2020 | 031 – Fast Track – Precise Placement via Guides, Ruler and Constraints

Hey, welcome, everyone, to the ARCHICAD Best Practices 2020 training course.  Today is May 15^th, 2019, and I’m back with you again.  Sorry I had to cancel Monday’s session because of my wife’s medical issue.  She was stung by a bee over her eye, on her eyebrow, on Mother’s Day – on Sunday, and by the Monday – 24 hours later, her face had just swollen up, and she couldn’t even open her eye.  She looked terrible, and I took her to the doctor and got a prescription for Prednisone, which is an anti-inflammatory and was also instructed for Benadryl, and anyway, she’s quite a bit better now, but it was a little bit scary because the reaction was quite extreme.  [0:00:56]

So, anyway, we are back, and we’ll be looking today at a new section of the course, focused on optimizing your working methods.  So, we started the course back in the beginning about organizing the projects and time-savers in terms of the structure of the project.  Now, we’re going to be looking at the on-screen controls that we have that can speed up your work, make sure it’s done more precisely, and just generally get your job done with ease.  [0:01:32]

So, as you probably have noticed if you’ve been checking out the recordings of the course materials, I’ve reorganized it into sections as opposed to just one long list.  So, for example, the Site Modeling section that we had went through 6 or 7 lessons here is all grouped, and conceptual design, etc.  So, it’s going to make it a little easier to focus in on different categories.  So, with this one, we’re going to be starting our section on on-screen time savers.  I haven’t quite figured out what I’m going to title this section, but it’ll definitely be the best practices for running things and drawing things and getting things placed the way you need them.  [0:02:27]

So, let’s look at the feedback here.  Alright, so thank you all for using Slack.  If you’re not familiar with Slack, I’ll just repeat the usual message, which is to go to bobrow.com/slack, fill in your email address, and you’ll be given instructions for how to connect up, and within a minute or two, you’ll be here in the general channel, and then you can go to channels and click on 2020, where the course discussion is held.  [0:03:03]

Alright, so Tom, Gestur, Lou, Zlatko, Roger, etc.  Alright, thank you.  What have I heard about ARCHICAD 23?  Alright, so ARCHICAD 23 was announced this week by Graphisoft.  I think I saw it yesterday.  It seems like they’re focusing on speed and some other optimizations, of course.  If we go to the announcement here, they’re showing some new examples of ARCHICAD in use.  I think it’s with some very complex columns and beams that are used in certainly some commercial architecture and some interesting designs.  [0:03:47]

They’re also featuring or focusing on BIM in an instant, with the idea that ARCHICAD will more quickly respond.  So, speed is certainly a focus there.  So, all I know is what I see on these announcements.  They will be having a demonstration streamed live on June 4^th at the Graphisoft key client office.  I’m hoping to go there.  I haven’t confirmed that I’ll be attending, but I’m interested in doing that, so we’ll see what happens with this, and usually they release the software towards the end of June in the U.S. and international versions, and then distribute around the world in other language versions over the following few months.  [0:04:45]

So, I’m expecting that probably will be the case this time.  I was not involved in beta testing the software, so I don’t have any hands-on knowledge of it.  I know of at least one course member who was involved with beta testing, but he hasn’t told me anything about it, so they, of course, have some non-disclosure agreements for anyone who’s involved in beta testing, so generally people that that pretty seriously and don’t really discuss their experience until after Graphisoft announces it, and now it’s public, so we’ll probably get some more details dripped out to us over the next couple of weeks and then see a demonstration on June 4^th.  [0:05:30]

Alright, so let’s see what we’ve got here today.  I’m going to be looking at aligning and placing elements.  Now, if you’ve been using ARCHICAD for any period of time, then you’re very familiar with placing elements and getting them to work together.  Sometimes, it’s good to go back over the basics.  I went back through some of the Graphisoft materials and guide lines and snap points and realized that I have some keyboard shortcuts that I had not been using, and now that I have reminded myself of them, I’m going to use them more.  [0:06:07]

So, we’ll be going over the basics of guide lines and snap points and just making sure that you’re taking full advantage of them.  Let’s see here.  So, let’s go and just see if there’s any other comment.  Alright, so thank you for the good wishes about my wife’s health.  Yes, she is doing much better.  OK, so let’s go to ARCHICAD 22.  I’m going to actually put my notes off to the side so I can stay on track here.  Alright, so I’ll just use this project here as a starting point for giving some context to this.  Let me just turn off the rulers here since we’re going to be looking at rulers a little bit later.  [0:07:02]

I’m going to just get this all ready here.  Alright, so there’s an icon up here that is in the main tool bar in probably all versions of ARCHICAD in recent years that turns guide lines on or off. If I click on it here, you can see this is now un-highlighted, and on the sides and top and bottom, we don’t see the icons that we had a minute ago.  If I click on this, you can see that we have these icons for the guide lines.  [0:07:41]

Now, the guide lines are two types.  There are lasting guide lines, and then there are temporary guide lines and snap points.  The temporary ones will show up while you’re working in any particular drawing or editing operation and then disappear. The lasting ones will stay until you either erase them or hide them, and then they will be available for future reference.  [0:08:11]

So, let’s just look at the very basics of it. I’m going to zoom in on a point here. If I’m in a drawing tool – we have to be in a drawing tool whether it’s the Line tool, the Wall tool, or something else.  Then, when I hover over an edge, we’ll see that it should highlight in blue. That is an indication that ARCHICAD is paying attention to this edge, and if I go along this edge, then I can see a snap that gives me the Mercedes symbol.  [0:08:46]

If I go along this edge here, for example, then it will give me the snap, and then when I get to this intersection, I can say I’d like to start drawing this line here.  Now, if I wanted it to be in line with some other point, perhaps – let’s just drag this down.  Maybe we want to have it go to the center of the door, and if I hover over a node point, you can see we get a special snap point.  So, this snap point then will tell ARCHICAD when I hover over it for more than about a second and a half as the default that I’m interested in this point.  [0:09:31]

So, now if I move the mouse away from it, you can see it’s in line with it here, and of course, I can find the intersection point.  You can see the little snap, so that line, of course, is rather arbitrary.  It starts in line with this, and it goes to that point there, so that was an arbitrary type of drafting exercise.  I’ll just undo that.  Now, you notice that the guide lines have disappeared from the screen.  I can always get them back by hovering over a point like this or an edge and then getting the implied lines.  [0:10:04]

Now, if I want to have a lasting guide line – one that I can snap to, I can drag from the guide line area – the tab on the side of the screen or the top or bottom, and then I get an orange line.  So, the colors that these are set up in the Options menu work environment under – let’s see.  I think it may be under on-screen options here, and we have colors.  Actually, maybe it’s under the input constraints and guides, and here are the guide line colors and the snap guide colors that we’re seeing, the orange and the blue.  [0:10:46]

So, if you prefer it or you’re colorblind or some other issues, you could change that.  Now, you’ll notice that the highlight as snap reference is set at 1 ½ seconds, which is the default and works pretty well for most purposes.  If you’re a little slow on doing things in terms of you not being as fast using the mouse, you might want to extend that a little longer so it doesn’t give you a guide line on screen when you’re just looking at things and moving slowly.  [0:11:19]

On the other hand, if you’re really a quick action-taker and just can’t stand waiting for the line to come up, you could cut that down to a second or something even less.  Now, there is a shortcut here, if you don’t want to change the setting here, but you simply want to get the guides to show up more quickly.  If you hover over a point and then use the Q key – so, I’ll just hit Q.  You can see how that instantly came on, and I’ll just go to another corner point here, and as I hover over it, I’ll just hit Q, and you can see how it instantly comes on.  [0:11:55]

So, the Q key is available for the guide lines for the snap points, and of course, now I can go and pick up this point here and line it up where it’s in line with that other point.  You know, I can find where that intersection is instantly, let’s say.  So, we’ll do the Q key.  Now, the guide lines that we drag in from the edges are infinite.  In other words, if I scroll out, you can see they just keep on going forever.  [0:12:27]

Now, sometimes you want to have a guide line that is a limited size because you actually want to snap to a certain distance or interval or spacing in an area.  So, for example, if I wanted to put in something like – I’ll just do something arbitrary in this case.  I’ll say that I want to put in a column that was halfway between or in the center of this room, or I wanted to space the text in the center of it.  What I can do is I can draw a guide line segment, create a guide line segment, or there’s a keyboard shortcut.  On the Mac it’s Shift+L, so in other words, it’s the capital letter L.  On Windows, I think it may be Alt+L, but you can look at the indicator here.  [0:13:19]

So, when I select that, then my cursor changes to indicate that I’m drawing a guide line rather than drawing a line or a wall or something like that.  I can then go from this point to that point.  Now, this is an orange guide line, but it’s not infinite.  It just goes from one point to another, and because it does have a fixed length, I can hover over it, and you can see different things show up. You’ll see this orange handle, which will show up, but if I wanted to place this line at the halfway point, let’s see if we have this set up to be halfway here.  [0:14:02]

If I go over this, we should have a snap. There’s the snap point there.  No?  OK, here’s the snap point.  Sorry. That’s the snap point.  So, I could, for example, snap at that point.  If I wanted to put in some text at that point, I can hover over it and find this, double-click, and then say centered text.  Now, if you are putting in an element, whether it’s a column or text, all elements that you’re working with when you place them have geometry methods, and the geometry method for text here – now, why am I not seeing my info box?  [0:14:53]

Let me just hit the – ah, here’s the info box.  If I wanted the text to be centered, I would want to align the text so that multiple lines were centered over each other, and I’d want to put the anchor point – the point that I click on, to be centered. Now, if I go and maybe turn off the background, turn off the outline, and turn off all of these extra stylings, then when I go over this, and I double-click here, we can see I just put text.  So, you can see that that text is now centered in this point, or if I were to go to the Column tool here and, again, use the anchor point and say I want to put it in centered, now when I hover over this, we should have that center point here.  [0:15:46]

So, that is exactly centered in there.  So, that’s a common question.  “I have an area, and I’d like to place something along a certain spacing, or I’d like to place something halfway.”  Those are controlled by our snap guides that can be set up for halfway or other divisions, but right now, we’re focused just on the guide lines and the fact that this line here is now available for snapping.  Now, right now we’ve got just a couple of guide lines showing.  Of course, I could drag in other ones in line with different points here, and you might end up with your screen filled with these guide lines.  [0:16:32]

Obviously, when you need them, they’re good, but there are times when you want to clear them out.  You don’t want to see them because they’re just getting in the way, and you’re accidentally snapping to things that you don’t necessarily want to.  So, how can you remove the guide lines?  Well, there’s 2 ways you can do that.  You can either hit the letter L, which will temporarily hide them all.  You can see that they’ve all just disappeared from this screen, and the guide line tabs in the side of the screen have disappeared. [0:17:04]

I’ll just hit L again, and now they’re back, or you can erase individual ones.  So, for example, this one here? Maybe we wanted it for one operation, and then we don’t need it anymore.  It’s just going to get in the way visually.  So, what we can do is we can right-click on it here.  Let’s see.  So, if we hover over this guide line, we have some options.  So, the handle here allows us to move a guide line over.  [0:17:39]

Now, in this case, moving this particular one over would not make any sense, and I can move this back to a position there. Unfortunately, I don’t think that you can select it and stretch it again into position.  So, that’s a little bit of a limiting factor, and you may just want to remove it.  So, how would you remove it?  If you right-click on the handle, you’ll see that there are some options, for example, to remove this guide line here, and that guide line will disappear.  [0:18:13]

You can also right-click in the guide lines tab and say you’d like to remove all guide lines, and they’ll all disappear. This is different than hiding them. This is actually just getting rid of them, and then you’d be starting fresh.  You can also say you’d like to erase one or more guide lines. When you choose Erase Guide Lines, you can then get this eraser icon and hover over and click on guide lines and keep clicking until you’ve cleared up as many as you want.  Hitting the Escape key will cancel that operation.  [0:18:50]

Now, if you do have multiple guide lines, and I’ll just sort of do some other ones here, and by the way, you can drag them from any direction, and then when you’re hovering over an edge, it will just realign to that edge.  In fact, if you have a circular shape, and we don’t have anything circular right now, but let’s just say that we had this particular step that was rounded or something like that – not sure why you would do that from a design perspective, but let’s just say that it was rounded here.  [0:19:29]

We had some rounded part.  Then, the guide line can actually be curved. This is not something that’s obvious, but as we hover over this, you can see that we can now get a circular guide.  Now, if it was a very long, graceful arc, we would just have on screen what looks like an arc, but ultimately, it is a circle.  It reminds me, actually, of rainbows.  Did you know that a rainbow – arc in the sky, actually is a full circle?  It’s just that usually half or more of it is below the ground, but if you were on an airplane, I think you would probably see it.  [0:20:08]

I don’t know if you see it in space, but anyway, it is a full circle.  OK, so this allows us to snap, of course, to the continuation of that arc.  Now, if I go here and I say to erase the guide lines, I can also drag through guide lines.  You can see this little visual appearance, and as I drag across it, you can see it’s just erasing anything in its path, and I can just keep going.  So, if you had guide lines in a certain area that you didn’t want, but you wanted to keep the other ones you’ve drawn, that would be a great way to do that, and remember, you can hit the Escape key at any time just to cancel the operation for that.  [0:20:53]

Now, let me just hover over this guide line, go to the handle.  If you have a circular guide line, you can go and actually stretch it bigger. You can see what it’s doing here.  It is taking the same center point and just making it bigger, so that can be useful sometimes. Now, if you want to get rid of it, you can drag it to the trash can icon that would appear in the guide line tab.  [0:21:23]

So, normally you don’t see a trash can there, but if you’re dragging a guide line, and you bring it to the top, bottom, or sides of the screen, it will show you a trash can.  You can drop it in there.  So, that’s another shortcut.  So, let’s just see what we’ve covered here.  So, we’ve shown basic short-term temporary guides, getting a snap with the dashed blue line – the temporary guides, the Q key, which will show it immediately so you don’t have to wait that 1 ½ seconds, and the L key which will turn guide lines on or off here, and Escape in general, as you know, will cancel a current operation, including creating a new guide line.  [0:22:23]

Now, you can also remove an individual guide line if you hover over that guide handle and hit Escape.  So, I didn’t demonstrate that.  Now, the lasting guide lines – I was demonstrating that you can drag it from the guide line tab or the ruler.  We’re going to look at the ruler in a moment, and you can let go to place it on a point or an edge, and it can be a curved edge, and this actually works in 3D as well.  [0:22:48]

So, if we were to go in 3D, and let’s just take our AXO view here, and if we wanted to have something in line with the face of this wall, if I’m drawing with the Wall tool, and I hover over an edge like this, you can see the blue line, and now I can go, and I could create a new wall in line with it.  That, of course, is just the first point, but I can also continue along that virtual line.  So, this wall is exactly in line with the face of that wall. [0:23:30]

Of course, we’re looking at the face of the wall rather than the framing line, so there are some limitations when working in 3D. You’re not going to be able to easily find the interior points for an element to align, but in many cases for modeling operations, the face is going to be a useful piece of information.  We can also drag guide lines here from the guide window.  [0:24:01]

So, if I drag this, and I take this in line, you can see how we can get guide lines. If we hover over this properly, now these – let’s see.  Click to place it.  That’s interesting. It should be able to get that. Hover over it there and let go.  There we go.  OK, so now we can see these 2 points in space.  Now, if the edge that I snapped to is a slightly different elevation than that one, then we might not have an intersection point.  That’s interesting.  You’d think that these 2 were exactly in line, and we’d find an intersection, but in general, these 3D guides can be useful for certain types of modeling operations.  [0:24:56]

Again, we can just hit the L key to hide them, the L to reinstate them, and we can hover over one of these, and if we say we don’t want this one, I can go to the handle and hit the Escape key, and it will  make it go away.  So, let’s see here.  So, we’ve already gone to creating a guide line segment, which would be a lasting segment.  In other words, it will stay there until you get rid of it as opposed to just being in place while you’re looking at it or drafting.  [0:25:35]

Now, moving the guide lines – why would you move a guide line?  Earlier, I just sort of grabbed the one in the center of the room and moved it and didn’t make any sense, but let’s just say that you wanted to have an offset for something.  This can be a great way to do that.  So, if we wanted to draw an interior wall a certain distance from another wall, what I could do is I could drag a line to either the framing or the face of the wall.  [0:26:12]

Let’s see if we go and just hover over this line here and grab the handle and move the handle.  Move this to the framing line there.  OK, or to move this to the face of the wall.  Let’s put this into a hairline so we can see that a little bit better, and then if I hover over this line here and grab this, I can move this.  Now, you notice that we have the tracker.  So, I can just type in and hit a number – 10 feet, and hit Enter, and that will give me a snap 10 feet from that point.  [0:26:56]

So, then, of course, it could be easy to pick up the settings of an interior wall like this and draw a wall here.  Now, again, face of framing or the face of the wall – whatever is your current wall setting that you’ve got, and sometimes you may need to flip this to say that you want so much space between these framing lines here.  [0:27:20]

So, that’s why dragging the guide line can be so powerful is that you can place it on a known point and then literally just drag it some distance away and have that as a reference for the next operation or a series of operations.  OK, so now, removing and hiding guide lines – I’ve already shown that.  If you cancel it in the middle of your operation, you can hit Escape.  You can also hover over the orange handle and hit Escape.  [0:27:58]

You can drag the guide line to the guide line tab and drop it into the trash can or right-click on the handle.  Let’s see, so right-click on the handle and choose remove guide line, and then you do have that context menu in the guide line tab that offers options, including to erase all of them, or I guess you can remove all or erase guide lines one by one.  OK, and then the L shortcut there.  So, that’s it for guide lines that I can think of for now. We’re going to move on to the Ruler tool, and let’s just see if there are any questions before I leave this main focus.  [0:28:56]

Alright, so Taren says, “Is there a way to copy or drag a guide line so that the guide line remains at the original location, but the new one gets dragged to the new location?”  That’s interesting. Let’s just try that, and another question – “If you dimension to the midpoint or endpoint of a fixed-length guide line, and then you erase a guide line, will the dimension string go away?”  You know, I’ve never tried dimensioning to a guide line.  A guide line is definitely something that is not part of your model.  It is a guide for putting things into your model, so in general, I would think you’d want to have an element there. [0:29:36]

Now, dimensioning to an element – of course, the most common thing is you’re going to go to the Dimension tool and find an element, whether it’s the end of a wall here, and you can see how it highlights this, or the end of a staircase or a door, etc., and then double-click and put in this measurement here.  [0:30:03]

OK, so these are referencing certain points.  If I hover over this point, you can see that it highlights the element that it’s referencing, and this one as well.  This one? I notice that although it’s snapping to the corner of the railing, it didn’t actually reference it, so that was one that had a little square instead of a round bullseye.  Still accurate, but if this railing or the stair changed its position, this would not update.  [0:30:36]

Now, if we wanted to try to dimension to a guide line, let’s just see if that’s even possible.  If I go and drag a guide line to here, and we’ll just drag guide lines here.  Alright, so if I go to the Dimension tool, and I hover over this and click, you can see how it allows me to place a point in space, and I can place a point in space here and even dimension this, but these are just associated with points in space, in the same way that I can dimension any 2 points here and place a dimension arbitrarily.  [0:31:22]

So, they aren’t associated with the guide lines, unlike when I hover over an element like a wall, and you can see that if you look closely at it, and unfortunately, I can’t blow this up on-screen, but it will be a round bullseye, and if it’s a round bullseye, and let’s just go and dimension another one to here, then, of course, moving the wall – I’m just trying to get this to pay attention to me here.  So, I move this wall, and you can see that, of course, these 2 dimensions updated.  [0:32:02]

Now, if I grab this guide line or this guide line here, which is dimensioned, and move it, the dimension doesn’t change because it’s not attached to the guide line.  Now, your other question would be “Can I drag a copy of it?”  So, if I press down and right-click on it, we don’t have any options for dragging a copy, so if I drag this, and I use the Option key, there.  Yes, you can see I pressed and released the keyboard shortcut for dragging a copy, and then I can get a plus, and I let go, and we now have 2.  So, of course I can do that a specific distance, and we can have as many of these snaps on screen as we like.  [0:32:51]

So, the answer your first question is that you drag it, and then you use the Option or Alt.  On the Windows, I think it’s the Ctrl key.  You press and release that, you get a plus, and then you can drag a copy, and you can probably use the option to drag – let’s see if I have to go to the handle, and then you can use Option+Command – let’s see.  No, it looks like you can’t.  I was trying to drag a copy, and it looks like when I hit Option+Command, which would normally drag multiple copies, it actually didn’t accept that, but you can drag individual ones, for sure.  [0:33:41]

So, let’s just go here, right-click on this to get the context menu, so I’m hovering over the tab and right-click, and I can say to remove all guide lines here, and now we’ll have our screen a little bit clearer.  OK, so Taren says thank you.  Good questions.  Alright, let me just get rid of these elements here.  Now, again, just a little quick shortcut.  If I wanted to select all of these elements and get rid of them, if I hover over the center area and try to drag a marquee selection arrow around it, unfortunately, I’ll be dragging something.  [0:34:26]

You can see, in this case, the slab because it is underneath my cursor, and it is a volume that is sensitive when you have Quick Select active.  If I turn off Quick Select and click, I can then actually select a bunch of things like this and delete them.  Now, you can do this on the fly, again, just a tip many of you are very familiar with, but some of you are not.  [0:34:56]

You can see the Quick Select.  If I press the spacebar temporarily, that goes off, so now I can go and select things here and delete, and I did not select the slab. The slab did not move and was not selected, so it didn’t get deleted, etc.  So, that’s the spacebar, which will turn the Quick Select on or off temporarily.  Spacebar, again, is not the Shift key.  It is the key you use between words in a sentence.  Often, people get confused.  Where the spacebar?  I don’t know what you mean, but obviously, we use it all the time for typing.  [0:35:35]

Alright, we are going to move on to the Ruler and the Measure tool.  Alright, so the Ruler, I think, used to be more important, but I think it’s rarely used.  I certainly rarely use it, but there are times when it is very helpful.  So, how do you use the ruler, and what options does it give you?  So, if I go to the View menu, you can see ruler command is available.  It’ll bring up these little guides on the side of the screen.  Now, the numbers here relate to your current working dimensions.  So, if you’re in metric, it will be showing metric information.  If you’re in feet and inches, it will show feet, or if you zoom in, it may show more information than just feet.  [0:36:32]

Now, as I am selecting something here, we’re not seeing any particular feedback here, although you can see as I move my cursor, this little moving bar, and it’s actually moving up above as well, so in other words, these little tiny indicators can give us some visual help, but an interesting thing, sometimes, is to right-click on the ruler, and let’s see. If we just his Escape, right-click on it, and say Cursor Projection.  When you do that, now you can see as I move my mouse around that I get these long dotted lines, and if I hover over a point, I can look at it on the side.  [0:37:18]

So, right now, this is at 16 ½, and I go up to this point, and it’s at 28 ½, so you can just move around.  Now, if I zoom out here and move this around, you can see that I’m still getting that feedback.  There’s fewer numbers because everything is a little closer.  Now, it’s just giving the numbers every 5 feet there, but certainly as you’re looking at things on a site or some diagram where you’re just not quite familiar with the overall size and dimensions, this can be useful.  [0:37:52]

Now, if I zoom in on a particular area, like this, you can see how it will expand out, and just like any traditional ruler, between 33 feet and 34 feet, now there are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.  So, it’s actually dividing it up in half and quarters, etc., as opposed to inches.  Maybe if we zoom in a little bit more, it might get to inches.  I don’t know.  Obviously, just seeing dots on here gives you some reference, but if you want the size of a particular element, what you’ll want to do is use the Measure tool.  [0:38:35]

So, again, most of you are familiar with the Measure tool, but I just wanted to do a quick refresher.  If you click on the Measure tool, you can click on a point and go to another point, and you can see that it’s giving us a distance here, and if I then continue to another point here, we can see another distance.  Now, the grey area that we’re seeing on screen is the area between the first and the last point.  If we were to do a polygon, and that gives us the actual area.  [0:39:09]

Now, in this case, it’s sort of irrelevant, but let’s just see how that works in a room, for example, or a site.  Now, again, you see all of these guide lines here, showing up?  If I hit the L key, those guide lines will disappear. Let’s see. I think – that’s interesting.  L?  Well, they did temporarily disappear, but they’re still there.  Anyway, let me just hit Escape, and we’ll just look at the Measure feedback.  [0:39:46]

If I hit M, that activates the Measure tool, and then I can go here, and this is 11’-7”, and this distance here is 9’-3 ¾”, and you can see the cumulative distance and area displayed.  If I go over to this other corner in the shaded area, now we can see the area is 108.36.  So, 108 square feet here.  Now, I can just hit Escape to cancel it, or you can hit the M key – the keyboard shortcut, but these cursor projections certainly are useful in some cases when you’re looking at something that you’re not in general familiar with the sizing, and you just want to get some quick checkpoints on how far things are from each other without necessarily using the Measure tool.  [0:40:38]

To turn this off, we right-click in the ruler and turn off Cursor Projection.  Now, if I right-click here, and I turn off the ruler, then it will disappear, just like going up to the menu, under the View menu, and you can bring it back under the View menu.  There’s no built-in keyboard shortcut for the ruler, but you can add one if you wanted to bring it in and out frequently from the keyboard.  [0:41:05]

Now, the working units option here is exactly the same as going to the options menu, project preferences, working units.  It does allow you to change the way that your tracker and your Measure tool are giving feedback.  So, if you wanted to measure on a site, and particularly in the U.S., you’re going to be measuring things for a site, typically with decimal feet, so 108.37 feet as opposed to 108’-4” – things like that.  You can switch here.  [0:41:40]

This is just a temporary change of how the tracker and the Measure tool will read.  The same thing goes for areas and volumes.  If you need to, and of course, this is when if you were going to input a drawing in surveyor’s units, this is where you could set it.  So, you can get to this command here using the ruler, or you can get to it under the options, project preferences, working units.  It gets to exactly the same place there.  [0:42:11]

I’ll just hide the ruler here.  So, this little prompt came up and got in the way of that, so I’ll just hide the ruler there.  OK, so let’s just see what we’ve got.  Oh, you can also drag new guide lines from the ruler, so you can, if we do have the ruler showing, then you can literally drag in a guide from the ruler.  Let’s see.  If I press down on it here, this is not doing it.  I know I’ve done that before.  Oh, you know what?  Guide lines are turned off.  That’s why.  If I hit L, now guide lines are available.  [0:43:00]

Now, I can go and drag from the ruler, so it’s pretty much the same as dragging from this little tab, but you can do it from any part of the ruler there.  Alright, so let us see.  I think I’ve got all the stuff from the ruler and the measure.  Let me know if you have any questions on this.  I’ve been going very quickly through it because it should be familiar, and I’ve covered similar topics already in other parts of the course, but it’s sometimes good just to go back over things, like that L shortcut.  I had forgotten about it, and that is really an essential one to know that you can hide guide lines temporarily or show them using the L shortcut.  [0:43:45]

The Q, if you’re impatient, you can hover over points and just, in quick succession, hit Q each time you hover over it, and you’ll get those little snap circles or the snap guides to show up there.  So, let’s see if there’s any comments or questions before I proceed.  Ah, so Chris says, “Can you set zero on the ruler?” I believe you can. Let’s just see how that would work here.  [0:44:19]

So, yes, see, this is 38 feet.  There is the – it is this one here. This is the user origin.  So, the origin of all reference in a project is called project zero.  You can’t move project zero because it’s just the definition of where everything is – the point in space that you’re measuring from inside ARCHICAD, whenever you draw or place anything.  However, you can change the origin of your measurements temporarily to anywhere you like.  [0:44:58]

So, if I click on this user origin and then place it – let’s just say at this corner here, you can see this little black dot shows up, and notice that the zero is showing up here, so this is now the zero point for that.  Now, if we were to go to the Measure tool – just hit M, and now when I’m hovering over this, you can see that it’s measuring from that bottom corner that I placed the user origin at.  [0:45:30]

So, you can see that it says it’s a certain distance.  It’s 10’-2 ¾” or about 3 ½ meters from that corner there, but if horizontally it’s in line, the X displacement is zero.  So, I can just move around.  So, this is actually a very good thing to use the user origin position to be able to just hover over points, and without even clicking the Measure tool, just see how far things are and whether they’re in line with each other, like is this corner point here in line with that corner point?  [0:46:09]

The Y offset, which is the one vertically on screen, is ¾ of an inch, so that’s saying that this interior face corner is not quite in line with that.  Why is that?  Well, it’s because we prioritized that the interior face in the kitchen is continuous, but of course, this is a thinner wall than the insulated exterior wall.  So, certainly sometimes it’s just great to be able to quickly measure distances from a point of interest.  So, that is the user origin.  [0:46:48]

By the way, let me turn off the Measure tool here.  I can place that user origin by clicking and clicking again.  So, click on the icon here to set user origin, and click again, but we can also use a keyboard shortcut.  Those of you who have been around ARCHICAD for a long time will probably remember this, but if you’re more recent, even in the last 5 or 10 years, you may not know that you can hold down the Shift and Option or Shift+Alt keys and then hover over a point, and what you’ll see is if I hold down Shift and Option and hover over a point, you can see how the X moved there.  [0:47:28]

You can see the little tiny X.  If I Shift+Option, and I hover over any point that would have a check mark or a snap or node point, I can move the user origin there.  Now, moving the user origin simply affects the display of dimensions in the Measure tool, or if you were to just type in a value where it relates to, normally, regardless of where this is, if I go to the Wall tool, and I click to draw, this is the distance from the edit origin.  [0:48:07]

So, you can see the X at the end of the wall is the start point of this wall, and ARCHICAD naturally, by default, changes from the user origin to the Edit origin for the tracker right on the fly.  It just makes so much sense that it’s just the default, but occasionally, you may need to reference dimensions in relationship to that user origin and maintain that information.  [0:48:39]

So, here’s how we would do that.  I’ll hit Escape, and we’ll see this.  In the tracker controls up here, we can change from relative coordinates in the tracker to coordinates related to the user origin.  So, if I turn that off, and I now click to start this, you can see that this is no longer – well, let’s see.  This is still showing the distance there.  Alright, let’s see.  If we turned off relative coordinates here – that’s interesting.  OK, under the options, work environment, tracker and coordinate input, we can choose to show X Y coordinates relative to user origin in tracker.  [0:49:47]

So, in the rare case when you need to do that, and I would say probably this would happen when you’re doing things with surveys or some other diagram where you’ve got some point information that is in relationship to a specific location in space, then you can at least temporarily show X Y coordinates relative to user origin in tracker.  So, now having done that, if I start, let’s say, the wall here, and it’s just taking a moment to wake up, now you can see – oh, no, OK, this is still showing the distance here.  [0:50:33]

Even though the user origin is down there, let us see.  OK, it’s still relative coordinates in tracker, so it’s the prefer X Y coordinates in tracker as grey.  I’m just going to see.  This is a little diversion because most of the time, you would never use this, but I do want to just get this figured out.  If we go to tracker and coordinate input, this is prefer polar coordinates in tracker during straight vector input.  OK, so obviously, as I draw a wall, most of the time the vector length is what’s of interest – how long that wall is, but if I temporarily turn that off, let’s see if this works.  [0:51:16]

ARCHICAD will reconfigure here, and if I go and click to place a wall, you can see that now the X and Y are showing in relationship to that user origin, and if you look closely in screen, there’s a tiny diagonal line going down through the door – the D03 to that corner point, and as I move around here, you can see that diagonal line is attached to the origin, and so that way, I can see its relationship to that, and if I wanted the X offset to make it in line with this, I could just type in X0.  If I wanted it to be 6 inches or half a foot or half a meter to the right or left, I could type in that value and then hit Enter, and that wall – what happened there?  [0:52:15]

There is a snap here.  This is ARCHICAD a little confused here.  There is a wall here.  You can see the Mercedes, but it’s not showing.  Let me just zoom in or out a little bit.  Wow, I can select the wall, but the wall is invisible.  That’s rather odd there.  If I deselect it, it goes away.  So, that appears to be a little buggy.  It may have to do with the Z height or the zed height there.  I’m not going to spend more time investigating that.  I’ll just go back to the work environment, to the tracker and coordinate input, and put it back to the normal default settings where we use polar coordinates, which gives us the length and the angle of the vector, the line or the wall or the edge of a polygon.  [0:53:15]

While we don’t necessarily need to see the X Y coordinates relative to the user origin because we care about our edit origin, the last point we clicked on is usually the edit origin or the end of an element that you’re stretching would be the edit origin, in most cases there.  So, let’s see if we have any other questions on the user origin, since I went off on a little exploration of setting zero on the ruler, and the implications of moving the user origin.  [0:53:54]

So, let’s see if we have any questions here.  I’m going to ask you a question.  Have any of you used that user origin option, or do you use it regularly, and if so, what do you use it for?  I’m interested in knowing whether you’ve taken advantage of it and where it becomes particularly helpful, so type into the questions area.  When do you apply that?  It’d be interesting to see.  [0:54:32]

OK, so I see Henry and Roy say that they don’t use it, but Tom says, “I use it to locate a start point.”  OK, and Blue?  “Use it for references and dimensions.”  OK, so certainly here is a great example that you can do. I’ll just use the Column tool because it’s the simplest thing in terms of just a single point.  If I wanted to put a column, say, a certain distance from a node point.  Let’s say this window.  I’ll say that I want it to be 6 inches over and a foot down.  [0:55:10]

How would I do that?  I would move my measurement origin to the corner here, so you can see how I held down Shift+Alt or Shift+Option and got the measurement origin there, and now when I go to click the column, it will place it wherever my cursor is, but if I wanted this cursor position – whether it’s a wall or a column or anything else – to be a certain distance from that, even before I click, I can type a coordinate, like X.  [0:55:41]

You see that as soon as I type X, it is bringing up the tracker, and I can say I want it to be 6 inches.  Now, if I hit Enter, it would click at 6 inches over, but wherever I happen to be in the Y – just where my mouse was, but if I wanted this to be down 6 inches, or that would be 150 millimeters down from the origin point, I can type in Y and then type in – (minus) because I’m going down, -6”, and of course, -150 for millimeters, and then hit Enter.  [0:56:22]

So, now my X is set up at 6 inches.  My Y is set up as -6 inches, and I hit Enter, and the distance from this column to that corner is exactly 6 and 6.  Now, because the column was set up to be a foot, and 6 inches is half of a foot, and this is the center point, you can see that it actually lines up very neatly in there.  Of course, I could have put in the corner of the column exactly on this, in this case, but this just gives you an example of placing an element from an origin point by moving the user origin and then typing in a value before you place the element, and it could be any element, whether it’s a column, a slab, a wall, etc.  [0:57:16]

So, we’ll just undo that, and let’s see other comments that people have added here.  Alright, so Steve says, “Used it a while back, but no longer.”  Alright, so another reference, just in terms of placing things with dimensions, is if I go to that column, and I’ll just click to place the column.  I’ll just click it on this point, so now, if I wanted to be that specific location that I had, I can drag it.  So, I’m just going to do Command+D or Ctrl+D and then move this, and of course, I could snap it, in this case, to this point because I know that that’s good, but let’s say that I want it to be a foot over and 2 feet down.  [0:58:04]

So, I could say X 1, Y -2 feet, Enter, and you can see that that is moved into a new position.  So, instead of placing a user origin there, sometimes it’s easier to simply drop the element there and then move the element afterward.  Certainly, they are a similar number of keystrokes.  It is just a matter of preference, so if you’re very comfortable with all of that, then sometimes it’s just easier to put it in exactly where you need it right away whereas it sometime is easier for people to say they’ll place it and then move it, and that is pretty quick.  [0:58:54]

OK, so let us see what we’ve got here in my notes.  Alright, so I’m going to add some extra notes here about the user origin to when I put this recording into the number area, I’m going to be putting in some of these little quick notes in there.  So, let’s see.  We are at the hour mark, and I think I’m going to just keep this session today on the short side.  We can finish up, and next time, we’ll be continuing on with some more of the tools and methods that will allow you to quickly place elements and move around on screen.  [0:59:42]

I’m basing this on the original Best Practices course.  We’ll just bring that up as a reference.  In general, the tools and methods that were described in this area still apply, but the interface has, in many cases, changed, so we are looking at Week 13.  We’re looking at guide lines, the ruler, Shift key constraints.  Actually, I’ll tell you what.  I’ll do one more section, which has to do with the Shift key constraints because I think that that is very closely related to this and can be confusing. So, this will be an interesting extension of it.  [1:00:27]

So, we’re going to be looking at these – Weeks 13, 14, and 15 from the original course, bringing them all up to date for just moving more quickly as you’re drafting, as you’re designing and getting things exactly where you need them.  So, let’s go back now, and we’ll take a look at the Shift key and see some interesting variations that not everyone understands, so let’s just do a slab off to the side.  [1:01:05]

Now, if I select this, and I grab this point, you can see that we’ve got this little handle from the user origin. I’m going to go and turn relative coordinates and tracker back on, and you can see that now, we’re not seeing that handle.  So, it’s relative to the point that I just was hovering over.  Now, if I wanted this point to be in line with it, you can see, of course, that I have the dashed blue line.   I can use the Shift key to lock this.  [1:01:48]

So, the Shift key is certainly something that you learn, even as a very beginning user, to keep things straight on the axis.  So, if I have the Shift key held down, I can then hover over something else, make sure that something is in line with any other point, and then click when I’m ready.  Now, the most basic use of it is if we’re drawing the Wall tool, and I’m slightly off, if I press the Shift key down, it will just jump down to that, so you can see that pressing the Shift key locks it on the axis.  When I let go, it’s off the axis.  [1:02:27]

So, I certainly recommend that in general, you use the Shift key anytime you want to have it on the axis, and then you can move your mouse freely to snap to any alignment point.  Now, there are ways to do that using the guide lines, so if I hover over this and get the little cursor here – the little snap point, we can see the snap in line with that.  So, visually, that’s very helpful, but using the Shift key allows me to just literally go and get the snap directly without having to go back up and find the implied intersection there.  [1:03:13]

Now, variations of the Shift key can be confusing, and I’m going to demonstrate that because this is where people can get confused.  If I wanted to bring this down on this angle, it’s no problem.  I have the stripe and the pencil that is the equivalent of the Mercedes edge sensitivity, and I can just click on any point, knowing that it’s right along that edge, and if I wanted it to be a certain distance offset, then I can type in that distance. The tracker shows this.  [1:03:50]

Let’s say if I type in 1, then that’s 1 foot or 1 meter down, or 1 millimeter down in that direction. The angle is locked in on the particular edge that I’m snapped to.  Now, sometimes you need to be able to snap this up to extend it.  So, when I bring this up here, it is very convenient to have the dashed line, and in fact, that’s so much easier than it used to be that I would say it would be a preferred method, but again, you can use the Shift key and then lock this and find some snap with the Shift key.  [1:04:41]

Now, sometimes you’ll find, depending upon the context – let’s just see if I can synthesize an example here.  So, if I go to this point here, I’m trying to think of where this comes up most commonly.  Let’s say that we add in a point there.  No?  OK, I’m just trying to think. There is a concept of what end you’re closest to that is a very important one to recognize.  So, let’s just look at the edit origin concept.  [1:05:34]

When I have a linear vector, and I go to an end point, and I use the Stretch command, we can see that right now, it’s showing the distance of the whole vector, the length of this wall, and I could type in something like 15, and that would say that I would like to click the mouse on a point 15 feet, in this case, about 5 meters from the other end, where you can see the little X is the user origin or the edit origin.  [1:06:08]

Now, on the other hand, if I wanted this to be a certain distance longer or shorter, if I press down the Shift key when I’m doing this operation, pressing down the Shift key, you can see the edit origin is now at the nearby end.  So, now I can, for example, make it 2 feet longer.  I can just type in 2.  Now, here is an interesting issue.  When the Shift key is held down on a laptop keyboard and on certain other types of keyboards, if I press down Shift and type a 1, it’s going to give me an exclamation mark, or Shift+2 is an @, or Shift+3 is the pound sign.  So, the Shift key modified what happens when you press one of the number keys.  [1:07:06]

Now, if you have an extended keyboard with numbers off to the side, that won’t be affected because they don’t have variations in terms of punctuation marks or special characters, but if I wanted to hold down the Shift key and get a number value here, I can keep the Shift key active but switch to tracker input by hitting the character of the coordinate that I’d like to enter.  So, in other words, we see D, distance is highlighted.  I can hold down the Shift key and type D, and you can see how it highlights this.  [1:07:43]

Now, I can let go of my keyboard entirely, and I can type in, let’s say, 2, and that’s going to be 2 feet in the current direction from that edit origin.  So, I’ll hit Enter, and that actually made that exactly 2 feet longer.  So, that edit origin was the closest point of the eligible ones when I press down the Shift key.  So, if I press down here, and I’m stretching, Shift will give me the edit origin there.  [1:08:17]

Now, if I don’t have the Shift key held down, then the edit origin is the other end, and I can type in a value.  Now, if I press down the Shift key when I’m near this end, then you can see regardless, no matter where I go, it’s still giving me the overall distance.  So, sometimes you want to get the overall distance here and use that Shift key referencing the other end, which is further away.  So, where this can get particularly interesting here is let’s say that this point here is not quite in line.  Let me just click again here.  [1:09:03]

This is not quite square.  Now, we can see it’s pretty clear that it’s not square on screen, but there are times when the offset is just a hair, and where you’re trying to get things lined up to be square, and it’s just not working, right?  Things are snapping, and you just can’t figure out why things are not quite square and not lining up. [1:09:34]

Well, if I an zoomed in on it, and I move this so we can see that it’s attached to the other ends of the polygon – the other adjacent node points, but how can I get it to snap where it’s in line with the one on the left here, which is square, but also in line with the one down below, which is not square?  It’s obviously off on an angle.  So, here is the little trick.  [1:10:07]

What I do is I bring it close to this point, press the Shift key, and now you can see it’s locked in to that particular origin.  You can see the X down at the bottom corner, so that is the edit origin that it’s snapping to, and then I can go up here, and I know that it’s going to be exactly 90 degrees in this case.  So, if you ever have a cockeyed situation like that, you can go grab that corner and bring it close to one of the other corners, press the Shift key to lock it straight in line with that edit origin, and then bring it back into position.  [1:10:53]

Now, if you had walls, and this would be a common thing, and I’ll just do a similar thing here.  So, again, these are not square.  I can select both walls and edit them at the same time.  So, I can go to this corner point, and if I move it in or out, you can see how it affects both walls at the same time, as long as they’re both selected.  [1:11:17]

Now, if I wanted this to be in line with that point, I can go down to this vicinity, press the Shift key.  Now, let’s see.  We should be able to – that’s interesting.  OK, so because this line is so far off, when I press the Shift key, it’s jumping to the existing value.  So, let’s see.  The alternate thing would be to hover over this, get the little snap point there, and then we can see the snap.  If I press the Shift key, it is locking it on that there.  [1:12:01]

OK, so that’s what we would need to do is to hover over that point until we get the snap guide or the snap point with the circle around it.  So, the Shift key will be sensitive to the vector, the offset line and angle, from the edit origin.  The edit origin is either the point that you last clicked on – the one that you’re stretching or drawing from, or in the case of a polygon, you can force the edit origin to be one of the neighboring node points when you want to line things up.  [1:12:45]

So, that’s an important thing to realize is that the Shift key has different effects, depending on where you are on screen and which point you’re closest to.  So, I encourage you to experiment a little bit with that so you’re comfortable, particularly when you’re trying to clean up things that are not quite in line with each other, and one general thing – I’ll just drag this into here, and in this case, this is outside these walls, because this wall’s reference line is here.  [1:13:27]

So, it’s a little bit odd because more commonly, you would have a slab going inside the building, but what I wanted to point out is that if the slab is not quite in line – let’s say it’s off line this, sometimes when you select it, and if it’s so close, and you’re trying to snap it, and let’s say that you’re moving it, and you’re trying to get it to snap to some point, sometimes you can’t quite snap because these points are so close on top of each other.  Maybe if it’s like this, and you’re trying to find that point, which point is it?  It’s not quite square.  [1:14:06]

Sometimes, it’s best just to literally move it very far out, and I’ll just zoom out a little bit.  In other words, I’m really taking it away from being in line, and then the only point that’s left, as long as there are no other points here, I can go and drag it back on top.  So, that’s a tip for when there are a bunch of points that are almost aligned but not quite.  Move an end or the actual element away.  Move all of them away until you get one that you know is accurate, and then bring them back and snap carefully.  [1:14:44]

OK, alright, so I see some comments of people having to leave, but also Lew saying, “Needed this one lots of times.”  OK, so that was 4 minutes ago.  So, I think that would relate to that Shift key and the snapping.  So, thank you all for joining me today.  If you have any final comments or questions, please let me know, but we’ll finish up.  [1:15:10]

Thank you, Lew, for your encouragement.  That was a great session.  So, we will continue on next week.  So, tomorrow we have a coaching call for the course members, and if you have any questions about how to apply these best practices principles in practice, please join us for that session.  Send in your project if you want me to take a look at it on screen.  [1:15:36]

So, Steve, thank you for the comment about nice review of some of the easier stuff.  Absolutely easier stuff, but certainly sometimes you forget about things like L key, as I said.  I think I will now use it regularly.  Alright, my pleasure to share this with you. Thanks for joining me today.  Back soon.  [1:16:02]