here. We just want to work on the way the walls and the floors were working.  I can select these 2 walls and this floor here, perhaps, and right-click and say to show just the selection in 3D.    Now, you can see it becomes much easier in 3D to move around and study what’s going on here.  So, this is something that is all live. We can select these elements and edit them.  [0:24:33]

We can change anything we like about them, and we can go back to Show Stored Selection Marquee in 3D.  Actually, this is now the stored selection here, so we can only go back to Show All.  I think Show Selection Marquee – this won’t be active because we have nothing selected at the moment here.  I think if I select this, it’s interesting.  It did the same thing as if we said Show All in 3D.  [0:25:04]

Now, let’s see if I say Show Stored Selection Marquee, now we’ve lost that particular selection.  Now, if I wanted to go back to the marquee that I had originally set up, I can go back to the floor plan.  Notice that it now says the source (1 First Floor) – it doesn’t have the view, which was the first floor plan because it’s not set up with those layers.  Since it is using the layers that match the 3D, I can now go and either right-click or just hit the keyboard shortcut to bring up that marquee again.  [0:25:45]

So, those are some manipulations that are very powerful, in terms of being able to bring this up with a marquee from the plan or select things in 3D and focus the view and possibly go to Show All in 3D and go back to the stored selection.  So, these are things that I use all the time, and there are keyboard shortcuts that you can read here.  They’re actually a little different on Mac and PC.  I think on PC, it may be F5 instead of F4 there.  [0:26:16]

Now, this menu here, and when we right-click on one of the tabs here, it does give you a variety of different controls.  So, for example, if I say to restore view, it is the same as double-clicking on this.  You can see the AXO overall 3D. A minute ago or a second ago, it had an exclamation mark because it wasn’t the original view, and in fact, as soon as I rotate or do any type of manipulation, we’ll see this little exclamation mark.  [0:26:53]

The exclamation mark is not a danger signal.  It’s just simply saying that this is not exactly the same as the view.  If I double-click on the tab, it will take me back to that view.  The same is if I double-clicked on the view over here.  So, we can also save views right here.  This is a very powerful thing, so let’s say I wanted a different angle on this, just to make it simple.  Right-click here, and say Save As View, and we can give this a name, and View 10 – whatever.  [0:27:33]

Now, whatever, wherever I’m highlighted in the view map, this will go below that.  I say Create, and you can see – actually, I’m sorry.  In this case, it went below all of the views, and I can drag it up into another position here.  Not sure if you maybe had a folder selected if it would go within that, but that’s how you do that.  If I go to AXO Overall, we’ll see that it goes back to the previous one, and View 10 here is the one that I just created.  [0:28:08]

So, we can save views.  We can look at the View settings.  This is the same thing as right-clicking on a view here and looking at the View settings. We can control it, and we can actually change it.  So, for example, if we want to change it to just showing the building now, that’s going to be the view, and you see that there’s not exclamation mark.  This is now the saved view.  Double-clicking here won’t change anything.  I’ve literally just redefined the view that’s over in the View Map.  [0:28:42]

Now, we can also pick up the view settings.  So, what does that mean?  This allows us to redefine a view.  So, suppose that we wanted, just to make it simple, to have another angle here. I’ll say, “You know what?  I’d like to redefine View 10.” I can say to redefine with current settings.  So, now that View 10 here will go this way.  Let’s go back to the AXO Overall.  You can see we’re at the front of the building.  View 10 is going to go to that back sort of shaded view of the back part of the building.  [0:29:20]

So, we can pick up the view settings here. Now, actually, we just did the redefine here.  Now, pick up view settings is another option.  It allows us to inject these settings into another window. Now, what would we do here?  These options here have different applications, and I don’t think I can possibly show all the ways that you would use them, but if you think about what the view settings are – so, if we look at the view settings, it’s the context.  [0:30:03]

It’s the layers. It possibly is the scale.  Even in 3D, there’s some sense of scale for certain elements like the grid here. If you were to place it on a drawing, there would be some basic understanding of scale.  Maybe the verticals here in an AXO view would actually scale properly compared to other linear dimensions.  We have, of course, different options for the way we’re looking at the model and different options for how we’re seeing it in 3D.  [0:30:36]

So, these view settings can be injected into another view.  This is a way of sort of tweaking and adjusting stuff to get something fine-tuned.  Now, the 3D information here could not be injected into the plan, but all of this is something that can be injected.  So, if I just cancel out of this – these are the view settings.  If I go to this tab, and actually, I guess if we open it, and I think if I pick up the settings from the 3D view here, and now I inject them into this, you can see here’s what it’s got.  [0:31:26]

It’s got the building with those grid lines, but no site.  So, it’s picked up that information.  So, the main thing to realize is that these tabs have a lot of control when you right-click on them, and they are connected to views in the View Map, and they can actually control those views.  You can redefine views from that, and when we are looking at it, you need to understand the difference between something in brackets here that is the source view and something that’s a named view, like View 10, and understand what the exclamation mark is.  [0:32:13]

Now, if I double-click on View 10 here, you can see it restores it.  It’s the same thing as the Restore one that was up there.  If I rotate around, Restore would be the same as that double-click.  Now, recent related views.  You can see these are ones were looking at, like the AXO Overall.  So, during today’s session, I had brought up AXO Overall, and I’ve been going back and forth within it.  So, I can easily find other ones that we’ve been working with.  Let’s go to a Temp here.  [0:32:55]

So, this was one that was saved earlier or another temp.  Let’s see if we have these related views here.  So, these are all views that we have visited in this tab.  Now, in terms of tabs, we obviously have the plan in 3D.  We also can have tabs for layouts, details, elevations, sections, etc., and any time you switch in a tab to a new place in your project, this will accumulate in that.  [0:33:31]

So, let’s go to the title sheet here.  So, here we have a sheet, and I’ll just go down to another sheet here with interior elevations, and now, when I right-click here, we don’t actually have other layouts in this list, so I guess that doesn’t work for layouts.  I’m always experimenting to see if I can pick up a few new tips.  So, here, we don’t have an option to go back to a previous layout that was in this tab, but if we go to a worksheet – let’s go to a worksheet here, just as a quick thing.  [0:34:14]

If I open up a kitchen and bath cabinets as a worksheet here, and then I go to something like the structural notes worksheet – these are both opened up in the same tab here.  Recent related views? No, they’re not.  They’re actually not here, so the 3D is the one that would have the other 3D views.  I think that these related views here – if we go to all related views here, it is showing the View Map.  It’s a little quick way to navigate through the View Map and where in the View Map your position is.  [0:34:58]

So, let us go on to some other things here relating to that.  OK, so the other thing that I wanted to just make sure you knew was the keyboard shortcut here.  I’m in the floor plan here.  Let’s go back to our saved view that we were working with here, and let’s say that we didn’t have a marquee. If I right-clicked here and said to show all in 3D, we’re going to have a little bit of an issue in the sense that it’s only showing the layers that we were looking at on plan.  [0:35:49]

Now, I’m going to go back to the one that was the AXO here.  So, if I was on the plan, and I wanted to go to 3D, how would you get there?  Well, of course, you can double-click on this, but as a keyboard shortcut, let’s see.  If we go to Window, we can see this keyboard shortcut for the floor plan, F2. There is the generic shortcut for the 3D window, which would be F3, so if I do F3 here, it will bring me to that 3D window without changing the view.  [0:36:24]

Now, on the Mac, it’s a little bit confusing these days because if you have something like what I have, the MacBook Pro, there’s this little strip of icons that changes, depending upon where you are, so right now, it’s showing an option for 3D, but that option was set up by GraphiSoft to say to show the selection or marquee in 3D.  In order to use the simple function key shortcut, I have to hit the Fn, the Function key button in the bottom-left corner of the screen, and then it highlights my F keys, so I can do the F3.  [0:37:08]

So, just know that the F4 or F5 shortcuts will pick up some of the settings that we were in.  For example, on the plan, but if you just wanted to go generically to 3D, leaving it in the same view that you had earlier, then that’s the keyboard shortcut.  Of course, if you don’t remember that, just click on the tab to go there.  [0:37:36]

Alright, so let’s look and see if there are any questions before we go on – comments.  Alright.  OK, so Scott says, “3D view defaults.  Is there a way to configure the AXO and perspective 3D default cameras so when hitting these, you’ll always open a predefined view?”  No, as far as I know.  You basically are going to get things based on your current context, and using the views in the View Map is the only way to have a predefined view.  [0:38:11]

Now, Andrej says, “What I found useful in my work is that I set up shortcuts for Quick Layer possibilities.  So, hide others, hide selection.”  These are from the Quick Layers palette that we were looking at a few minutes ago.  So, nice to see a coherent set there.  You can do that probably without even having the Quick Layers palette on.  I’m imagining that that actually is effective, even without the Quick Layers palette.  [0:38:44]

So, this is interesting.  You may want to test that out.  OK, Andrej.  Thank you.  Alright, so we’re going to go on to hiding locked layers and why you would do this and what the pros and cons for it are.  OK, so I’m going to go to the floor plan here, and let’s say that I wanted to put in some electrical elements.  When you’re thinking about putting in some elements into your model, you need to think about whether it’s a modeling element, if it’s something that’s going to be visible in a 3D model or if it’s an annotation, and of course, there are hybrid elements that do both, like a grid marker, maybe seen in a 3D view, and it is really annotation there.  [0:39:46]

My general suggestion is that if we’re doing the electrical layers – the electrical drawing, that I would want to switch my layer combination.  I could go to the view and say I want to work on the electrical plan, but a quick way to do it is to go to the pop-up menu here and say ComDoc Electrical.  That switches my basic layers of what’s visible to the mode where we’re seeing the ceiling lights and ceiling fan, and there are a few receptacles indicated there.  [0:40:24]

Now, if I go to the Object tool, and I want to put something in, there are different ways that you can sort of quickly zero in on what element you want.  If I pick up this recess spot with the eye dropper, then, of course, I can just drop in another one.  Right now, it’s going to take a second to get ready to start doing manipulation of the model, so I’ve got a spinning beach ball.  [0:41:00]

Eye dropping is a fantastic way to start your work on a particular phase of the project.  If you’ve already got some elements in there because it just immediately picks up these settings – for example, what layer, what element type, and the height that you might have for that element.  Now, let’s say I need a different type of light.  Of course, I can open that up and browse through the library, pick something else – maybe we have a spotlight kit here, and I say OK, and of course, I may want to check some other settings about it, but this is now on the corresponding layer.  [0:41:45]

Now, sometimes you have an element, and you’re picking it, and it isn’t already on the plan, and you want to say, “Well, what layer would it go on?”  The layers in this list are a little bit hard to pick from because there’s a long list, and I have to scroll through it.  Only some of them are available in terms of being visible, and so it’s a little bit awkward and confusing.   A nice shortcut or something that will simplify your ability to select layers is to go to the Options menu, Work Environment, Dialog Boxes and Palettes, and select the option Hide Locked Layers in Pop-up Palettes.  [0:42:37]

Now, if you do that in conjunction with actually locking hidden layers, then if I go to the layer choice here, now I can see that the Object tool or the Lamp tool can only be placed on these layers.  It’s much easier to pick from this short list of layers.  Now, I did 2 things to make this possible.  One is in the layer settings dialog.  Any layer in this layer combination – ComDoc Electrical – any layer that is hidden, where we don’t show normal floor plan dimensions there is also locked.  [0:43:23]

So, that means that with that preference that I just showed you, they disappear from the pop-up menu.  So, anything that’s hidden is also locked.  Now, if we just scan through this, you’ll see that’s generally true.  Now, when setting this up, I basically had to go through each one of these layer combinations and make sure that these corresponded.  So, of course, in different layer combinations, different layers are showing and hidden.  [0:43:54]

So, it could become an onerous task, but here’s a shortcut.  If I sort by visibility here, so clicking on the top of the column that has the eye ball, we can see all of the layers that are in the upper section are visible, and the ones down below are hidden.  So, I can go in here, and I can select a bunch of these layers.  I can go all the way down to the bottom here.  Now, these are all the layers that are currently hidden, and I can go use the Lock icon.  [0:44:29]

Now, you’ll notice that there are a couple of exceptions here.  These are ones that are maintained unlocked, just as a convention in MasterTemplate.  The trash/recycle bin is a layer that is always kept unlocked, so you can say, “Hmm. This is something I don’t think I need.”  You put it in there, and then later you can go and discard or delete it, but it will disappear from all views, and the same with special temporary hide.  It allows you to hide elements with the intention that you’re going to go back and rework them or possibly figure out which layer they belong on.  So, these are 2 that shouldn’t be locked.  [0:45:09]

So, let me just go and select this layer down to here, and then I can lock.  These are already locked, but what I’m going to do is unlock them.  You can see how they change, and then lock them again, and you can see how that updates.  So, basically, to set this up for each layer combination, I maintained this in the sort by visibility and went to the layer combination – in this case, electrical.  You notice that it resorted here, and the layers I had selected earlier are a little bit scattered because there are fewer layers that are visible in the electrical plan.  [0:45:54]

Now, I can go do the same sort of thing, if I needed to.  I can just select one layer and shift-click to select all the way down to the bottom and lock.  So, if you want to implement this method in your own template, you simply need to go through in your template and/or in a project you want to do this for.  Each one of the layer combinations, so it will take a little while to go through, but each one, as long as it’s sorted by visibility, you can have it updated within 15 seconds, and you’d do that for 30 or 40 or 50 layer combinations.  In 20 minutes, you will have it all set up to go.  [0:46:33]

So, by doing it this way, now we have just a very short list of layers.  Now, if I switch to a different layer combination here, like let’s say we’re working on the furniture plan, and we go to the Object tool, and we want to pick an object, well, these are the layers that are available for the furniture plan.  So, that’s a real time saver, and it also just reduces the mental stress because any time you have to really think and look and study takes effort, and the more you can make it just sort of a quick selection, the less energy and stress on your brain you’ll accumulate during the day.  [0:47:22]

Now, what are the disadvantages of this?  Well, let’s say that this element here is a piece of furniture, but let’s say that it wasn’t.  It was a lamp or something else that we didn’t want to see.  Well, of course, if I don’t want to delete it, but I want to put it on a different layer, when I have this selected, I can only put it on these layers.  So, if it was supposed to be on a layer for landscaping or something like that – maybe this was an outdoor bench seat or something like that, that layer is not visible, and I can’t change it there.  [0:48:04]

So, how would you manage that?  If I said that I wanted to make the other layers – we can’t unlock the other layers here.  OK, so we can hide or lock other layers, but we can’t unlock them. I was just wondering about that.  This is lock/unlock layers toggle.  This is an interesting thing.  So, if I toggle this, now this is locked.  You see all the layers that were hidden are now unlocked.  I can go and, for this particular layer, unlock this one.  So, now this element here is on a layer that’s unlocked, and I could say to put this on the landscape layer or something like that.  [0:49:01]

So, we’ll just do that here.  So, now, if I go back a couple of steps here, I’m now back in the environment where we have just the furniture thing.  So, the Quick Layers one allows me to do this.  It’s a little bit convoluted, but if I select this, and I want to put it on a landscape layer, what I could do is – what is this?  Toggle all the layer visibility, unlock this one, put it on another layer – the landscape here, and then go back a couple of steps.  So, that would be a way to do that.  [0:49:47]

The other way that we could do it is simply putting it on one of these layers, like the temporary hide.  We say, “Well, I’ll get to that later,” and then at a certain point, you might go to the layer dialog and say to turn on the temporary hide. Where is it? I think it’s at the top, actually.  Temporary hide here. I’m just going to turn that on, and now that’s visible, and I can say, “Oh, I want to put that on there.”  [0:50:21]

So, if you knew that you put a bunch of things for the landscape layer plan that had been put incorrectly on a layer, you can put them on the temporary hide and then go to the landscape plan, turn on this layer, and switch it to the layer that you needed it.  So, in terms of this option here for streamlining the layer selection, I would say it’s very useful.  I like using it, but you have to set up the layer combinations properly, so that’s a one-time thing in the sense that you can do it for a template, and then it’s just there for all future references, and that’s how we have it in MasterTemplate.  [0:51:07]

In actual use, there are some things that are a little bit awkward, so some people don’t like it, but I personally think it’s useful.  Alright, let’s look at locking layers versus locking elements and locking due to groups and hotlinked modules.  So, we’ll make sure you understand those controls there.  So, let me just undo back a couple of steps here.  [0:51:38]

Alright, so now I’ve undone back, so everything is as it was earlier.  OK, so if I wanted to protect – let’s go to our plan view here.  I’ll reinstate that, and now we’re seeing things like the grid.  So, it’s very common for the grid, where you set up your column grid or structural grid, it’s something you carefully lay out, and you don’t want to take any chances that it moves when you’re selecting elements and moving them around.  [0:52:19]

So, you could go at any point and lock that layer.  So, here we have the S grid 3D layer.  I could move this around.  I’m going to go and lock this layer here.  So, you can see that now, the handles have changed color, and if I select any of these and try to drag them, they won’t drag.  In fact, you can see the layer is in italic, and if I go in to make a change to it, the OK button is not available because it’s on a layer that’s locked and therefore, the elements on it are not editable.  [0:53:04]

Now, locking a layer is something that will get forgotten about if you switch to a different layer combination.  So, if I just switch to the original view settings, that reinstates the layer combination. The layer combination did not have this layer locked.  So, if you wanted to protect it a little bit more from accidental changing, instead of locking the layer, what you could do is lock the elements.  [0:53:39]

So, how would you do that?  I can select one or more elements like this. Here are 2 of them. Go to the Edit menu, Locking, Lock.  So, that will lock those 2 elements.  So, now those 2 I can’t drag around.  If I open up the settings, we’ll see that the OK button is off whereas if I open up another one here, I could modify it or drag it around.  Now, if I wanted to lock all of these related ones here, then the simplest thing might be to eye drop one of these elements.  That switches me to the Grid tool here, and then I can go to the Edit menu, select all grid elements, and you can see all of them very quickly selected.  [0:54:28]

You can also do just Command+A or Ctrl+A when you’re in this tool, and then I can go to the Edit, Locking, Lock there, and now all of them are locked.  You can do other selection methods that are more specific.  You could lock the exterior walls of your building by saying you want to select all walls that are on the exterior wall layer using Find and Select.  So, you can do that.  [0:54:55]

Now, at this point, these are locked until further notice. I can hide them.  I can show them, but I can’t edit them.  Now, if I do want to unlock them, I can say, “Oh, I need to change something about this one.”  So, you can go to the Edit menu, Locking, Unlock, and now this one in particular?  I could go modify it.  Maybe I want to make this bubble go out for some reason.  There’s some other annotation that it’s getting in the way of.  [0:55:28]

Now, if I wanted to unlock everything, sometimes things get messed up.  I’d say it’s an unusual situation, but you just really want to get everything unlocked.  You can go to the Edit menu, Locking, and Unlock All, and now it gives us a warning that when you do that, you can no longer hit Undo.  So, for example, I won’t be able to undo this move here, but I’ll just say yes, and now we’ll see that all of those elements are now able to be edited.  The undo here is not – let’s see if it actually works.  [0:56:12]

It’s giving me a spinning ball.  Interesting.  I thought it wouldn’t.  Not quite sure what it did when I said Unlock.  It’s highlighted a whole bunch of things, but it didn’t actually move this back into position, so I’m not going to worry about that, but that is a side effect of the Unlock All is that it’s going to prevent you from just doing a routine undo there.  [0:56:43]

So, that’s lock and unlock for elements as opposed to the layers. Remember, the layer locking is controlled by the layer combinations, so it can easily be forgotten about or incorrectly set, whereas locking basically will stay there unless you unlock them manually. Now, another thing that can be a confusing issue, and I’ll just go to a furniture plan to make it easy to see.  [0:57:18]

Alright, so let’s say that we had a group of elements.  So, here is a carpet, and we have a couple other pieces.  Let’s say this is a group that we wanted to deal with, and maybe we’ll just take the plans near here as well.  So, if I go to the Edit menu, and I say to group them here, you can see the handles change in color.  Now, groups can be suspended with this icon or the menu command that we were just looking at, or they can be active.  [0:57:56]

So, when this is not depressed here, it is active.  Now, all of these are selected, and I could drag them.  So, I could say to drag them over to a new position.  I’ll just undo that because I don’t want to do that.  Now, as a group, there are settings that cannot be modified.  For example, we can modify individual elements by setting there.  If I suspend groups, I can select individual items and temporarily move them around here.  [0:58:45]

So, then when groups are active, you’ll see it’s got a new relationship to it.  Let me just undo that.  So, groups are powerful because you can select one element, and it selects the whole thing.  You can then move the whole group, keeping them in careful arrangement.  You can also drag copies of all of those settings, so I know what I was trying to remember.  [0:59:15]

If you had one of these elements that was locked – so, for any reason at all, if we were to go and select this element here and lock it, or let’s say it was on a locked layer.  Either way, if I go to locking or put it on a locked layer, now, if I have groups active, you see how all of these are selected, but because this one is locked, I can’t drag it.  It will not allow me to drag it.  So, if an element in a group is on a locked layer or is individually locked, then the whole group will be locked when you select it with groups active.  [0:59:59]

Now, if groups are suspended, then you can see that these handles here are allowing them to be edited.  This one is – let’s see if I can drag this here.  Yeah, you can see it allows me to drag the unlocked elements there.  So, that’s something you want to use very selectively, but it can be useful.  Alright, let’s just say here that I’d like to unlock all the elements that are selected.  Only one of them is locked, but that one becomes available.  [1:00:38]

Now, we have this group here that was sort of an arbitrary thing, but what if we have something that’s referenced in from outside – a hotlinked module, or an Xref?  So, this would be groups of elements that have been brought into the file from outside from another file, and ARCHICAD will maintain them in relationship to other elements in that reference in a specific arrangement.  [1:01:12]

This is mostly positive, but occasionally, it can be confusing, so let’s take a look at the case of MasterTemplate’s Interactive Legends.  So, if I go to a layer combination that turns on the Interactive Legends here, and I zoom out to Fit In Window, you’ll see that the model is up in this corner here, and this is the kit of parts that is from an outside file. In fact, there are actually 3 separate ones that are arranged close together.  [1:01:50]

Now, if I go and select an element here, like this, you can see that it’s got the sort of grayish handles there, and I cannot drag it.  When you have the greyed out handles, then you can’t edit it.  Now, if I turn on groups – if I unclick Suspend Groups, then you can see all of these elements here are now selected, and they have bright ungrayed handles, and we can actually drag this.  So I can drag this over like that.  So, this is a special case in terms of it being a kit of parts – the Interactive Legends.  [1:02:41]

I’ll just undo it and put it back.  If you have a hotlinked module that is a unit plan in a condo – so you have unit type A, and you repeat it 6 times on the story, and you decide you want to rotate one of them or move it in a different place, you can select the entire hotlinked module – as long as groups are active, and move it around, but if groups are suspended, then even if we have all of them selected here, we won’t be able to drag them.  [1:03:19]

ARCHICAD is just saying, “I can’t really tell for sure if you have everything selected, so when groups are suspended, I will now allow you to move these elements.”  When groups are active, I know you’ve got everything selected, and as long as nothing’s on a locked layer or individually locked, then we can drag it around.  This works beautifully for repetitive unit types in a building or possibly for an entire building on a site, where you can select the whole thing and move it to suit the conditions as you need to.  [1:03:55]

Alright, so let’s just see if there are any other questions or comments related to this.  By the way, that also applies to Xrefs.  So, if you bring in something from AutoCAD using the Xref capability or external reference option, then similarly, while you can move that Xref around as a whole, you can’t move or change individual elements in the externally referenced materials.  [1:04:27]

Taren asks, “What is the best way to avoid inadvertently adjusting other elements in the model?  For instance, if I’m working on a landscape slab, if there a way I can make it less likely that I might accidentally make an unintended change to a roof or wall?”  That’s a good question.  Let’s just go back to that context that we had earlier.  [1:04:47]

So, I’ll go to just the first floor plan here.  So, when I am doing this first floor plan, you can see that all of this disappears because it’s on the Interactive Legend, which is controlled by a master layer that’s turned off, and I can now go to, say, Fit In Window here, and we’re now back to seeing just the model.  Now, if you wanted to manipulate certain things and not have worry about changing anything.  Let’s say we’re working on the interior fitout, and we didn’t want to take a chance that we would modify the outside walls.  [1:05:36]

Well, during this careful operation, I could go in to the exterior walls and lock them.  So, now they’re locked but visible, and now, if I go and say that I was saying that I wanted to select these elements here and move them around.  Now, when I drag them, you see that I can move the elements that I selected, and of course, I was very casual. I selected a bunch of things, but you notice the exterior walls did not move with it.  [1:06:12]

So, I had basically locked those layers.  Let me just go back to the original view settings where they’re not locked. The other way you can do that is that if you’re moving things in close proximity – let’s say we didn’t want to change the walls.  I’d say the exterior walls and the interior walls – I don’t want to change them, but I’m going to be moving furniture around.  Alright, so I can go and say that I’d like to lock the layers that I’ve currently got elements selected on.  [1:06:50]

Now, you can see the handles change to be a grayed out version, and now I can go in, and I could, for example, select some things here.  Maybe I want to also lock this floor plan – this floor slab, and lock that here, and now, if I go and select things like this, I’m only selecting the cabinets.  Maybe I also want to lock this one here.  Not sure what layer that’s on.  Stairs, I guess, we’ll probably lock that there.  [1:07:31]

So, now I can more easily go and select these things here.  Let’s see.  What do I have here?  It looks like I’ve got another one that’s the slab, which is locked.  Well, I guess if I have this, and I drag these things here, you can only see the elements that were editable moved.  So, using the Quick Layers palette is a faster way to do it, and you can make sure that you’ve locked certain elements.  If it’s really important, then you would want to select those elements and just use the Lock option as opposed to lock the layer.  [1:08:11]

OK, so let’s finish up.  Taren says, “Thanks.”  Alright, so we have actually looked at a number of these view settings already, but I wanted to – alright, we already looked at that, and updating the view settings.  Alright, let’s just look at a couple of things about redefining views so that you really have the full control over that.  Then, we can finish up today’s session.  [1:08:55]

So, if I activate this layer combination here, one of the things about views that I prefer to do is to use a setting that says to ignore zoom and rotation when opening this view.  Why do I do that?  Because now I can go, for example, and go to another story, like this, and I know that I’m still looking at the same part of the building.  Let’s just move this where we can see these section markers here. So, when I go down to the lower story, I’m still in exactly the same part of the building.  The balcony is above this part of the kitchen.  [1:09:45]

I go down to the basement plan, and I know I’m staying in the same location.  So, if you set up – certainly I’ve seen this often.  Let me just zoom out to Fit In Window.  If I set up the basement plan to be this particular view – so, it’s got these layers. It’s on the -1 story, and let’s say that I wanted it to be an overview of the building.  Let’s jump out to that.  So, I can right-click on the basement plan view and say to redefine with current window settings, and double-check or, in this case, for demonstration, I will turn off the ignore zoom.  [1:10:34]

Now, it’s going to have the zoomed area as part of its definition.  So, now let’s say that I was zoomed in.  I’ll go back to the first floor, and I’m zoomed in at this area, and I say, “What’s the foundation like underneath it?”  When I double-click on basement plan, you can see I’m going down to the lower story, but I’m also jumping out to a different view.  [1:11:01]

I find that more disconcerting or getting in the way than helpful.  Now, you can usually go previous view, and you can see that now I’m jumping into the view that I had.  So, this previous view here is a way to work around that, but I find I’d rather go into the view settings and say to ignore this when you’re going from any other view to this one.  [1:11:34]

So, that means that I can also be – if I’m on the first floor plan like this, I can switch down to the first floor room finish plan, and it’s going to change the layers and the other context here or the furniture plan.  So, all of these are set up to ignore the zoom, so wherever I’m looking, it will just stay there while I change those settings.  [1:12:03]

So, I demonstrated this redefine option, which is very powerful, as well as the option to say to jump out to the overview.  Now, when would I do an overview or something where it’s not ignoring it?  Well, let’s say that I wanted to be working on the kitchen here.  Let’s get this set up where I want.  Alright, so this is a view that maybe I want to return to from time to time, and maybe I want it to be on the furniture plan because the furniture plan is going to show the lower and upper cabinets and just enough information that I can work out the interior fittings there.  [1:12:49]

So, what I’ll do is I’ll now say to save this current view using the icon button here, and we’ll call this Kitchen Working View.  So, just giving it a custom name, leaving it with these settings, and I’m not going to ignore this, and you can see it’s shown up in the list, just underneath where I was working.  Now, let’s say that I’m on a different plan like this construction document plan, and I’m looking over here, and then I say, “Oh, you know what?  I need to fix something in the kitchen.”  [1:13:35]

So, the simplest thing here is I can just click on Kitchen Working View, and it jumps me into that location with the right layers.  So, I would create some specialized views that take you to an area.  Maybe it’s a corner of the building that needs some work or the entrance.  Maybe it’s an overview of the whole building.  Maybe it’s an overview of the whole site, but use that selectively.  For most of the working views I have, ignore zoom so that when I switch to those different settings, I don’t end up jumping around and losing my place, so to speak.  [1:14:19]

So, let’s see if there are any other questions here, and I think this is a good place to finish up for the study of the View Map and layer settings and controls and control of elements because we’ve now really gotten a handle on just how to be in the part of the project that you need with the settings that are going to facilitate your work, and the key principles that will just make it just easy to do that.  [1:15:09]

Alright, so I see a thanks from Bob.  Let me know if you have any final questions.  Tomorrow, we have a coaching call as usual, and next week, I think, should be a full week with classes both Monday and Wednesday.  I will be finishing up some of the high-level organizational foundations with a study of attributes and the relationship between different types of attributes, and then we’re going to be going into some of the initial planning of a project.  [1:15:46]

I guess there’s one other thing, which is a general principle that we’re going to be looking at – some core principles about modeling in a way that gets you the best results.  So, probably next week, we’ll have 2 lessons, and then we’ll be starting to go more into the workflow of a project.  OK, so I see a bunch of thanks.  I will have an announcement about a job board.  This is slightly off-topic, but definitely related to the world of ARCHICAD.  [1:16:27]

I am setting up a new job board on the ARCHICADuser website.  This will make it easy for people to post jobs and to post resumes or their CV, and hopefully to connect.  There are some other ones out there, but I have some ideas that I think may make this more useful globally, and I think there’s a need for it, so I’m going to go ahead and launch it, and it’ll be free, at least for a while.  I’ll see whether it’s something that possibly becomes a business, but right now, it’s just going to be a free resource.  So, look for an announcement on that soon.  Thanks for joining me today.  I’ll be back again with more soon.  Bye.  [1:17:22]