2020 | 016 – Detailed Modeling Using Complex Profiles and Solid Element Operations

Detailed Modeling Using Complex Profiles and Solid Element Operations

Hey, welcome, everyone, to the ARCHICAD Best Practices 2020 training course.  Today is Wednesday, March 6^th, 2019. Let me know that you can hear me and see my screen, and we’ll get going.  Please use Slack to communicate here.  So, I’m waiting to see some people type in on the 2020 channel in Slack.  Hey, Tom, Sherry. OK, Tracy, Chris.  Alright, thank you for confirming that.  [0:00:43]

So, today we’re going to be continuing on with more about modeling in great detail cleanly so that you can get not only a beautiful accurate model but also very clean, detailed sections, and even detail drawings directly from the model.  We’re going to be taking some more time to go into complex profiles, some of the potential that is built into complex profiles that only some people really push as far as it can go, and we’ll be looking at some of the key principles of working with building materials effectively because, while there are things that are very obvious, there are other things that are a little bit more subtle and trickier to understand.  [0:01:38]

So, we’re going to finish up a couple of things from last time that I had intended to include, and then we’ll be continuing on in this general mode.  So, vectorial hatching on elevations – if I look at, let’s say, an elevation here, we’ll go down to my elevations and bring up one of these. We have the opportunity to show hatch lines, for example.  In this case, we’re seeing hatch lines for the roof.  In some cases, you may see bricks or blocks or stonework.  [0:02:33]

Now, if I zoom in on this roof here, you can see linework is rather thin, but if I go to the View menu, on-screen view options – well, let’s see.  We do have true line weight.  It is rather thin. Now, that is appropriate.  We don’t really want to overemphasize that suggestion of the roof covering, but how do you get control over that?  [0:03:00]

Well, it turns out that first of all, this roof here is made of something – in this case, it’s a composite with framing 2x10 plywood sheathing, and the top surface here has an override that says Shingle Roofing – Gray. So, basically, while this is being done in a simplified fashion, where the plywood at the top is the top surface, and we’re not actually putting in another skin for the shingle, which would obviously be very thin, we’re defining it in terms of the 3D views to have this surface that’s shingle. [0:03:46]

Now, the shingle is a surface that is defined under the options menu, surfaces, and if I go to Shingle Roofing – Gray, because I had this selected, it actually brought it up right away.  I didn’t have to go search for it, but what you’ll notice is that it says this is the vectorial hatch pattern that it’s going to show in the elevation, and it’s going to use the element pen for this.  [0:04:16]

Now, the element pen means that however we drew the roof – whatever this surface is applied to, it’s going to use that, but sometimes you need to override that, and I’ll just demonstrate this.  If I make this pen, say, a thick black one, and say OK, then you can see how this has gotten just a lot thicker.  Let me just go back to the surfaces here, and we’ll make it a red, just so we can see what happens.  [0:05:00]

Now, right now, we’ve got a set for a pen set here that apparently, the red is not showing. Let’s see – view pens, where we’ve got an option for the graphic overrides that is changing the way that the pens are done.  Let’s just turn it to no overrides so we see the raw information here.  So, you can see with no overrides, the red that I just picked is being defined, and the red is – yeah, sort of a medium weight.  If I go back to that surface, and we go back to, say, the black, we’re going to see it being a much heavier weight here, and if we go back to the surface here and say to use the element pen, then it’s going to look at the settings of the actual roof as opposed to the settings of the surface.  [0:06:02]

So, these are some of the controls you have.  You can see how much thinner that is.  Now, the views of this model right now, in terms of the elevation, are controlled by the view settings, and then I manually change the graphic override. I said, “Hey, let’s not override the graphics, the settings in the elevation marker.”  If I double-click on the view again, then it’s going to put it back to the settings where it’s got some overrides and where it’s actually turning off the shading that would make it a colored elevation.  [0:06:44]

Now, let’s look just at the settings.  When it says the element settings, what does this mean?  If I go and open up the roof settings – so, this is the roof that I’ve got drawn here, it’s saying that in terms of the model, it’s overriding the surface here.  The – interesting.  OK. This piece of roof here is the sheathing only. So, in this particular area of the roof, I’m defining it simply with the top surface of the roof. You can draw a roof as a composite, or you can draw it as a possibly separate skin for the top surface, and in this case, it is just the sheathing here.  [0:07:46]

So, in fact, I was not reading it correctly when I was describing that a couple of minutes ago.  The reason why this particular model is set up this way is that we can have the framing space where we have the rafters and possibly insulation, etc., that goes over the main part of the building, but where it extends past the façade of the house, in this case, we have just the plywood sheathing, and of course, there would be roofing material on top of that, and by doing it this way, we have a continuous top surface for elevations in 3D views, but we actually can have the rafter tails exposed that would be ornamental supports for the extended eaves.  [0:08:40]

So, in this case, it’s being drawn with this particular composite, and if I go and say to just open this – select this again, and say that I’d like to look at the settings for that composite, we can see the settings for the various parts here.  Now, I’m just looking. I’ve just got a little bit sidetracked here, and I apologize, in terms of the settings for the vectorial hatching linework, and this is something that I think I have gone down a little rabbit hole.  [0:09:26]

Let’s see. We have floor plan and section here.  The uncut line pen? Alright, I think that this cover fill pen that’s on the plan and these lines here – these are various controls, so I’m going to stop here from trying to go into too much detail on this particular area that I had intended to just do a small aside.  The main thing is that if you need to control the linework of things – and we’ll go to, let’s say, a different elevation.  [0:10:06]

Let’s go to one of the ones that has the stonework in it, and so, for example, this stonework here – if I open up the composite and profile here, this is the wall with that stone.  So, this stone is made of a building material called Stone – Ledger Stone.  So, if we look at the building material sort of by name, so I can see Stone – Ledger Stone, it’s using a surface called Stone – Finish Ledger Stone. That’s what defines that particular appearance in a texture as well as linework, and if we then go to the surfaces for – I see.  [0:11:08]

If we go to surfaces for the stone, Finish – Ledger Stone here, we’re drawing this with a pen 103.  So, pen 103 is one that I chose because it had a color.  Here’s the actual color here for that stonework.  So, that’s what would give a color if we had the elevation set up without overrides.  So, we’re going to go to the no overrides, and we’re going to see the color here.  [0:11:49]

So, the color is set in this particular case, based on the building material and the natural surface that’s associated with that building material.  The thickness of this is actually larger or heavier in this mode.  If I switch to the elevation setting, we can see that this overrides the color but leaves the thickness to be more prominent, let’s say, than the roof.  [0:12:21]

So, the main thing is that if you want clean working drawings, you need to understand where the controls are for the drawing of lines, and this is one particular area where it’s a little bit subtle because it’s controlled by the surface and also, of course, it’s overridden by the graphic overrides where you say, “Hey, do I want color or not?”  [0:12:47]

Now, that was one thing that was originally fitting into the last lesson. Let me look at one other area which just has to do with the general use of Solid Element Operations and complex profiles.  So, for example, we’ll go to a section here. Now, we can see in the section that we’ve got a terrain mesh. Now, the terrain mesh follows certain topographic contour lines, but it is excavated out underneath the house in order to get, obviously, a clear representation of how this building is constructed.  [0:13:36]

Now, the two things I’m going to point out here – one is that this shape here is a complex profile, so we’re just going to go, and let’s see if I select just the complex profile, if I can then say to edit it and take a look, and we’ll see that we’ve got this part here made of concrete, and then we have some framing up here, and a trick – which I’ll look at in a little bit more detail later today and then in greater detail when we go into complex profiles as a separate topic, but this framing is made up of several distinct pieces to create the linework.  [0:14:24]

The point right now is that in this drawing, this is clearly in front of or actually excavated out of the terrain.  That’s done with the Solid Element Operations.  So, this little rectangle here is a symbol that there is a Solid Element Operation or a connection to other elements involved.  If I press down on it or click on it, you can see that it says Solid Element Operations, and it mentions the particular target – the element that’s associated with it, and if I hit the X for either one of the items listed – because you can have multiple ones, or at the top here, it will disable or basically remove that association.  [0:15:17]

Now, if I click on that to remove it, what’s going to happen is that these two elements now will pass through each other.  So, we’ll just see how that works in a moment.  It’s just giving me a beach ball while it’s setting up the first bookkeeping for Undo operations on this file.  While I’m doing that, let me just see if there are any questions or comments in Slack here.  [0:15:48]

OK, everybody just saying hello.  So, you can see here that the terrain is now passing through that area.  So, that is the way that this was done. I basically had in the Design menu, Solid Element Operations palette. It’s brought up, and you can then say that you’d like to make this element – the terrain mesh, the target, and this element – the footing wall – the operator, and then we use a simple subtraction to say to just take out where they intersect, and I say execute, and you see within a few seconds, that it’s cleared that area out.  [0:16:35]

Now, the other thing that is a little bit more subtle here is the fact that the terrain has been excavated down below grade for the airspace underneath the building.  Now, in order to do that, there is an element that is currently not visible. Let’s see.  When I hover over this, you can see this is a wall. This is one of the other walls, just like this is a wall here. We’re looking at the back end of the far side there, but if I go to turn on layers, and let’s see.  I changed the layers to building only.  [0:17:26]

Let’s see. We’ll do Building Only SEO Visible.  Let’s see what that shows there.  Now, that layer combination turns off the site. It’s a building only, but we should have – let’s see. If we have the slab here, what we’re seeing here that is a little bit hard to tell visually is a slab. This slab is on a layer that’s specially designed for Solid Element Operations, so it is used as an operator to modify the model, but it’s not normally seen, and what is this slab doing?  Well, it’s going to be subtracting out the area of the mesh.  [0:18:22]

So, let me go back to the layers and manually turn on the mesh terrain here so we can see this.  So, you can see that here is the mesh terrain, and it has a Solid Element Operation when I hover over it. I’ll click on it, and you can see there’s a whole bunch of different operators or things that it’s being affected by.  Basically, all of the elements that are buried in the soil are being subtracted out of it. [0:18:57]

Now, if I hover over this area right here, that’s the wall. Let’s see. The slab is here. Now, I know that I had that layer for the Solid Element Operation visible, and we were seeing that slab a minute ago. Yeah, that is there, and if I go to slabs, select all slabs here – OK, so this slab is the – that’s the mesh.  OK, so sometimes it’s hard to see this in a Solid Element Operation. What I’m going to do is just do a 3D view specifically of only the layers that I want to show you for this particular purpose.  [0:19:55]

So, I’m going to go to the layer settings and select them all and hide them, then deselect, and in this case, for presentation purposes, I’m going to say to show just the terrain mesh.  So, this is under see mesh terrain here and the Solid Element Operation here.  Now, what you’ll see is I’ve got the terrain with its natural grade, and you can see all the little holes where the footings have been placed, but what you may not quite see at first is this element. That is a slab.  [0:20:48]

Now, what is this slab? You just see some linework there when I select it.   This slab is the one I was referring to earlier. It’s made out of airspace – strong, so this is a building material that’s specially designed to just create a void – to create a hole in elements.  You can use this to create a shaft in the middle for ventilation or for HVAC duct work to be run through. In this case, it’s being used to excavate out underneath the main part of the building.  [0:21:26]

Now, this particular element here – you can see that it has a Solid Element Operation where it was subtracted from the mesh.  If I turn that off by, say, removing that operation temporarily, I can click the X here, and you see that now, although the slab exists, the terrain has been restored.  So, in terms of this particular operation, I could undo that step, but just to show you how that was done, this was drawn basically tracing the footing of the building, and it was set up to go to the correct depth, where we wanted the grade underneath the building to be excavated to.  [0:22:13]

This particular slab, which was drawn on the plan and set to be the right thickness, etc., is going to be the operator.  The terrain is the target, and I’ll just do a subtraction here. Execute, and you can see that now we have that gap in there.  So, we can use Solid Element Operations for a variety of purposes to essentially make the model the way the building is going to be constructed.  So, just wanted to show a couple of other examples for Solid Element Operations for basic modifications between one element and another.  [0:23:00]

These elements that are floating up in the air here are also Solid Element Operators, also being shown just in a wireframe, and as you may recall from the earlier lesson, some of them were cutting off the edges of the rafter tails to make a ornate form. Others are actually set up to carve out part of the roof, so you can draw a roof that has the full body with the rafters that extends to an overhang and then use a Solid Element Operation to remove the part outside the building so that you only end up with the plywood and the roof covering.  [0:23:49]

That’s one way to do it. Earlier today, I mentioned that you can draw a roof in two pieces. One would be the main body that has the structural components, and that may only go to the façade of the building, and then the upper part can be done as a separate piece. Basically, just drag a copy of it up, and make that copy just the sheathing and have it extend past the façade of the building to create the overhang.  So, those are two different ways to do that type of modeling operation.  [0:24:26]

So, let’s continue on with some of the new sections, as these were sort of going back over some things to expand things that I had shown last time.  Let’s look at how detailed walls can be done, where they can include framing and even waterproofing and other details so that when you cut through them, and you have a section, it is virtually as much detail as you would need in a detail drawing, and in fact, in some cases, it can be exactly what you would have in a wall section or a detailed drawing of an eave.  [0:25:14]

So, let’s take a look at this.  So, in MasterTemplate, I provide some examples in the Interactive Legends. I’m going to show you those, and that will give you some idea of things I’ve put into MasterTemplate many years ago. Actually, right at the beginning – probably back in 2007.  We’ll also look in this sample project at some additional details that have been developed in this year’s version, and then I have some to share with you from Tim Ball.  [0:25:47]

Some of you are familiar with his work. I’ve shared his work through the Masters of ARCHICAD program. He’s spoken at both of our summit conferences – online conferences as well as part of ARCHICAD User and a whole course on how to model in great detail. He presented it back a few years ago – three years ago or something like that, and he continues to push the limits of his work, so I’ll be showing you some of those examples so you get a real picture of how far the best practices of ARCHICAD can be taken to get detailed models.  [0:26:27]

So, let’s look at some of these things here and see if there’s any questions before we go on. So, Taren asks, “Do you usually put the invisible Solid Element Operators such as the terrain excavator slab on a special layer?”  Yes.  Yeah, so there are elements that are Solid Element Operators that are part of your model, like the foundation footing stem wall is part of the model, and it’s operating on the terrain.  So, it’s on a layer that allows you to see it on plan when you want to see a foundation plan and, of course, in sections.  [0:27:10]

On the other hand, the excavation slab that was used to basically cut a hole as well as those ones that were used to modify the roof and the eaves and the rafter tails – those are elements simply used to modify other elements, and they don’t exist in the final model.  In this case, they’re negative spaces.  They’re subtractions, so they have to exist in the model in order to have an effect.  You can’t just delete them after you trim, at least in terms of Solid Element Operations. With Solid Element Operations, you have to maintain the operator.  If you delete the operator, the operation goes away.  [0:28:00]

So, putting it on a hidden layer means that we don’t see those extra things floating around in space, so I put them on a layer that is normally turned off, and when I have it turned on, as you saw here, I often have that set up as a wireframe so that you can see the results behind it – in this case, down here. You can see through it to this terrain mesh, or if we have the rest of the model showing, you would see the actual roof and the rafter tails.  So, yes.  Put it on a special layer.  [0:28:41]

OK, so let us go on to an area of the template for some examples of profiles. So, in MasterTemplate, we have a whole lot of resources, as I’ve mentioned at different points, that are called the Interactive Legends of visual favorites, and if I go and open up this folder for legends and favorites and then go to legends plan – legends all, this brings up the whole kit of parts. The kit of parts here, we can see it’s grouped in different areas, and very, very briefly, there’s walls and windows and doors and then miscellaneous objects for interior fit outs in these upper sections, and it’s intended that you might eye drop these when you want to put in different wall types or different elements.  [0:29:48]

Down in the lower section are room groupings. So, for example, we’ve got these quick rooms which you can bring into your design or use as an idea that you can have your own quick rooms, where you bring them in and move things around so you can very quickly get a design laid out.  In this lower section, here are some examples of profiled walls, and I’m just going to use the marquee tool here to say, “Show me these profiles,” and so when I have a marquee drawn, and I use the shortcut, I can say to show me what’s in that particular area in space, and you can see some shapes here.  [0:30:36]

So, what we’re seeing are several wall types drawn with a little zigzag, so you can see both outside and inside corners of how they work. The slab down below and the ceiling up above are being drawn with a wireframe effect.  So, you can see into this more easily. This is just for educational purposes, although these walls could be used directly in a model, and that’s part of the idea here.  [0:31:11]

So, if I zoom in on this area here, you can see that the wall is made of the various skins, and we have framing here. The framing is sort of subtle.  When I don’t have this selected, and I let go, you can see that it sort of all blends in, but if you really zoom in on it, there are some lines that are being drawn here in a light gray, so they’re not standing out when you do the cut-through here, but obviously, this wall – if I select it and say to look at the profile in the editor, we’re going to see how this is drawn, and there’s nothing in here. This is void right in here. This is where we have the solid.  [0:32:13]

So, this is the void in between, and of course, we have our standard skins of stucco and sheathing, and in this case, plywood behind that sheathing there and some extra details, even in this case, where we have some metal.  So, this has got some metal bands. If we go back to that 3D view here, we’ll see that this particular one – I think if we rotate it around, it’ll be a little bit clearer. You can see that there are some metal bands, so this is a wall with a lot of detail.  [0:32:57]

Now, up at the top, of course, there is a flashing for waterproofing, and if we go back to that profile here – where is it?  There it is.  We can see that this is being drawn with a fill that is designated as metal – zinc, with a particular line pattern, just allowing you to tell at a glance that it’s made of metal.  So, this is an example of something that you can do. In this case, we wouldn’t even need to have a Solid Element Operator. The slab could just fit in here and rest on top of the framing.  [0:33:46]

Now, there are, as I mentioned here, a number of different examples here for this in MasterTemplate. There are some other ones here – profiles. These are actually some profiles for some molding shapes. You can see some crown molding there, and I’m not quite sure what else we’re looking at.  I guess these are some walls that are simpler, but they do have framing built in like that.  [0:34:33]

OK, so let’s take a look at an example in the sample project, and then we’ll take a look at how far Tim Ball takes it.  So, if we go to a section here, we’ll look at a section like this one. The wall includes the framing. Let me just put this into hairlines so it’s a little easier to see.  The wall includes all of this framing. Now, in this case, this lentil above the window is put in as a 2D element, and it is just in front of everything else.  [0:35:36]

Now, of course, the lentil is not going to extend the full length of the wall. It’s just put in in relationship to the window framing. Now, you could model that as an element in ARCHICAD – a beam, and in fact, in the floor joists here, these are not 2D.  These are actually profiles done with the Beam tool, and if I open up those profiles here, you’ll see that they’re very simply just a set of four triangles.  [0:36:15]

Now, it’s not very simply. It’s relatively simple because it is just a rectangle broken up into four pieces, but there are some subtle settings that I had to work out in order for this to show up properly in every view I could think of – meaning in a section, in a marquee cutaway in 3D, and if you actually had that beam just sort of sitting there, and the end was exposed, and you wanted to be able to see that linework here.  [0:36:46]

So, that’s something we’ll look at just a little bit later to understand some of the subtleties of the use of building materials, but I just wanted to point out the context in the sample project.  Let’s take a look at Tim Ball – what he supplied, and I will be posting a link to this on the lesson page so you’ll have access to it.  Tim was kind enough to share it.  Now, it comes directly from his work – from his template. It’s only the masonry walls.  He hasn’t shared his entire template, but he has shared this, and this does give quite a bit of useful information.  [0:37:30]

Now, before I move on, I see a question from Tom. “With all detail included in the model, ¼- inch sections get muddy, where lines and fills are close together.  Is there a way to simplify the section?”  OK, so there are different options that you can use and different controls.  So, if we go to – oh, we’re in Tim’s.  Let’s go back to MasterTemplate here, and let’s look at this section, and let’s look at it in true line weight here, and we are at ¼ inch to a foot.  So, obviously ARCHICAD is set up to try to represent on-screen how this would print at ¼ inch, or that’s roughly one to 50.  [0:38:28]

If I click on the percentage here in the bottom navigation strip, I can say to show it to me at 100%. Alright, so this is – at least on my screen – approximately what it would print out in terms of size.  Obviously, you might have a huge screen. It could be projected on a wall – anything, but the weights are being shown in that relative scale.  So, how does that look to you, Tom? I’m not sure.  We can see some delineation here, and some of the line work is thinner.  [0:39:07]

Now, let’s zoom in on it so we can inspect it, like you had a magnifying glass on your piece of paper, and we’ll see what we’ve got. Now, the linework is deliberately thin for the insulation and thinner for the cut-through of the framing than it is for the outline of the wall.  The wall clearly is shown in the heavier border on the outside.  So, we’ve got everything with some differentiation there.  Now, how muddy is it?  That’s up to you to decide, but I think that this is usable for printing, and some people really prefer having this much definition.  [0:40:04]

Now, if you want to print with less differentiation, you can do things like this, where you literally are turning off the line weights and, for some purposes, that can work very well.  You can also – even if you do have true line weight turned on – you can switch your graphic override for some purposes. For example, right now, we are in a graphic override, which is just turning off some shading.  Let me put on no overrides.  We’ll see that this has some color that is being generated on here, but let’s go to the one that is for a simplified drawing, and you can see that this graphic override is literally turning off the interior hatching of the elements to give you a very simple view of the model.  [0:41:17]

There may be, in some cases, some lines that drop out that you need to draw in 2D, if you want to do that, but ultimately, there are different options that you can use with graphic overrides as well as the model view options to do alternate views, and I do have a whole presentation that I did recently in Design Views – some of my free tutorials, that shows some of those examples.  [0:41:46]

So, let us continue on with some comments.  Now, I’ll look at these questions and see if I can fit them in. We’re sharing Tim’s information. Andy asks, “Is there a way to see or understand the priority that is built into the materials list for perspective?” So, that file that I’ll be showing you in a moment – you’ll have access to it, and it does have his materials list, so his building materials are in that file so you can look at that.  [0:42:21]

Michael asks, “I’ve created a special building material called SEO Operators.  This material is red glass and has an intersection priority of zero so it doesn’t interfere with other building materials.  All objects used specifically for Solid Element Operations uses this building material and live on the XX Operator SEO layer.”  OK.  [0:42:43]

So, you’re using a separate layer, exactly like what I suggested.  You’ve got it colored in a red glass, so you can see that it’d there as opposed to just wireframe. That’s a preference that may be helpful for visualizing it.  The intersection priority of zero is something that, if we look at the building materials, and we are going to be spending some time looking at building materials, a zero would mean the lowest priority. It would basically be like air, and it would not bump into anything else.  [0:43:21]

When you do Solid Element Operators, we’re going to be looking at some of the rules for when they’re able to interact and when they’re not, and so let’s take a look at that.  Thank you, Michael, for sharing your approach.  I appreciate it.  Christian, “In sections, I typically use uniform line weight and set the line weight to something thinner, not like traditional drafting, but it works.”  So, there is definitely a movement for some people to move away from using line weights in the traditional form for delineating building materials.  [0:44:01]

I know that Jared Banks prefers to use colors, and since often these drawings are being seen on screen, where color is helpful, and we’re not talking about color printing costing more, he says that that can be very useful and make the line weights lighter but use colors to differentiate things.  Certainly, when you have more and more detail, you have to weigh that out, in terms of how you’re presenting it, how you’re printing or duplicating the drawings, so there are always going to be some compromises depending on what you need.  [0:44:41]

ARCHICAD gives you a lot of flexibility, and of course, you could make a mess of things.  You could have a lot of detail that is not very legible.  So, working with line weights, using all the tools that are built into ARCHICAD, and experimenting with things like working in color – even for .pdf output or BIMX, can be very effective.  [0:45:07]

OK, so let’s go to Tim’s file now.  So, what Tim has provided here is a small little section of a building and a few walls.  Now, if we go to the 3D view here, you can see that here’s that little section of the building, and let’s zoom in on the walls that he’s got.  Now, there’s a lot going on here, and it’s definitely worth serious study. I will highlight a few things, and you’ll have a chance to open this up and study it.  [0:45:46]

First of all, I select the slab.  You can see the slab has multiple skins, as you would expect.  I guess it’s got some stone that the concrete is going to be poured on top of, etc.  Here is another piece of stone that joins with it here, but it’s actually part of this wall here.  So, he’s modeling, in this case, the footing as a separate piece of wall. This one here – if we zoom in on it, it’s actually got the grout lines of the concrete block, so we’re seeing how he’s delineated the grout, and I guess the central core would be filled in with concrete.  [0:46:40]

So, we have blocks with the concrete filled in.  Now, a complex profile is a uniform cut-through that is extruded through some line or possibly a curve in space.  What that means is that these vertical separators here are not part of the actual wall geometry. They are part of the picture that’s applied to the wall surface.  [0:47:15]

So, as we were looking in the last class, the pictures have a textured version and a linework version, typically, for structural elements like bricks and blocks and siding, boards, etc.  So, he has got a real grout line here, but the row of blocks is delineated with a picture of where the divisions are because ARCHICAD will not put in the actual geometry of it.  [0:47:52]

Now, let’s look at the brick above here. Looks pretty realistic in terms of just older brick with sort of messy masonry, right?  When I select this here, you can see that we zoom in on the side. Again, we’ve got a core that is concrete. We have the bricks with – you can see that here’s the masonry in between each one.  So, each coursing of the bricks has an area of brick and an area of the masonry.  [0:48:33]

Now, let’s take a look at this as a complex profile, and you can see that he’s using color quite effectively.  This is an interesting approach that he’s made. Instead of having the brick with, let’s say, a white or a gray and then black lines to indicate things like this here, he’s actually using the color of the brick and some diagonal lines that are a light color.  So, actually, on the plan, if we go back to the plan here, you can see that the brick skin is a natural brick color.  Your eye will just say, “Oh, that’s brick,” and the linework is light, so unlike the most common thing, where you have some color and then the dark lines, in this case, he’s using these lighter contrasting lines.  [0:49:38]

Now, each one of these is literally a separate brick course that is done just with a fill because that’s what complex profiles are about, and then each one in between is a masonry – in this case, mortar.  So, it’s a building material.  Then, here we have masonry airspace.  So, this is the airspace between the façade brick and the insulation here, and then we have, in this case, a different type of masonry inside the thermal block with, again, a mortar division.  So, how hard is it to make this wall?  [0:50:25]

Well, what Tim does is he creates a version that’s appropriate for the particular building. In other words, what’s the ceiling height?  What’s the height between stories?  Of course, you can select to create something like one course of the brick and one mortar and repeat it – multiply it, and so you just say that you want this spacing, and it will take it up to here, and I think it’s common to just take it up further and the figure out where the end point is and delete the extra pieces.  [0:50:56]

So, this is literally terminated at where it needs to support the next story or the roof here, depending upon what he’s doing.  So, because he does it this way, he doesn’t actually stretch the complex profile or shorter on the fly. He will create different variations as needed in a particular project for each condition. So, if there are three or four or five different variations in terms of how high the wall goes, he just has three or four or five different complex profiles there.  [0:51:39]

So, he’s doing this in such detail that if we go to a section here – here’s the section, and we can see what level of detail there is.  Now, I’m going to point out something you wouldn’t have seen, probably, at a first glance, and that is that he’s got some waterproofing in here, and these are actually part of that wall profile. Actually, this one – we look at it.  OK, we have the slab. You can see the slight grain here. I’ll click it, and this is the slab. If we open up that composite, let’s go to the definition for that composite.  Here we have something called Groundworks DPC. I guess that’s damp-proof coating, I think.  [0:52:42]

DPM – Damp-proof membrane is what I think that stands for, and that is just one of the building materials that’s defined in this project.  Now, you notice that it’s got this blue and white stripe there – sort of unusual pattern for a building material, but it does show. It’s a very thin little space – five millimeters, which is a fifth of an inch here, that he’s got that set up. So, maybe that’s actually thicker than the real one.  If you have a plastic sheet that was in there – a membrane or something like that, it would literally be a fraction of a millimeter, perhaps, but he puts it in so that for visual purposes, it’s the right thickness, and he subtracts out whatever is the space from the adjoining skins, just to represent it visually.  [0:53:43]

So, he makes a compromise there for visual clarity. Of course, that works well for communicating construction intent nicely.  So, here he’s got this linework there, and that actually is able to turn the corner up here. So, what’s going on in this wall?  Again, if we go back to this wall here, in a complex profile, and we go down here, you can see that in addition to this sort of more standard piece of masonry block cut course, we have this skin and another skin, and another skin here, and obviously, it’s overlapping waterproofing to make a good seal.  [0:54:36]

So, what he’s using as a little – I wouldn’t say trick, but certainly a method that works is the same that we maybe take for granted when you have insulation, and that is to say that the orientation of the insulation or of this linework is based on the direction of the skin, and so that’s how he’s able to get this to work.  I’m trying to remember. He described how he was able to get these to turn the corner.  [0:55:21]

I think that it’s not necessarily possible to draw something from scratch like this, but if you have a skin in a normal composite like insulation, it has an orientation, and so by putting this piece of this damp-proof membrane into a normal wall and having it oriented, he was able to then copy that and rotate it and have this piece here orient properly.  [0:56:00]

In today’s session, I want to show you these principles so you know how far you can go. You’ll obviously be able to download and look at Tim’s file and study it.  We will be spending quite a bit of time on defining complex profiles and building materials in a later section of the course, but for those of you who have already been using these things, and you want to take them further, this will give you probably enough of an idea that you can develop your own work quite a bit further.  [0:56:37]

So, let me continue on, then, beyond this. Let’s see what he’s got here.  I think – let’s see. Yeah, here.  So, this is an interesting thing. You can see that again, this is the drawing that we’re just looking at, and this is one where he has changed some of the overrides, just like I did in the sample project, and I showed you a simplified view of the section. He’s got a very similar concept here, where even though this is made up of multiple skins, as is this, and as is this wall, the graphic override is saying to make those all go to white. If you study his sample file, you’ll see some of the rules for, in this case, the graphic overrides, where he’s saying certain things are made white.  [0:57:43]

All the cut fills are made white here, and the model view options that he’s defined, which, in this case, I guess I’m not quite sure. Let’s see.  Model view – maybe this is primarily in the graphic overrides because I think if I said no to graphic overrides, I think we would be back at the – yeah.  So, it’s not the model view options. It’s only the graphic overrides that is causing this all to be simplified.  [0:58:24]

OK, so let us look at some general principles. Let me go back to my notes, and we’ll be going over some principles about building materials that are very important to understand because it is an essential framework for generating clean, accurate, detailed section drawings as well as even plan drawings that look correct when you have walls join each other – making sure they intersect properly.  [0:58:57]

Now, to demonstrate a couple of things properly, I’m going to open up a new instance of ARCHICAD while I talk. We’ll just say new one here with the standard U.S. template because it has some issues I’d like to demonstrate how you fix because they help you to understand when things aren’t set up properly, how to fix them.  So, I’m going to create a new file with that standard U.S. template, and let’s go back to my notes here.  [0:59:30]

So, when you’re stacking up elements in your model – when you’re assembling your model, we used to put things side by side or on top of each other and essentially, they would all be discreet.  With Solid Element Operations, of course, it was common to cut off the top of a wall with the roof.  So, the roof would pass through the wall and would remove wherever it passed through the wall and any stub or any piece above, but starting in ARCHICAD 17, it becomes actually best practice to intersect slabs with walls so that the framing will be represented properly in the section.  [1:00:26]

So, essentially, you end up with a model that is the way you’re going to build it, where the horizontal members of the joists or the rafters are resting on top of the vertical members and the supports, and you can actually have ARCHICAD calculate all of that for you.  Let’s see if there’s any questions here. So, Dennis says, “Do you know if Tim prints all his in color, too, or does he change it all to black and white before printing?” Tim, I believe, is doing more and more with BIMX and with .pdfs.  So, he does less and less printing, and he even picks contractors who are happy to do that.  [1:01:16]

So, I’m not saying he never prints things, and he probably has to print things for submission and approval, but for actual construction, I’m under the impression that he actually works in color and works with contractors and subcontractors and so on who will be looking at the .pdfs on a tablet, on-screen, etc.  [1:01:42]

John Dunham, “Eric, for the DPC/DPM, I think Tim probably set the fill orientation to fit to skin in the structure and appearance panel in building materials.  I started doing this after seeing one of the sessions with you and love it.”  OK, so that is a key part of it.  The question is fitting to the skin. How do you orient the skin in a complex profile?  [1:02:14]

In a composite, the skin is always going vertical for walls and horizontal for slabs or on whatever angle the roof is there. When you have a complex profile, you’re creating areas.  The area may be long and thin, and we know it’s oriented vertically, but how does ARCHICAD know that?  I think his trick was to create something in a composite converted to a complex profile, and it had a skin orientation, and then when he rotated it, it kept it, but the building material – you’re correct.  It has to be set to orient to fit to skin, which means it will orient in that direction and expand, in the case of insulation – the little swirly lines, to fit the cavity.  [1:03:05]

Alright, Andy says, “Tim says he uses all in color.”  OK, so thank you for confirming that.  Alright, so let’s take a look at an issue that starts to explain some of the principles of building materials on plan, and then we’ll look in 3D as well.  So, I’ve just drawn a little box of four walls using this default U.S. template, and I’m now going to switch from generic exterior wall that was set up to an interior wall. Let’s say with dry wall, and just for good measure, we’ll put it on the interior layer, and we’ll just draw an interior partition.  [1:04:02]

Alright, now when I look at this, we see an awful result because the core of this wall is made of a building material that is stronger or higher-priority than the core of the exterior wall. Now, when I select these two elements, we can see the linework that here we have a reference line for the exterior wall out in its face of the wall – not the face of the framing, but the face of the wall, and in this case, the interior wall being on one side – not the face of framing, just the surface – and this linework here is of the reference line of this interior wall, and it reached the exterior wall reference line.  [1:04:53]

I point that out because this is correct. It’s just the building materials that are incorrect.  If I go to the Options menu, building materials, we can look at the building materials that are currently in use for the elements that are selected. They are highlighted in green. We can look at them by name, where we’re sorting them alphabetically, or by priority.  [1:05:22]

Now, when we look at them by priority, we can see that, say, gypsum board has got the lowest priority of all of these elements, so that means wherever the cladding of the gypsum board bumps into some framing, it’s going to just stop. That makes sense. We’re going to see that there is something called generic interior, generic exterior, and wood structural. So, generic, in this case, is just a way of defining a building material that is not specified. We haven’t made of a decision yet.  I just drew some walls, right, on the outside of the building using the default.  [1:06:00]

So, I haven’t decided what it’s going to be made of or what the actual wall assembly is. Now, the generic interior here is this one. Now, if I right-click just on that one wall, I could say to edit that composite and see it, but I’ve done this many times, so I know that this is generic exterior with a generic interior body, and the interior wall is made of structural wood. That’s the core here, with the dry wall – the gypsum board on the outside.  So, this structural wood here, of course, is down lower in the list. The grey bar is longer. If I highlight it, you’ll see the number that says 647, whereas the generic interior, which is the interior of one of these standard walls, is set at 500, so it’s obviously a smaller number.  [1:06:59]

Now, what I would suggest is that the exterior wall should be down lower, have a higher priority than this interior one, and even this one that would be interior but used primarily for these exterior walls that haven’t been well-defined – they’re just sort of conceptual. This should be stronger. So, what I’ve just redone by dragging them down is had ARCHICAD automatically figure out, “Well, to have it down in this position, I’m going to put it at a higher number than this one.”  You see, here’s 647, here’s 650, and here’s 700.  [1:07:45]

Now, the exact numbers don’t matter, but they do in terms of which ones are stronger.  So, by doing this, I’ve said that the exterior wall is going to be stronger. We should never have this interior one ever go out to there, and in fact, the interior generic one should also be stronger, and it shouldn’t be interrupted here.  Now, I’ll say OK, and we’ll see a much more pleasing result now.  [1:08:12]

Now there are times when you want to have this interior core and this interior match up so you don’t see a line there.  Maybe that would be typical if you don’t have an insulated condition. Maybe you’re doing something in a tropical climate where the walls aren’t insulated, and you have the same wall type for inside and outside – at least the framing.  If you do have insulation, then it probably makes sense to have that insulation shown in a line, showing that here’s where the uninsulated wall stops, and here’s where the framing for the insulated part starts.  [1:08:49]

So, this is certainly very acceptable to me. If we wanted to make this particular wall have an interior cladding, then I could go and either redefine it and say, “Hey, I’d like to make this an exterior masonry or something like this,” and you can see that here we’ve got some masonry. We’ve got some insulation. Again, we have an issue where this structural interior wall is showing as stronger than the insulated space. So, I’ll go and select the two of these.  Now, having made that change, and again, look at what’s wrong.  Go to the building materials, and say that this insulated wood area should be stronger than this wood structural. [1:09:47]

So, either this interior one needs to be made of something different than wood – structural, or we just need to say that if you have wood – structural that’s insulated, in general, it should have a higher priority because it’s going to be outside, and wood – structural that’s uninsulated, generally, needs to be inside the building, so these are considerations that may have to be experimented with, but a good rule of thumb here. Say OK, and now we have something where the gypsum board is turning the corner, the wall framing stops, and the insulation just continues on here.  [1:10:29]

Now, by the way, I just changed that one wall here. I can eye drop this wall and inject it into that and have this happen here or, of course, I can do it for all of them and change them all one by one or just select them and change their settings.  So, that is a quick introduction to the building material concept of the priorities, and how you can select elements to make them actually intersect properly.  [1:11:01]

Now, let’s take a look at some context in a section, because this is purely in plan, but the same thing happens in sections.  Let me see if there are any questions here.  Alright, no questions in Slack. Let me go to my notes here. So, the building material priority numbers determine which elements and which building materials pass through and which stop or disappear.  So, we looked at that.  Now, one thing I didn’t mention is that elements must be on layers with the same layer intersection group in order to have this work.  [1:11:38]

So, let’s just see how that works before we go into the section.  So, this wall is on the layer called Walls – Interior, and normally, we want interior walls to intersect with each other, and in fact, for this type of a clean intersection to happen when they bump into exterior walls – in this case, the dry wall is turning the corner. The other structural things are stopping where they should. [1:12:10]

To show what happens when you don’t have it on the same intersection group, I’m going to temporarily change this number one here to a number two. It could be any other number.  Actually, let’s do the interior one to number two here. So, one is the most common one that you’re going to use for the layer intersection group.  This little icon indicates two walls turning a corner and intersecting with each other.  By putting a layer on a different intersection group, and you can see there are some ones built into the U.S. template for partitions, for example. That would be a separate layer group.  [1:12:56]

Actually, let’s not change this one. Let’s just put these on partitions. If I say to put these interior ones – instead of on the interior, let’s put them on partition. OK, so now, you see that they are ignoring the building materials. They’re actually just saying, “Well, I’m going here, and the other one’s going there.  I don’t know how to talk to you. I’m going where I’m going.”  Now, literally, if we do a 3D view – actually, let’s do it this way here.  [1:13:36]

What are we going to see here?  We’re going to see that they’re passing through each other. You can see that they are just ignoring each other. Now, this would not be a clean model, and it would not give you good drawings.  When would you use the partition layer? Why would you have that? Well, think about, in an officer, certain types of partitions are actually not joined to the structural framing of the exterior of the building.  I mean, there’s going to be some way that they’re secure, but they are not literally interrupting, and maybe even the drywall continues, and it stops at the dry wall.  [1:14:27]

Of course, we may have lower partitions in an open office sort of thing – done with the Wall tool, perhaps.  Let’s just take a look, then, at one way that this might make sense. If I took this, and I pull this back, so I’m stretching it back to the intersection here, and of course, now, this is a partition that just stops, but I’ve manually stopped it.  So, if these pass through each other, they will only clean up if they’re on the same layer intersection group.  Let me just put these back onto the interior wall layer, where they would clean up.  [1:15:13]

Now, this one is cleaned up here, and it looks similar to this, but you can see that it’s actually the framing coming in, and the drywall turns a corner, and the other one – because I just stopped it dead, is stopping at that dry wall.  Now, if I push this into here, saying that I want to take it down to here, you’re going to see something very odd happen.  I’m going to click, and you can see how it now is doing that correct cleanup, but you see how the blue line just jumped down to that, and that is because of the setting under the Options menu that you can turn off or on called auto-intersection.  [1:15:56]

So, auto-intersection is a setting in the program that says if I’m drawing a wall, and I finish the wall, or maybe even if I start or finish the wall touching or inside the body of another wall, it’s going to say, “Ah, these are on the same layer intersection group, so they should intersect.  I will adjust the reference line to meet in the proper way.  So, in this case, because I took – I had this turned on, and I made a Stretch operation, it extended it.  [1:16:37]

Now, earlier, when I touched the edge of the wall and said here’s a partition, it didn’t do that because they were on different intersection groups, and it said, “Oh, OK.  Well, you’re putting it there. That’s fine.  I won’t interfere.  I won’t automatically intersect it.”  By the way, when that mode is on – which it usually would be on most of the time – if I draw a wall on a diagonal like this, what you’ll see is that this – while it looks perfectly clean here, it is actually extending the reference line to meet the other wall’s reference line.  [1:17:16]

So, it gives you the result that you want, but it’s basically making sure that these walls are meeting, in this case, in roughly a T intersection – a T intersection where a single line meets a line that passes over and continues past the intersection as opposed to a corner, where you might say it’s an L intersection there.  OK, let me just undo that, and we’ll look at some section things here.  [1:17:52]

OK, so I did already go through this, selecting the elements involved in the intersection and then opening up the Options menu, building materials dialog, and seeing which building materials are arranged in which order and then potentially redefining by dragging the building materials up or down on the list and/or typing in a new value to have it go in a different sort order.  So, this is something that I just explained here, and we’ll see that I may not be able to show you this today because we’re getting towards the hour and 20 minute mark, but let’s look at some of these rules for intersections here that are going to be very useful to understand.  [1:18:46]

So, we looked at how the walls naturally participate in this calculation of the intersection. So, let’s look at a slab underneath this.  So, if I go under here, and I just draw a slab, I’m using the standard U.S. template.  I haven’t even looked at what the setting of the slab is.  I’m going to just draw a slab and see what we get.  So, I’ve done the slab here. Let’s take a look in 3D, and we’ll look at this.  OK, we can see, and let’s rotate this around, maybe.  It will be brighter from the other side.  Yeah, a little bit easier to see.  [1:19:31]

So, we can see the bricks here. We can see that the slab is made up of two building materials and that there is a clear difference between the wall and the slab that, of course, is a possible way to construct things, but very frequently, you’re going to have whatever the cladding is go down outside the structural slab.  So, you don’t have this line in space.  [1:20:05]

Now, if I were to take this wall here and change its height.  Let’s see.  I’ll go to the corner and use the pet palette to change the base down to here, you can see something interesting. Although it is going down through here, it hasn’t changed the 3D model at all.  Why?  Because these bricks are not stronger than probably this concrete that we’ve got.  [1:20:47]

Now, if I take it down further, we’ll see something very odd here.  This is where ARCHICAD gets confused because it says, “With this brick here and the interior of the wall, which is the insulated space, it’s not as strong as the concrete, so I’m going to stop it,” and as long as you keep it within the boundaries of the slab, it looks at least like it makes sense, but when I take it down further, it says, “Well, OK, it must stop there, but continue.”  Now, this is the same thing that you’d see in terms of the plan, if we were to go, let’s say, take these walls here.  [1:21:40]

You can see how this wall continues. This wall continues here, and this wall stops, but what if I take this beyond? Well, basically, it’s stopping and starting as it gets to the other side and doing its best in terms of the middle part, and that works pretty nicely for this type of a representation on the plan, but we do have that issue in 3D, and we would see the same thing in a section.  [1:22:16]

Now, depending upon how you’re designing things and how things are built, some of this can be corrected by essentially making the slab not go out to the façade.  So, let’s go to the plan and say that there is a slab here.  Right now, it’s going out to the face of the brick.  Let’s say that this slab – I’ll use the Editing Operation to offset it.  I can make it bigger or smaller. Let’s say that I make it – not quite sure.  Let’s just say to here. This would be under the framing that’s insulated but not going out as far as the cladding.  [1:23:05]

So, now you can see the green highlighted slab goes to the face of this framing.  Now, if I go to the 3D model, we’ll see.  Actually, let me take a section and see, because this is just one example.  If I take this one down, for example, here, from the outside, this is looking at least plausible. The brick might extend down.  Let’s take a look at the section.  So, I think we have sections here. We’ll open that section.  OK, so we can see that the slab here – I had pulled it into the face of framing.  [1:24:14]

The support, in terms of stone, is obviously a lower priority, so it is stopping here.  Now, actually, of course, we don’t want to have the insulated wall going down, so when we have composite elements passing through each other, we can have issues like what we see here.  Now, you saw in Tim’s case, what he had was a main body wall, and then he had separate walls down below. So, he didn’t extend the main body wall down below.  He actually had the foundation footing stem wall – those things- built separately.  [1:24:59]

There is a way to make this work if we use a complex profile, and if we use a complex profile that uses the new feature called offset modifiers.  Now, this particular example may not make as much sense as some, but let’s just see how this one could be reworked.  What I’m going to do is select just the wall and go to the Options menu, complex profiles, and I’d like to capture the profile of this to turn it into a complex profile.  [1:25:41]

It isn’t allowing me to do it in a section. I think I have to do this in a plan – possibly in 3D.  Let’s see if I can do it in 3D.  If I select this wall and go to the Options, Complex profiles, capture profile of selection, what that’s going to do is capture a copy of the composite, which just has everything uniform, as a complex profile, and then I can go in and, let’s say, save this. Give it a name as Brick Wall with Profile.  So, whatever we want to call it, and now I’m going to use what’s called the offset modifier option that was introduced into version 22.  [1:26:26]

So, I’ll say new modifier here, and we’ll call this Outside Cladding Depth.  Now, I could type in any name I find useful, or I can look and say, “Is there one that already exists in the standard template or in this file that’s already been used?”  Maybe we want to say, “Oh, base depth. That could work.”  So, in fact, I will use that or foundation depth. One of these might be a reasonable representation of it.  I’ll just use this.  The name will show up here with a warning sign, saying although it’s been defined as a name, we don’t have a definition for what it is connected to.  [1:27:12]

To do that, I click on the plus here to find a starting point.  I’m just going to say this point here is a good reference, and then I could pick any edge and say I want to move this edge or another edge on the fly, make it thicker or thinner.  In this case, I would like to make it this edge here that I want to take up or down from the point that I started with.  Then, I have an opportunity to place a click, saying what this is measuring and what direction it’s going.  [1:27:50]

So, if this foundation depth is assigned to be a few inches or a foot or two, it will go down. If I said minus something, it would go back up.  Now, I also want these skins to also move, so I’m going to go and hover over either the name here or this plus sign here and say that I’d also like to add this one, and I want to make sure that the direction is the same, so I go and click here.  Actually, let me undo that. [1:28:32]

I think I’ve done it here. Click here, and then add this one. Click this way. I’m a little confused.  This was click plus. There we go, and then you have a choice of which way it’s going to move in the same direction going down with the other one, or possibly going in opposite directions.  So, I’ll just hover over this, do one more plus, and do this edge here, and there we go.  [1:29:06]

So, now we have all three of these skins with the little triangles pointing the same way, and I’ll save this. What I’ve just defined is a control parameter for offsetting this.  Now, if I go to the section here, this wall right now is set as that composite – just the original wall that’s been pulled down, and I’m going to change it.  I’ll say, “You know what?  I’d like it to be a complex profile, the new one that I just selected or created.”  I’d like it to be the one that I just created – Brick Wall with Profile, and it starts out.  [1:29:46]

Actually, I think I need to start it out with this reference here. So, what is this? This is basically saying the wall sits on top of the slab, and now I can go to the edge here and use the new pet palette option for changing the foundation depth, and I’ll take this down. I can type in a value like 18 inches, or I can just do it visually, and you’ll see what it’s done is it now has set the main profile space here, but this edge has been changed.  [1:30:26]

So, this is now part of ARCHICAD 22. It allows you to take these, and you could potentially have multiple controls for each one of these skins having different depths.  How deep or how far this comes – maybe this goes out further.  You take it as far as you need to and then have these go down. Let’s take a look at an example that one of our course members, Roger Schafer, sent in that I created, and this will be our close for today’s session.  It’s just to demonstrate something that he sent in.  [1:31:09]

We’ll go to open this wall skin. Let me go find that file, and we’ll say to launch a new instance, and here is this one here. I think we can do this here.  So, this is an example of a condition where we had a similar issue of the exterior wall needing to come down and have the cladding and the plywood framing come down in different distances and have the cladding, which was stucco, stop at a complex profile for a weep screed.  So, it becomes a much more intricate relationship, but the principles I’ve just gone over here apply 100%.  [1:32:11]

So, we’re just going to take a look at this in a second. Let’s see if there are any comments in Slack here. OK, so Michael says, “Eric, is the auto-intersection setting object-specific or a global setting?”  It is a global setting. It’s on, let’s say, all the time, unless you turn it off, and then it stays off until you turn it back on. Generally, I recommend that you leave it on because it’s helpful, but occasionally, when you want to draw or stretch something and not have ARCHICAD extend it, I will turn it off, and then usually I’ll turn it back on right after.  [1:32:55]

OK, so John Dunham asks, “Is there a way to get the finish material like drywall to wrap around the end of the wall automatically?”  I’ll show you that in a second.  He comments that the stretch modifier feature is such an amazing addition. I love it.  Yeah, Roger, who provided the sample, “Can you make the same exterior skin go down to the bottom and up on top?”  You can have an offset modifier at the top of the wall as well. That would be a separate parameter because obviously, they wouldn’t just both go the same distance, but yes, you can do that.  [1:33:34]

Alright, so we’re just going to go here to take a look at this, and we’ll finish up. So, here is the example after the recent coaching call, where Roger sent this in, where we have – I’ll just zoom in on this.  This is a wall. The base of the standard wall is on top of the flooring.  We have two skins here – plywood and stucco.  The stucco is trimmed to the weep screed, which is this profile here, and I believe that in this case, if this wall was pulled out just a hair, and I’ll just pull it out a little more than we need to, just to say here.  [1:34:50]

It just needed to be in line with it because you can see that the plywood here stops at this concrete.  So, let me just pull this back, if I can here in this 3D view. Let’s stretch it back, and I’ll just make sure it lines up cleanly because this is actually what it should do here.  So, let’s take a look at how this was done, and then you’ll really understand – I wouldn’t say everything you need to know, but you’ll understand most of what you need to know for using building materials and complex profiles in relationship to each other for walls and slabs and beams.  [1:35:31]

So, this particular wall – if I look at the settings here, it is a complex profile initially created from a simple composite. In this case, I’ve got two parameters.  This one here is the plywood sheer extension, and you can see it is highlighted, and I click on stucco extension. So, basically, each one of them was defined using the little plus icon here, and after you click on that, you click on a reference point.  I conventionally pick this opposite side here. It could be any of these points here, and then you click on the edge that you want.  [1:36:13]

In this case, they’re not linked together. I created a separate one for each of them.  So, in the section, if we look at it, you can see that – let’s go out. So, this wall starts here. This may be a different part of the section. Let’s go to the section. OK, this is the section through the back part. Let me just create another section here through this front part here.  [1:37:05]

So, this is our complex profile wall. You can see these dots indicating this is the base.  It’s sitting at -64 on the first floor?  That’s a little odd.  I’m not quite sure why that’s showing that, but let’s see. This?  OK, we’ve got this reference line here. Is that what it is?  OK.  Alright, let’s look in 3D, and let’s say this is the little profile here that is the weep screed.  [1:37:58]

So, this profile – if I just open that up to take a look at it, it’s this shape here. So, here is a metal flashing. That metal flashing is what we’re seeing in the building section here. It’s actually on a diagonal. We look in the 3D view, and it’s on a diagonal going down because there’s a grade there.  So, that is a complex profile with a beam that’s been just angled, and the wall here has a Solid Element Operation – actually, two of them.  One is its having the stucco trimmed by the weep screed. If I turn that off, we can see the stucco goes down, and it’s no longer cut there.  Let me undo that.  [1:39:00]

Then, we’ve also got a subtraction here from the masonry wall. So, basically, that’s what’s preventing this wood – plywood – from sticking down there. So, if I turn that off, you can see how this plywood passes through there.  So, we have a combination of being able to pull down the cladding – the different pieces to different heights, and Solid Element Operations to remove the area below the weep screed.  [1:39:46]

So, this is a file that I’ve posted in the coaching calls section of the course, and you can download that. Roger was kind enough to share that, and it will give you some additional things to study in relationship to this topic.  OK, so I see some people saying that they have to go. It’s been an hour and 40 minutes, so I understand.  [1:40:09]

So, we shall finish up for today. I think there will do one more section on the building materials and connections in relationship to roofs because being able to get walls and roofs joined – there are some key principles for using Solid Element Operations sometimes and using connection with intersecting elements at other points, and the subtle and confusing – even for me, so I’ll be sharing that.  [1:40:47]

Now, as a note, I should have perhaps said earlier that on Monday, instead of having the Best Practices course like this, I’m going to interrupt this program to have the ARCHICAD User free training webinar that all ARCHICAD users are welcome to attend. We’re going to be having a presentation with Roderick Anderson and John Halgarth. Roderick is the Costa Rica architect that does some beautiful tropical design and design builds, and he’s going to be showing his work, his template, and particularly how he does quantity takeoffs and construction management using a combination of tools, including Blue Beam PDF and BIMX.  [1:41:33]

John Halgarth will be showing a little bit more about his system for doing quantity takeoffs and reporting cost estimation using the ARCHICAD model, primarily exporting the information to Excel, and compiling the quantity data in conjunction with a database of costs.  So, we’ll be looking at that.  On Wednesday next week, we’ll have our next Best Practices course lesson.  So, I’ll look forward to seeing you all then, and hopefully, you can join us on the Monday. It’s a different login link. You should get that separately from GoToWebinar because that’s a link that is public as opposed to the course, which is only for members.  [1:42:25]

So, please feel free to email me with any questions about these topics or anything else related to ARCHICAD or our work together. I look forward to sharing next week’s sessions with you, and of course, tomorrow, we have our usual coaching program call.  So, join us if you want to get some help applying these principles in your office and in your projects.   [1:42:51]

So, let’s see here.  Michael asks a question for next Monday.  “Is it possible to have live detail links saved to the floor plan to building section in Blue Beam?” Good question. We’ll ask Roderick about that because he’s using Blue Beam.  I believe it’s probably an export-only option and that you can update things easily by republishing them, but it’s possible that Blue Beam has some bidirectional live association. I don’t know about that.  [1:43:25]

Tom says, “Where will I post Tim’s info?”  I sent out an email two nights ago, I think, with basic information about that.  You should look in your inbox because you definitely would have been sent that.  If you don’t have that information, just email me to support@bobrow.com, and there will be a reminder from GoToWebinar an hour before that session with your personal connection link, assuming you already signed up for the ARCHICAD User sessions.  [1:43:58]

So, OK, Tom says, “Where will I post this wall info?”  Tim’s info?  Oh, so Tim, I’ll post the download link for Tim Ball’s file that he so kindly shared, and that will be on the page with this recording.  So, I may also create a resource area where things like this can be more centrally located, but I’ll definitely place it on the page with this recording.  OK, alright, thanks, everybody. Catch you next time.  [1:44:36]