2020 | 020 – Conceptual Design Strategies – Geometric Constraints and Requirements

Conceptual Design Strategies - Geometric Constraints and Program Requirements

Welcome to the ARCHICAD Best Practices 2020 course.  Today is Monday, March 25^th, 2019, and we’re going to be talking about conceptual design strategies, particularly geometric constraints and program requirements.  Let me know that you can hear me and see my screen, and we’ll get going.  [0:00:26]

So, we’re going to be using Slack as usual for the communication. If you haven’t been working in Slack, go to Bobrow.com/slack, put in your email address, and you’ll get quick instructions to join us.  Once you join Slack, you’ll be in the general channel, and then you can go to channels and click on 2020, where we have our commentary and discussion about lessons in the 2020 training course.  [0:01:01]

If you’re in the coaching calls, and I see this is bold, meaning someone’s typed in there.  So, Roger says hello and all is good, but Roger, please use the 2020 channel instead.  So, let’s see.  OK, so Roger, just click on Channels, go to 2020, and you should be able to participate.  Alright, hello, everybody.  Let’s get going.  [0:01:26]

So, today we’re going to be looking at actually drawing some things that are the foundation of your design.  Your initial design is always going to have certain constraints, whether that’s dealing with the property lines and the setbacks, the amount of area that you’re able to cover, the budgets – all of these things are part of your concern as you’re working on a design with a client.  [0:02:02]

You have program requirements as well – how many rooms, which sizes, how they’re arranged, which ones are next to each other, how you deal with circulation and access, etc.  So, these constraints and requirements can be dealt with in ARCHICAD using a variety of tools and methods.  So, beyond just sort of saying, “Hey, I’m going to use the Wall tool to place some walls,” I’m sure you’re very familiar with the idea that before you actually lay down a firm building design, you have some geometric constraints and things that you’re trying to achieve.  [0:02:46]

So, let’s look at how you can use some of the tools in ARCHICAD to deal with those constraints.  Now, Jared Banks uses an interesting term for constraints and limits on a project.  He calls them invisible forces, and he calls them that, I think, because they are forces that affect your model.  For example, you can’t go beyond a certain setback line, or you can’t take it above a certain height limit – whether that’s flat or following the terrain or some other limitations in terms of view or etc.  So, these are forces that limit you.  [0:03:27]

They control the design, but of course, in the end result, you have a building that has fulfilled its requirements within those forces that you’re optimizing of the client’s needs.  So, what are some of these invisible forces?  Well, setbacks and clearances are probably one of the most fundamental and the easiest to deal with, just in terms of knowing where you stand.  So, let’s just see how that works in an ARCHICAD project.  [0:03:57]

So, I have a brand new project here, done with the U.S. template. I’m using the first floor plan here. We could go to architectural site plan for this. It sets it at a different scale factor.  Now, one of the things that I would like to do is have a view that doesn’t already presuppose where the elevations are going to be shot from.  I don’t even really want to have to move them.  So, I’m going to go into the layer dialog and look here.  [0:04:30]

I actually couldn’t find anything that gave me exactly what I wanted, so I’m going to create a new layer combination that will be a copy of the architectural site plans, and we’ll call this Site Design – something like that.  OK, so I’m working in Site Design.  It’s not intended to be an output.  It’s just intended to be a working mode, a layer combination that we call on, and in this case, I’ll go to the markers for elevations and I’ll say to hide them because I really don’t need to see them here.  [0:05:08]

I say OK, and they go away.  This element here is a survey point. We can leave that there.  It’s not going to get in the way.  Now, we’ll be talking about importing surveys in a later lesson from .dwg or .pdf, but right now, I’m going to just simply draw a poly line boundary for the site, and I’m going to be totally arbitrary because I just want to talk about concepts. So, I’m just going to draw some lines here.  Alright, so we have an irregular-shaped site.  Let’s say that the front of this site is down here, and we have a certain setback that we need to maintain, so you can’t get any closer than a certain distance from that.  [0:05:58]

Now, in order to do setbacks, we’re going to be using offset as an option.  When we offset, we can do it in a variety of different ways.  So, how would we offset this line to be a certain distance? Well, the simplest thing is to draw another line.  I’ll just draw a single line here, and then I’ll select that line with the Shift-click. By the way, since I had the Line tool active rather than the poly line, Shift-click automatically preferred the Line element as opposed to the group – the poly-line element.  [0:06:36]

Now, if I want to offset this – let’s say it’s 20 feet.  I can use the drag command, start to drag it, and of course, I can drag it in any direction I want, but this is going vertically on the Y axis.  This would be going on the X axis, but you can see that there is an option for perpendicular.  So, this is a perpendicular to that line.  So, ARCHICAD’s smart enough to pick up some of these key constraints for that.  So, let’s just type in a distance of 20.  [0:07:16]

Now, when we’re working with coordinates, all of you should be familiar with basic input of coordinates, but I’ll just highlight something that, in the most common and most useful way of having the tracker visible, the primary number that is highlighted is the distance, which is also known as the radius of a vector, the length of the line, and when you just type in a number, it’s going to go and fill in and replace that number that was highlighted with your desired value, and when I hit Enter, we’re going to have this 20 feet back.  [0:07:56]

Now, if I wanted to verify that measurement, I can hit the M key and say to go from any point on this line and move along here, and when I get the perpendicular symbol, then I can say, “Alright, it exactly is 20 feet.  That was no problem.”  Now, this is doing one line at a time. If I wanted to do multiple lines – let’s say I go to the Poly-line tool, and let’s say the back part – these 3 sides here have a common constraint.  So, I’ll draw 3 lines like that and finish, and then I will select them.  [0:08:36]

Now, I’m holding down the Shift key with the Poly-line tool active, and it’s showing me those 3 lines.  I can use the Tab key and say I might want to consider the whole boundary or Tab again and select what’s highlighted, the blue one with 3 lines.  Now, when we have several lines selected – a Poly-line or a polygon, I can go to any of the corner points and use the option to offset all the edges.  So, if I say to offset all the edges, then it automatically is going to be perpendicular, and let’s say this was 12 feet here. [0:09:19]

So, this is another way that we can do it.  Now, if you end up with some lines that overlap each other, then a very convenient shortcut is to hold down the Command or Ctrl key when you’re in any drawing tool and hover over the edge and click.  This is the Scissor icon or Trim.  So, hold down Command or Ctrl.  Don’t go to the corner here. You have to go to the edge, and you notice how the scissors becomes bold when it’s on an edge that it can trim.  So, we’ve now trimmed this.  [0:09:55]

Now, we could do this in more of one operation.  So, let’s see how we do that.  We’ll go and undo back a few steps here, and let’s take this entire poly-line, and we’ll go and copy it and paste it.  So, I just did Command+C and Command+V.  You can use Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V on the PC, and we now have a marquee indicating that it’s about to drop in something.  If I paste it right on top by clicking outside the marquee, now I have 2 copies of the boundary.  [0:10:45]

Now, I can go to a corner here, and let’s say that I want to take it in 12 feet here.  So, that’s 12 feet, and remember, this front one was 8 feet, so how would I do that with 20 feet?  So, I can go here and use the offset just for this line and make it the 8 feet that it needs to be in whatever direction I’m gesturing.  So, that’s a very quick way to get differential setbacks on sides, back, front, etc. here.  [0:11:19]

Now, another option here that you should know about – let me just undo this here.  The change is if I know that I want a particular distance from this – so, if I want this to go up here and it be 20 feet from this point, what I can do is drag it and position my mouse on that end point.  Now, of course, I don’t want this to go to that end point. I want it to be 20 feet back the other way.  [0:11:48]

So, you can see how the distance says 12 feet here.  What I can do is type in 20 and then a minus.  Now, if you’re in metric standards – if it’s 20 meters or whatever, you do a single minus, and it will actually subtract right away.  If you’re in feet and inches, you have to either type in a number of inches, like 0, and then a minus to do this, or you literally can do 20--, and you can see how it’s positioned the cursor 8 feet from where it started.  So, I went down to the edge of the boundary, said, “How about here?”  and it said, “OK, I could do that,” and then I said 20 feet back the other way.  20—will give me the result, and I hit Enter, and that will give me the same result.  [0:12:46]

So, that’s a very powerful method of using the coordinate information in the tracker by moving your mouse to an area that you care about that’s a reference – in this case, the outside boundary, and then typing in a number and a plus or a minus to offset it an additional distance plus would be to keep going further.  Minus would be to go back the other way, and with feet and inches, you need to either have feet-inches- or feet --, and that will give you the end result there.  [0:13:26]

OK, so we’ve looked at just some basic constraints here. Now, obviously, for visual purposes, we may want to have them in different line types. So, I’ll just do a triple dashed for this one, and I’ll take this here, and we’ll do this with  just a simple dash.  We can tell the difference.  Obviously, these lines can be manipulated in a variety of ways, including putting them on different layers.  [0:13:57]

So, we’re going to be showing the property boundary on a lot of drawings.  You may or may not show the setback lines.  They’re really more your guides for making sure that the building is going to meet code.  Obviously, there are some drawings where you want to show the setback line and how you are compliant with it.  [0:14:18]

Alright, let’s take a look at some other options here.  OK, so I copied and pasted the boundary. We can also use the magic wand.  So, if I go and have the polygon and magic wand here – so, if I have the polygon here and magic wand – the magic wand can be invoked by holding down the spacebar and then hovering over something, click, and you notice how I pre-highlighted to show you’re wanting to place something along this area.  [0:15:04]

In this case, my default setting for the poly-line was solid, so we can see the change there.  Now, of course, I can go and highlight this, select it, and do another offset here.  Just get multiple offsets there, but let’s look at another option where we can literally trace individual segments or an entire group of segments and offset them in a single operation.  This is worth knowing about, although there are certainly ways that you can skip using this.  It’s just an interesting option, and this is using the Window menu, Palettes, and it is Control Box.  [0:15:52]

Now, those of you who have worked with ARCHICAD for a very long time, we used to have the Control Box and the coordinates, and where did that coordinates – there it is.  The coordinates as our 2 primary palettes in ARCHICAD, up to a certain point. Before we had the tracker on-screen, the coordinate palette gave us data, and you could input data in the same way as we used in the tracker, but it was positioned onscreen at a certain location as opposed to being next to the cursor, and it wasn’t quite as smart in terms of the way that the tracker can expand to show more information or less, but it certainly performed the same function.  [0:16:42]

So, let’s take a look at the Control Box.  Now the Control Box here has similar controls to things that we already have in the standard toolbar.  So, for example, this Create Guideline Segment and Turn On/Off Guideline Segments, we see is already here.  It’s included here.  In addition, we have the snaps.  So, this turns on and off the special snaps – the snap guides and snap points, halfway points, etc., and we have that here with the same options.  [0:17:17]

There’s actually a little bit more controls visible here.  So, this half, we can go here and choose how we’re going to control this and actually type in values here, or in Divisions, type in values whereas in this one, when I choose half or divisions, there’s nothing up here that allows me to switch how many divisions. I actually have to go set snap point values and bring up a separate dialog box.  [0:17:53]

So, I actually like the way that this is laid out better than this one here.  So, this does add some interesting options for you.  Now, separately from that, there is an option for geometric constraints, which in many cases, we can avoid, or we don’t need because we’ve got onscreen snapping.  So, for example, the perpendicular and parallel constraints, which used to be so frequently necessary, are now built into the onscreen guidelines that we see, but a couple of them that are not available without this dialog are the single offset and the multiple offset.  [0:18:40]

So, if I do the single offset, what that means is while this is active and highlighted with the grey, if I either draw a line or magic wand on something, then as soon as I click, it’s created the element, but it’s saying you’ve drawn the base.  How do you want it to be offset?  Let’s just say I want it to be 10 feet in.  So, in a single action, I have created a trace of that as well as offset that trace automatically.  [0:19:14]

Now, let me undo that, and we’ll use the multiple one.  Now, notice how this is not highlighted.  It’s basically turned on for a single operation and then turned on whenever you need to activate it again.  Now, I’ll go here and press down and use the multiple offset, and click to turn it on, and you can see how the cursor changes here.  [0:19:39]

Now, let’s say that I didn’t want to trace the whole thing.  I just wanted to have a few boundaries – a few lines here.  I’m going to click a series of points, so instead of doing the magic wand, I’ll do these 3 points, and then I’ll click one more time to say I’m done with my trace, and now it’s going to be offsetting, and I can type in values, or I can just do it visually, and I can keep on going.  I guess I didn’t quite get that.  I thought that I had this set for the multiple offset.  That’s what I intended.  Interesting.  [0:20:12]

Multiple offset there.  OK, so it took a couple of tries to invoke it.  Now, I’ll go and do the same thing.  I’ll take these 3 segments here and then click again to say I’m done with this.  Now, I’m going to do one offset, another offset.  I can even go the other direction, but typically, you’re just going to do several in one direction with progressive offsets, and when you’re done, you can hit Escape.  The Escape key is a way of terminating the operation.  [0:20:44]

So, in this case, using the multiple offsets and either the magic wand or tracing a series of points, it allows very quick action for the offset.  You can even literally do just a single line.  So, if I go in here and do the single offset, and remember this one where I did the front offset?  I can go and literally just do this again.  Single offset here, and click these 2 points. This is a poly-line tool, so I’ll click again to finish this poly-line, and then I have the offset, and let’s say 10 feet, and there we have it.  [0:21:29]

So, this takes a little bit of practice and coordination here, but if you’re doing a whole lot of laying things out and wanting to offset, it can be very powerful.  You can also use this for offsetting walls and not just lines, so if I have a wall, and let’s just do a single wall here, and then we’ll do a wall on an angle.  We’ll see the same operation. If I say that I’d like to offset this here a single one, I can magic wand this wall and then move it to a new place, and you can see how I’ve got a wall that’s offset.  I can magic wand this one, and I can make sure that it’s active, and then magic wand this one and offset and type in a value.  [0:22:22]

So, the offset command can be with the magic wand.  In this case, just a single wall was being traced, or, of course, I can click on a wall to do that.  Now, in general, what I would do rather than do it this way is I would select this wall if we do want to have an offset and use the Drag command.  So, I did Command+E, and press down the keyboard shortcut Option on the Mac or Ctrl on the PC to say that this operation – the Drag, in this case – is going to be positioning a new element.  It will be a copy of this element.  [0:23:06]

So, when I go to here, what is the angle?  Well, you can see that it already knows the perpendicular angle to this.  You can see the little angular constraint there. So, this is not a 45° angle.  This is not snapping to a nice, even angle.  It’s snapping to perpendicular to the line itself.  So, it’s quite smart like that, and then, of course, I can type in that I want this room to be 12’-6” space here.  Then, of course, you need to compensate if you want clear space of a certain amount when you’re doing this.  You’ll need to take into account the thickness of the wall because you’re moving essentially an offset, but the clear space is going to be affected by the thickness of the element.  [0:23:59]

Alright, let’s see if there are any questions on what I’ve gone through here.  OK, no questions so far, but feel free to type in some questions.  I think these are very, very basic controls, and probably a lot of you have already mastered them, but there’s interesting combinations of them that are new and will speed up your work, and I’d be interested if any of you, as you’re watching this, are seeing something that you feel would have been useful or will be useful that you didn’t know about.  [0:24:37]

So, we’ll be continuing on from here, or if you have some other ways that you do things, let me know and then I can potentially include them or commend on the alternative methods.  OK, so Jimmy writes, “Absolutely.”  So, glad that you’re learning, and Andrej says that offset is a new thing to him. Alright, so this control palette here has a few little tricks that are useful particularly when you’re doing a whole bunch of a certain type of thing.  You can use this very efficiently.  [0:25:20]

Alright, let’s take a look at – OK, so Michael came in late and asks, “Did you show the limitations for what happens when the lines you’re offsetting overlap?”  Alright, well, we did show one thing, but I’ll show something else here.  So, if the lines overlap – so, for example, we have 2 different types of overlap.  I’ll say that I want to take this line, and we’ll offset this line.  Actually, we need to – when you do this offset here, you’re drawing a new element.  So, I need to either trace it manually or magic wand.  [0:26:07]

So, I’ll trace this with the magic wand and then offset.  So, obviously here, these lines all are intersecting, and maybe these ones need to be removed. You can go and use the Trim command onscreen.  You can either go to the Trim command here.  Actually, this is split. This is the scissor – Trim, and go click on here and go back and forth to that, or you can use the keyboard shortcut Command and click on the edge, or Ctrl if you’re on a PC, and the scissors will remain active while I’m holding down that keystroke.  [0:26:48]

When I have nothing selected, and I’m holding down the Command or Ctrl key, it will give me that trim. Now, the other type of thing is when we have – let’s say that we had a different arrangement here.  So, we’ll just get some space here.  Alright, so if I take this, and another way to make a copy of this is to drag a copy or the keyboard shortcut for it, and so if I drag a copy in a new place just right on top, I now have a copy here.  I don’t have to do copy and paste.  I can just use Drag A Copy.  [0:27:44]

Now, if I do the offset – let’s say here – now, as I say offset all edges, you can see at some point these will pass through each other depending upon what the requirements are. Now, I’ll just click here, and it actually is just fine.  As a poly-line, this is a valid shape. It’s a figure 8 shape.  I’m not sure what you would do with this offset here, but it certainly isn’t complaining about that.  [0:28:16]

Now, on the other hand, if we are doing the Fill tool or any polygon tool, we can have issues.  So, if I magic wand inside this or at the edge – well, let’s make this not – right. So, this is black because of a graphic override, it looks like.  Let me turn off the graphic override for the architectural site plan. There we go.  OK, so I activated a particular view in the standard U.S. template that had some settings for making the walls and other fills solid black.  [0:28:55]

Now, I’ve turned that off, so we’re just seeing a normal fill here. Now, if I go and offset this, of course that’s just fine, but suppose I offset it further to where it would cross.  So, it used to be that ARCHICAD would actually give you an error message when this would happen because a polygon can’t make a figure 8. It can’t cross over the boundaries.  Now, I think it’s smart enough to basically make it into multiple pieces if necessary.  [0:29:25]

So, those are some of the comments in terms of just when things intersect each other, how ARCHICAD deals with it and how you can trim off excess pieces that are passing by each other. If you do them individually, you’re going to be prone to have that. If you do them as a group, then you’re going to have this type of resolution.  [0:29:48]

OK, so let’s look at some questions.  So, Tom says, “Is there a command to repeat a previous action without reclicking on a tool?”  Well, sometimes I’m just using the same keyboard modifier – like to trim several things in a row, I’m just pressing down the Command or Ctrl key and holding it down, and then I can keep click, click, click, and keep trimming. If you’re eye dropping, another shortcut is to hold down the Option or Alt key and click, although it would make no sense to eye drop one thing and then eye drop another because it’s just going to be the last one that you had selected that’s going to be active as a tool there.  [0:30:34]

Now, there is a command that you can use. Let’s see.  If we go to the Edit menu, there is a command that says to repeat that has got a shortcut Command+B.  I don’t know why B, but they just chose that that was the standard one. Now, you notice this is grey, but let’s say that I have something selected here, and Drag A Copy now is available because you can’t drag a copy unless you have something selected, but I can go Command+B, Drag a copy. I have this one selected.  Command+B, Drag a copy, etc.  [0:31:18]

So, that command that was the last one active – the last one invoked from the keyboard or from a menu – can be reinvoked by doing Command+ or Ctrl+B.  So, even though I know about it, I hardly ever have used it, because in general, there are already keyboard shortcuts or quick ways to do things, but this may help speed up some of your operations. [0:31:48]

Alright, so Diane says, “I’m working on a project that has one wing of a house on an angle.  I entered the increment angle in input constraints, but then it does not seem to hold when I’m drawing, for example, a wall, and I hold down the Shift key. How do you hold onto the constraint – the incremented angle?” OK, so let’s look at that.  So, let’s say that we were drawing part of the building parallel to this odd angle here.  [0:32:23]

So, if I go to the Wall tool, and I’m starting to draw a wall, I don’t have any constraint that’s making it pay attention to that angle. You can see there’s no snap here. Now, if I go along the edge of this, either before I draw the wall or while I’m drawing the wall, you can see this blue line, and as I move along it, you can see the blue line indicating that ARCHICAD is paying attention to it.  Now, there actually is a constraint.  You can see if you look very closely to my pencil – a parallel marker, so 2 little short lines parallel to each other.  [0:33:03]

So, it is now on that particular angle, and I’ll just click to do that.  Now, I also have the constraint that’s perpendicular, and you notice how it’s showing the perpendicular to the original blue line. The blue line is the one that’s active there.  Alright, now will it remember that the next time?  If I go down here, it’s not remembering this because there’s no blue line there. So, how would you be able to have it remember that?  [0:33:33]

Well, one thing is you can use guidelines.  Guidelines can be put in using this one here.  Create Guideline Segment here, and let’s say that I do a guideline like this.  So, that is now a guideline.  Now, if I’m drawing the Wall tool, it still doesn’t help, but I want to put in a guideline.  If I do want a guideline, how would you be using guidelines here?  Let’s say that I create a guideline segment, take it along here, and just extend it.  Alright, so this is now a dashed line that is obviously going along this direction.  [0:34:22]

Now, I can go, for example, and draw the new wall along here, and it’s going to snap to that or to the perpendicular. In addition – no, it won’t pay attention to this unless I go down on that line and then let ARCHICAD highlight this as a guide.  So, by hovering over an edge of a wall or anything that you’ve drawn or a guideline, you will end up with that particular angle being a constraint.  [0:34:57]

Now, you can also create guidelines by dragging from the guideline symbol along to an edge.  So, this is basically creating an infinite guideline by dragging from the guideline symbol here, and then this can be snapped to, and you can use the blue constraint for it, but let’s look at that option you were paying attention or that you were asking about under the Options menu, work environment, and we have input constraints and guides.  [0:35:36]

So, the input constraints and guides – we have an option to put in an incremental angle that would be useful.  Now, 45 is, of course, a very common one.  Sometimes people will have it at 15 or 30 to get different variations of that, but this angle here is a little bit odd.  I mean, it’s a precise angle, but you’d have to get the exact angle to make sure that this was working, that it was snapping exactly in line with everything.  [0:36:10]

So, if it was 42.387 – whatever, just based on some property line, I would rather just use the onscreen guides rather than type this in, but if you did want to have it typed in, and maybe sometimes that is an important way to do it.  I can measure this – so, I can measure this, and we can see that this angle here, if I type in A, it will highlight the angle 345.04.  So, that just happened to be the arbitrary angle.  [0:36:44]

I can copy this.  So, I just do Command+C or Ctrl+C here, and then let’s go to the work environment, input constraints and guides, and put in this value here.  So, this is an angle that it’s going to pay attention to – relative to the grid or relative to the horizontal.  So, let’s just leave this unchanged and say OK.  What does that mean?  [0:37:16]

So now, as I’m drawing with any tool, if I go to the Wall tool, you can see that the 345.04 is being indicated.  So, here’s our X.  Here’s our 345.04, and then we actually don’t have a perpendicular to it.  So, this is going to allow us to always snap to that, but it won’t give us the perpendicular automatically there.  So, I like using the guidelines and just hovering over something so that it becomes blue, and then ARCHICAD, for the duration of that operation, will pay attention to parallels and perpendiculars to that.  That’s probably the most efficient way to do it, and it literally takes about 2 seconds for it to pay attention to the edge and give you that blue highlight, and that lasts for that drawing operation.  [0:38:11]

OK, hopefully that answers that in a way that’s useful for you, Diane.  Alright, let’s go on to – what do I have here?  OK, so we’re going to be looking at getting some area calculations.  So, when you’re working on your building, you’re going to be calculating areas for a variety of purposes.  A part of it may be that the budget is based on us having enough budget for a building of 4200 square feet, based on the type of construction, so that’s what we’re aiming for, or we know that typically, for this type of retail establishment, it’ll need about that much size.  [0:39:04]

So, you’re going to be doing some analysis of overall size for budget or for feasibility, but you also will have calculations for the area of the site and the area of the building, and so you’re going to be doing floor area ratios – those sort of things, so these are numbers that are very helpful to have, even when you’re beginning the design process.  [0:39:39]

So, let’s see how you can get those numbers very early.  So, Diane, I see your comment that the input constraint is old-school since the grid lines are more developed. Yeah, I’d say this is going to be a more flexible and efficient way to do it.  So, how would you get some areas out of this?  So, if I go to the Fill tool, there’s an option to show area text.  So, if I turn that on, and let’s say that I magic wand this boundary – so I hold down the spacebar and click to do the magic wand.  [0:40:23]

Now, you notice that it has drawn a black line temporarily and that my cursor has got a hammer icon.  So, the hammer icon is used to place an annotation typically, place a marker head, or place a dimension, or in this case, place area text.  So, I click here, and you can see that there is a number – 14,512 square feet.  Now, that number is live in the sense that if this fill was offset here, you can see how that number actually changed.  [0:41:07]

I’ll just undo it, zoom in on it, and you’ll see that more easily.  I’ll undo, and you can see how it got bigger and that number changed.  So, this is a live number here.  Now, the number – I put it in the middle, but it could be placed anywhere I like.  I can select this text by going to the bottom-left corner of it, or actually probably any of these corners around that text and literally just drag it, just like any other element, and it’s still live.  [0:41:35]

So, again, if I take this fill and offset it, you can see how that number changed.  So, the area display is available.  I can make this bigger, too.  Right now, it’s rather small. Let’s make it much bigger there.  Area display can be turned on even after the fact, so if I have a fill I’ve already drawn, I can just say to show area text, and you can see how that popped in.  If I want them to have the same size, I can eye drop this text and inject with the syringe so that that setting for the size is constant.  [0:42:17]

Then, I can go, for example, and take this one and show area text, and you see how with the syringe having changed the default settings for the text size for the fill, it already has that information.  Now, this information, as I said, is live.  It updates as you make changes.  We can have, of course, multiple ones here that are reported in an schedule. They can overlap each other. There’s nothing that prevents that.  So, for example, if I – let’s just color code this and give it a different color, and I’ll just drag this down in here.  [0:43:02]

Alright, so now this is a filled area that’s inside that one.  This one didn’t automatically deduct.  If I wanted it to deduct, then I can go to the Fill tool and create a hole.  So, we can have one or more holes within any polygon shape in ARCHICAD.  To create a hole, you can go to the edge or corner and use the option for the minus – the Subtract From Polygon in the pet palette.  [0:43:33]

Now, when I do that, it’s waiting for me to click a series of points in whatever geometry method I’ve got.  In other words, a rectangle or a polygon shape here.  Let me do a polygon shape, and I’ll just draw a series of points and click the last point an extra time, and you can see how it cut a hole and the area changed.  Now, let me undo that, and what if I wanted to cut a hole for this?  [0:44:01]

Well, with this selected, I can go do the pet palette minus, Boolean subtract, and spacebar on this, and you can see that when I use the magic wand, it automatically cut a hole for this, reducing the area, so now these two are disjunct.  They’re not overlapping each other.  So, depending upon what you need to calculate, these fills can overlap or be separated by essentially cutting them around each other using that Boolean subtract there.  [0:44:40]

Now, if you want to do floor area calculations and ratios right now, let’s just say to imagine we had just the simple case of a building on the site, and it’s just one story.  Let me just undo the subtraction.  So, now this is the overall site area. This is the built area, and our ratio is one over the other. Now, if we are going to be doing multiple stories, of course, we can put fills on each story and delineate areas. This is often one of the simplest ways to just say, “Hey, I have 3 stories. There are going to be zones in each room or space, but I want to just get an overall total for each story.”  [0:45:34]

So, you draw or trace the boundary of each story with a fill with the magic wand, and then you can read off those numbers, and of course, we’re going to be looking at creating a schedule with those numbers.  You can say the ground floor is this, the second floor is that, the third floor is that, have a total for the area of the building, and of course, you have a reference of the site area.  [0:46:00]

Now, there are calculations you can do starting with ARCHICAD 22 for elements, where you can have it calculate certain things based on the element’s shape, size, or other properties, but unfortunately, there’s no way to compare two elements together, meaning the sum of all of the building areas is in a schedule and going to be reported as just a total, and there’s no way to calculate the ratio to another number like the site from that total automatically.  [0:46:36]

So, you would have to take the total that ARCHICAD would give you automatically and just type in a value, saying the FAR is a certain value.  So, that’s some of the limitations that we have, but let’s look at some other variations.  This is done with the Fill tool.  Let’s look at another option, which would be the Zone tool. So, the Zone tool – some of you have used it a lot, and some of you have not used it at all.  I’m sure of that because I talk to people who say, “Well, I don’t know.  I’ve never used the Zone tool.  I don’t know what it’s for.”  [0:47:15]

Well, let’s look and have a very, very quick introduction to the Zone tool.  So, I’ll go and just draw a little building shape here. Maybe that’s a little too big.  We’ll just do something like that, and so here we have a building shape.  I’m going to go and put in some interior partitions, and maybe I’ll take this one, and I’m going to extend it across.  Let’s say there was a series of offices or something like that.  So, I’ll use the Adjust and click here, and this wall now just jumps over to where it meets the other one, and perhaps I’ll take this wall and use the multiply command.  [0:48:13]

By the way, I often use context menus like this when I’m teaching because you don’t see my keyboard shortcuts, but you do see when I invoke a command this way.  When I’m doing it just on my own, I will probably just use Command+ or Ctrl+U, which is the second letter of Multiply.  So, we do Multiply here, and we have different options. In recent versions of ARCHICAD, it’s gotten quite slick in the sense that the default settings here give you a lot of controls without having to choose anything in this screen.  You simply say to go ahead.  I want to get some copies and say OK. [0:48:58]

The first point is where you’re starting from. The second point is where you’re going to.  So, let’s say I wanted it to be 12 feet here.  Hit Enter, and then I can actually just draw multiple copies.  So, while you could type in a value saying I want 4 copies, you can also see how many fit here, and that is often a really convenient way to do it.  Maybe this last one doesn’t work because that final piece would be too small, so I’ll just stop here and click. So, now I’ve got 4 rooms up above.  [0:49:31]

Now, when we’re working with the Zone tool, the Zone tool is this one here. The Zone tool will delineate areas on a plan.  It also will calculate those areas, if you want.  You can display the numbers for it. The Zone tool – for right now, I’m going to leave it on its normal layer, and when I click to place it, it will say, “Oh, that’s layer’s hidden.  Do you want to turn it on?”  So, I’m jumping around in training here, but normally, you would be laying out the zones with different layer combinations active.  [0:50:13]

So, I’m going to go and use the most common construction method, which is the inner edge. It’s basically saying the zone will be all the clear space in the room up until it meets the edge or face of that wall.  When I click, first of all, it says this layer is hidden.  I’m going to say to show the layer, and then here’s that hammer again.  Click again, and you can see that we now have a zone in here.  [0:50:44]

Now, the zone name – we can type it in before or after.  So, for example, if I choose this, I can say this is room 1 here.  Now, the number is optional, but obviously, commercial buildings will frequently have room numbers – residential, less frequently.  Generally, they’ll all have a room name here.  Now, the Zone tool has a category.  The category can be just what it’s labeling, like a room name, or what is it used for, like storage?  Is it conditioned space that needs to be heated and cooled or unconditioned space – potentially a garage or something like that?  [0:51:31]

So, these are different color codings and groupings for totaling.  Now without getting into all the uses of the zone, I’m just going to click on a series of zones here.  Now, you can see that they’ve all been coming in with an increment – 1, 2, 3, 4.  I can make the names show whatever I want, but let’s just choose one of them and give it a different category.  So, for example, we’ll say that it is an educational purpose. It’s going to be a different purpose here.  [0:52:06]

Alright, so when you change the category, it changes the color, and let’s go into this one, and we’ll make this something assembly.  OK, so we’ve now got several different colors.  Each one of these can show the areas.  So, if I select all of the zones and go into the settings for the zones, and by the way, I used Command+A or Ctrl+A to select all of the elements of the active tool – in this case, the zone tool, and so there were 5 of them here, and I’ll go to the stamp text or the settings for this and say that I want to show – we’ve got the zone name and the zone number here.  [0:53:00]

This is at 1 to 50. This zone stamp can get very complex. It can show different information at different scales.  Let’s see.  We are currently – I think when we’re working at the 1 to 200, what are we scaling at?  1 inch equals 10 feet.  That’s 1 to 120, so I don’t know which one it would be here.  Let’s see if we can just simplify this and say not scale sensitive display, uniform display.  So, now what that’s going to do is say that I don’t care when I change the display. It’s going to have the same information rather than changing depending upon the scale.  [0:53:44]

So, what is the content here?  I’ll say that it’s going to show the zone name, the zone number.  We want to get some area here.  Maybe the zone number is less important than the zone areas here.  So, we’ll choose that and say OK.  Now we’re seeing the name and a finish.  I haven’t worked with this one in a while.  Let me see if this is content and appearance here.  OK, display here.  OK, I’m getting a little bit off track here.  [0:54:30]

So, we want to turn off the floor finish here, and we want to turn on the measured area there.  Let’s try that, and now we’ve got some numbers in here, and apparently, I’m showing the measured area and something else.  Let’s turn that off and – no.  Alright, so we have measured area, but why are we showing both the – we’ve got the zone areas, and I put zone areas in twice.  That’s why.  So, we’ll put this one as the zone areas, and we’ll turn this one as empty and see what that does.  [0:55:22]

Almost getting there.  OK, so obviously, I’m a little rusty in terms of just the display of this information – the controls, but the point is that these zones can easily display and total up those areas.  Now, the interesting thing about zones is that they not only can show up in plan, but they can show up in 3D.  So, let’s do a marquee around this to say that I’d like to just show what’s inside this marquee and say to show only what’s in the marquee in 3D.  [0:55:59]

Here we have those simple rooms. We’re not seeing the zones.  As I mentioned, you can show them, but the way that you would show them is by going to the View menu, elements in 3D view, and changing the setting for the filter for the elements in 3D.  So, when you filter elements in 3D, you can potentially turn off things like, “Hey, I don’t want to see the windows and doors because this is a huge model, and I just want to see cutouts where the windows and doors are so that it will render more quickly while I’m in certain design modes.”  [0:56:43]

The default is to have the zones hidden.  By turning this on and saying OK, we can see that there’s a color coding here.  Now, let’s go to this one, and this is the one that was educational.  I can go in here, and I can change the model.  So, here’s this model information, which we haven’t paid any attention to, and we can say that this one is going to be some other colors.  So, let’s just make it a yellow color here.  [0:57:13]

So, this is now an opaque color, but we could choose or use different colors.  For example, I can go here and make it a frosted glass like this.  So, now we can actually see the color and the interior.  Right now, there’s no detail in the interior, but let’s look at how this could be extended.  If I go to the elements in 3D view to the filter – filter and cut elements in 3D.  There’s a keyboard shortcut that I use all the time there – Command+Option+A or Ctrl+Alt+A.  [0:57:59]

I’m going to say to turn off all types and just show zones for now.  Now, why would you want to do that – just showing zones? Well, sometimes you want to just show a massing and stacking model.  So, these zones can communicate different areas of the building.  We’re going to have so many of these types of units and so many of those types of units.  Maybe it’s unit types A, B, and C in a building. You’re going to have different usages for the public space.  This is for storage. This is for offices, etc.  [0:58:35]

So, you can color code it that way.  Now, these zones have a certain size.  So, if I select this, right now the zone is linked to go from the story it started with up to the next floor, but just like all 3D elements, I could choose to take it up to another story.   So, if there was another story here, we’ll see what that’s doing, and I could offset it as well. I could say that it’s relative to that other story, but it’s minus 3 feet.  It’s 3 feet below that or something.  We can see that we have flexibility that could be linked to that but be some arbitrary offset.  [0:59:21]

Now, if you look at this, this is, of course, a very simplistic starting point, but imagine that you took these zones as a massing tool, and you literally just modified their boundaries and modified their shapes.  Now, you can start imagining this as a tool, not only for measuring areas but for playing around with the volumes and the design.  Now, I drew those zones on the floor plan by telling it to trace this boundary where the rooms are, but if I go to the Zone tool, there’s an option to just draw a freeform zone.  [1:00:12]

So, imagine that you choose that option, and you use the rectangular creation. It used to be that you only had a polygon, and you had to draw all 4 points around there.  Now, you can do – as is common – a rectangular or rotated rectangular shape, which is so useful, and I’ll just go here. Now, let’s say that I wanted to make this a certain size.  So I’ll say it’s 20 feet across and 30 feet down.  So, it’s going to be 20 by 30, 600 square feet there.  [1:00:45]

So, this is purely in space, just a shape.  Now, I go back to the 3D view here, and now that new shape is – OK, what’s going on?  I’m trying to zoom in and out, and my mouse is not working here.  There we go.  OK, so this shape was done totally arbitrarily.  Now, because it’s arbitrary, I can literally go and instead of trying to trace something that’s there, I can use the pet palette, and I can take some liberties to define a new shape.  [1:01:31]

Now, right now it’s cut off because of the polygon.  Remember on the floor plan, I said to just show me what’s inside the polygon.  So, let me just go, and we’ll leave the polygon alone, but I’ll just drag this up so it’s within that visualization boundary.  So, this shape here has got flexibility.  You can take it up as many stories as you want.  Now, let me just show you another option that can be very, very powerful in terms of reshaping it.  [1:02:12]

So, let’s actually take off the marquee and just select this.  We can offset this to make it any size, but there’s another option that is very, very interesting that was added into recent versions of ARCHICAD.  I’m not sure when it was.  It could have been ARCHICAD 15 or 17 or something like that, and this is to reshape from an edge for a rectangular piece like this, maintaining the same area.  [1:02:51]

So, let me just go and make sure this is showing the area properly.  So, actually, I’ll go and eye drop this one and put it in here.  OK, so when I did that, it changed it to think that it’s looking for a boundary.  I’m going to make this and convert it so that it’s, again, just a manually created boundary here.  OK, now you can see the 600 square feet.  That’s what I wanted to get at.  So, if I go here, and I stretch it, this now is showing a different number of square feet, but sometimes you want to be able to say that you need to still keep it that 600, but you’re going to make it a little wider.  [1:03:41]

So, it’s going to have to get shorter.  Well, using the option in the pet palette to maintain the area, which is this one here – fixed area, you can make it a little wider.  Notice how the shape is adjusting as I move my mouse, and of course, I could type in a value.  If I want it to be 4 feet wider than it was, it’s still 600 square feet because it got 4 feet wider, but it got shorter. So, now think about this as a way you could do program requirements for your building.  [1:04:13]

So, in some designs, you’re going to have a whole list for programming of so many rooms of this size, so many rooms of that size, etc. You can literally go and duplicate these things.  So, let’s just do a multiply here, and let’s say that we’re going to have 4 of these here, and then let’s just take this one, and I’ll drag a copy of it up to there, and we’ll make this sort of have an independent outline, and we’ll do multiplying this along here.  So, we’ll just say however many.  [1:05:00]

Alright, so now we’ve got some building blocks, and I can move these around freely, and of course, you could snap them to each other, or you can sort of play around with it like pieces of paper that you’re just rearranging.  So, as we do this, we can start seeing how the building would lay out, and, of course, allowing space for circulation, etc., but all of this information is going to be tabulated into a schedule, which we’ll be looking at in the next lesson.  [1:05:40]

This now is a way that you can design based on program requirements and get a report showing the shapes and forms that you’ve got.  Now, after you work with this, let me just show you this.  So, let’s say that you – actually, we’ll just draw some walls around this shape. So, I’m going to go and sort of loosely create the shape here, and I’m not worrying about the particular wall types. I’m just saying that here is sort of a general design there.  [1:06:27]

Now, these yellow ones in this area are now – we have a little bit of extra space there.  How would we find out what the end result is after having drawn some walls around the zones?  Well, I can select this and change it to this method here, where it’s going to find the boundaries.  If I want to update it, I’ll say Update Now, and you can see how it now fills this area and gives me an updated value. So, the same thing with this one.  [1:07:06]

So, we can easily lay out a basic concept with these zones and stack them on multiple stories – as many stories as you need.  Volumes can be multiple stories easily or maintain within a story envelope, and then you can draw in your walls.  So, you have the flexibility to work with programming first, then geometry in terms of the building shell and core, and have the zones give you guidance.  So, you know you’re in the right ball park, or you’ve got at least the minimum. [1:07:49]

It’s up to you if you want to make these the minimum things, and then you’re fitting extra space where needed, or if it’s sort of a ball park, and you know that in some cases, things can be reduced 5 or 10 or 20% for a particular requirement, and now you’re sort of laying them out with a concept without having to get too tight until you’re ready to lay that out.  [1:08:19]

Let’s see if there’s any questions here.  Alright, OK.  So, Ken says, “How are you commanding Show Size?”  Not quite sure what you’re asking, Ken.  Sometimes I use the Measure tool to actually measure onscreen distances, or are you referring the showing the area of the zone?  Let me know which context you’re talking about for showing the size.  [1:08:54]

Dave says, “Does it seem that ARCHICAD is combining scales?  For example, the drawing was set at 1 inch equals 1 feet, but in Zone tool settings, it showed these other values.”  So, right now, I’m trying to get some quick concepts explained.  The zone stamp, in this case, is set up to allow multiple different configurations based on when the zone elements are shown in a particular view.  [1:09:28]

So, when you’re doing a floor plan, you’re going to be at one scale.  When you’re doing a site plan, you’ll be at a different scale, and when you’re doing an enlarged floor plan, maybe it’ll be a different scale than the regular floor plan.  The zones can be set up to show different amounts of information.  So, a single zone could show more or less information, depending upon the scale.  [1:09:53]

Now, for simplicity, I just said to make it ignore the scale, and we’ll just control what it’s got, but as you get more detailed decisions for creating drawings, then you may optimize for that.  Different zone stamps will also allow you to show different types of information.  So, some zone stamps will show finish information, so the codes for the floor and the walls and the ceiling, etc. might be shown.  So, there’s all sorts of variations for the annotation that the zone stamp shows.  [1:10:30]

Now, the fact that it says 1:100 or 1:50, etc. – these are dividing marks.  So, they’re basically in that particular zone stamp. They were set up to say that if it’s less than this scale, then it’s going to show this information. If it’s at that scale, different information.  Now, 1:50, 1:100, 1:200 are metric standards.  In the U.S., we don’t use them generally.  So, we’re doing ¼”, which is 1:48, or 1/8”, which is 1:96.  So, that particular stamp, which is built into the U.S. template and the U.S. library, has somewhat odd settings.  [1:11:15]

Maybe it really should say at ¼” scale, what do you see?  In a 1 inch to 10 feet scale, what do you see?  Ultimately, it’s essentially saying a range.  If it’s between one scale and another, what would we like to see?  We’re not going to have necessarily a different version of the zone stamp for 10 different scales.  We’re going to have 2 or 3.  That would be common, and it would make the best choice for drawings that are at those scales.  [1:11:48]

OK, Tom says, “Can the zone color in plan auto-translate to 3D?”  Interesting question.  If I select this one here, and I chose assembly, and it had a particular color.  Let’s look at the options for zone categories. So, in the options menu, we have controls for attributes and some global settings such as auto-intersection and some settings for the project and work environment.  [1:12:29]

Now, the upper section here are attributes.  If you’re in certain versions of ARCHICAD, there will be an Element Attributes item, and them to the right, in a submenu, you’ll have all of these things listed here, but in the U.S. version, they’re directly underneath the Options menu.  Choosing zone categories allows me to see and edit the list of categories, and you can have as many of these as you find useful.  Each one has a name here. So, if I say to rename it, we can rename, for example, Education to something else.  [1:13:05]

We can change the code number. The code number, I think, is used to sequence these initially, and then when we have a single zone with the same code prefix, then it’ll be alphabetical. Well, actually, no, G, Site area. That’s interesting. It’s not alphabetical here, is it?  OK, so it is alphabetizing these ones, so that’s interesting.  Not quite sure how it’s sorting in the pop-up menu, but you can see that there’s a color.  [1:13:45]

So, if we go back to that – what was it? The one that I had – assembly, and I click on this color.  We can choose a different color.  So, we can go to a slider and choose that color.  Now, that color’s what we see on plan, obviously. There’s no other preferences here, other than the zone stamp.  Now, the zone stamp will control what textural information is seen on the plan.  That’s the only thing the zone stamp does is give you the option to show the room name and other data about the zone in the drawing.  [1:14:28]

The zone stamp does not affect how the zone looks in 3D.  So, how do we control the look in 3D?  If I select this here, and we open this up, the model, we can choose different ones for use.  Now, in the U.S. template, in addition to surfaces based on building materials like masonry, concrete, and stone, we also have colors.  So, these are surfaces that are just as if you were painting something, and then we have actually a whole bunch of sets of elements here that are zone colors. [1:15:20]

Now, the difference is their usage. In other words, they have the name zone, assembly zone, building footprint, and they also are generally set to be translucent.  So ,like a colored glass that you can see through.  So, for example, we’re in assembly.  Let me just change it to zone assembly here, which matches this and say OK, and now, if I look at this area, this is now different than the other ones.  Let’s go to the one that’s – this is zone room name, and we can see that it says zone room name.  [1:16:06]

It already was set for that same model.  Now, apparently, what’s happening when I just said to switch this area to the zone assembly, if I change an area usage – let’s say, to residential, just to be arbitrary.  You notice that this didn’t change.  So, if I wanted to coordinate, then I probably want to change one or more zones to a new category and, at the same time, choose a corresponding model.  Now, in the international version, I don’t know that they have this set up with a whole bunch of premade zone surfaces, but you can create them.  [1:16:54]

Typically, people will take the one that’s frosted glass, a blue glass, or something like that, and create duplicates of them and just tint them because that blue glass is – you can see through it.  It’s sort of got a nice level of translucency.  So, there is no automatic one here.  The only thing that’s automatic would be this general.  So, what does general mean?  [1:17:16]

General is a fallback surface that says to use the pen color of what was drawn on the plan as a solid matte surface in 3D.  That’s the only one that will – if you change the pen color on the floor plan, it will update.  So, there’s nothing that says to create a 3D translucent version of this color, unfortunately.  That’s not built into the standard thing.  So, we have to manually choose this.  The general one wouldn’t correspond to this color.  I think it would correspond to one of the pens that were using it.  [1:17:58]

Now, there is an option here if you’re placing the zone inside a room or a volume that it can actually have different colors based on the colors of the walls.  So, walls, and it can also be trimmed by a roof, so you can have the zone with a cathedral ceiling, and it will go up and potentially give you volume information based on this space. It goes up to a slanted ceiling and how much air is inside that.  [1:18:30]

Alright, so that answers Tom’s question.  So, Ken was asking.  “I was referring to when you were demonstrating areas with the polygons prior to the zone portion.  It was giving you areas, and I imagined you were doing shortcuts or whatever.”  So, the polygons that I was working with, Ken, on the plan earlier, before I was using the Zone tool, were fills.   So, if I select this fill here, the fill has, of course, geometry. It has patterns in terms of what it appears like on plan, and there is an option here called Show Area Text.  [1:19:17]

When that’s turned on, this text will be visible.  I can turn it off at any time, turn it back on.  Now, as I mentioned earlier, that text can be inside this, or you can literally select the text and move it to a convenient location.  You could even have a table off to the side of several fills with their reports.  So, that’s an interesting thing is that the numbers can be moved off to the side and make, essentially, a little reporting area.  [1:19:50]

Now, one of the things that you could do here is in addition to showing the measured value – this is the size of it.  We could say to put in some custom text, and when we have the custom text, we can have various information here.  Now, in the case of a fill area, there’s only one automatic one that makes sense, which is the measured area, but you can easily give it some additional information, like that this is a lower story here.  [1:20:32]

So, I’ve just typed in some value here, and this number is still linked.  So, if I go to this boundary, and let’s say that I make it curved.  You can see that even though it has some custom text, the number part of it has got the measured value, and that measured value was automatically put when I switched to custom text, but we can also just insert it manually here.  This will actually put in that name in the brackets that will refer to it.  [1:21:08]

Alright, Keys asks, “Can we show length and width on zone stamps?”  So, the zone stamps that we’ve got here – I don’t know that we can do that, but let’s see if someone can help me out on that – the zone stamp settings here.  So, size parameters.  OK, so let’s do size parameters.  How do we get that?  Let’s just – I’m going to say size parameters here.  Zone name and size parameters – this is room one here. I’ll say OK.  Alright, so what are the size parameters?  [1:21:52]

Of course, right now, it’s showing blank, so let’s see if we can get that to show here.  So, the zone name – second, alright.  Let’s see here.  Finished, heights – so, zone areas, perimeter things here, custom text.  We can do that.  Alright.  Let’s see. So, not quite sure.  What I’ve seen in a zone stamp that’s sold commercially, called Total Zone by a very clever GDL programmer based in the Netherland named Jeroen de Bruin.  You can look him up under Masterscript.nl for Netherlands. Masterscript.nl, or just Google Total Zone for ARCHICAD, and you’ll find it.  [1:23:00]

He has a zone stamp that actually has the option to show the room dimensions, and the way it’s done is he actually has some hotspots that you can pull out to touch the boundaries of the room, and then it will display the distances between those hotspots. The reason those hotspots are necessary is that rooms may have an irregular shape, be non-rectangular, and you have to help ARCHICAD determine what the values that are relevant are for the dimensions.  [1:23:30]

So, if there’s a little corner of the room that you don’t really want to make it seem like that’s the full width of the room, but it sticks out a little bit, you’re making those hotspots just go to the main part of the room.  Now, looking at some other comments here – so, Scott says, “Now, you’re going down the road that I traveled to accomplish my square foot for rooms in both conditioned and unconditioned portions, etc.”  [1:23:58]

I prefer to use zones because they have so much practical functionality.  Absolutely.  Zones are much more powerful than fills. Fills are much simpler, so I like showing both because some people – the fills are going to give all that you need, or it’s the best way to get started with some information and then use zones later.  Now, Lou says, “Zone tag U.S. has width and length dimensions not as part of the label here.”  OK.  [1:24:33]

So, Scott, we are going to be focusing on the use of zones more over the course of the Best Practices training series.  Today, we’re doing some quick concept feedback for a design.   So, Lou says, “The zone tag U.S. has width and length dimensions not as part of the label.”  So, we are in – which zone stamp are we using here?  So, this – we go to the options, zone categories.  We’re using Zone Stamp 0222.  So, let’s just actually change.  [1:25:11]

This is an interesting thing, and I’ll say that this one here – so, what is this?  This one is in assembly, and I’m going to go to the Options menu, zone categories, and say that I would like the assembly one – instead of using Zone Stamp 0222, to use Zone Stamp USA, except that we don’t have this Zone Stamp USA here loaded.  [1:25:45]

So, that Zone Stamp USA that you’re referring to, I recall, was something that was posted somewhere and was shared in our resources area.  So, if I go to the resource sharing, I think that back here, we had probably the first one that was shown – Zone Tech USA 21, and Reg, one of our members, shared a version of it that he had amended to metric to be able to work in metric.  So, I think it works in both U.S. and metric.  I’m not sure.  [1:26:25]

So, that’s something that we’ll look at further in a later lesson, but basically, we can pick other zone stamps that are in the loaded library and use them for different purposes because some zones – if you’re saying this is a zone to measure the area of the site, you may have different requirements for the annotation than when you’re doing a zone that’s for a room that’s supposed to have finish information.  [1:26:51]

OK, so, let’s see. We’re at the hour and a half mark, so I wanted to finish this up at a good stopping point. So, we’ve looked at how the zones can automatically fill a room, seeking the boundary walls, or be drawn manually, and you can total up the usage. We’ll be looking at that next time. We can see the zones in 3D using the filter and cut elements in 3D command and look at them by themselves as well without seeing other things, if you want.  [1:27:35]

Now, something that we didn’t look at today, but I think is pretty obvious – you can just use the Slab tool to create a shape, and while the slab most commonly is being used for floors or ceilings and is going to have relatively thin depth, we can make it the height of a story or several stories.  So, there’s nothing preventing you from just using the Slab tool as a tool that you can push and pull, even in 3D.  Just make it taller and change the shape of it.  [1:28:11]

To have more freedom, you can use the Morph tool, and so we’ll be looking at how, when you use the Morph tool, and you maybe take it up several stories and change the profile – maybe it gets narrower as it goes up towards the top or slants in on one side.  Well, one of the things about the Morph tool is that you can actually get ARCHICAD to give you reports on the area of the morph at each story level.  [1:28:39]

So, if you think about it as just sort of a concept shape, we’ve got a 20-story building, and we’ve got this upper area that’s going to be this size, and this lower area here slants in towards it, the ability to do that freely and get data, in terms of the areas on the stories.  It’s a very powerful combination, so we’ll be looking at that.  [1:29:10]

I think what I’ll finish up with is this interesting thing about using the Wall tool instead of a Line tool for certain designs.  So, if we go to the Line tool, I’ll just do a shape for a building.  Alright, so here’s a shape for the building, and maybe I’m saying that we’re going to have a row of offices on this side here, and we’ll do something like this.  So, I’m just drawing some lines along here, and we’ll have some shape, like that.  [1:30:12]

OK, so this is all lines, and I can certainly very freely create these shapes and then say that I want to pull this down. This is an interesting thing that not everyone realizes.  If you have a poly-line, you can go and use the offset option, just like you can with polygons, and stretch this.  So, we can literally go and freeform adjust it.  I’ve selected the poly-line here, but what I’m doing here, which is so flexible, is limited because I can’t see it in 3D, and I can’t put in doors or windows.  I can’t really develop this directly.  [1:30:53]

Now, I could go to the Wall tool and say Trace.  I can go piece by piece along here, or I can magic wand this shape and create a building shell like that, but if you want something that looks like this but actually is more flexible, I can go into the Wall tool and make it a generic element, and if I want, I can make it zero thickness.  So, it literally is just like a line but has some height.  In this case, I’ll just leave it as a single story wall.  [1:31:31]

So, if I just draw something similar, I won’t go as elaborate.  Alright, so this is a wall. If I zoom in on it, it’s still just lines here, but I can go in and potentially put in doors. Let’s see.  If we go to the Door tool, why is it – Interesting.  Why is the Door tool default not standing there?  Let me see if I can put in a door here.  OK, we can put in a door right there. Can I pop in a door here?  We should be able to.  Wow, interesting. These walls that I just drew – I know in the past that I’ve been able to have walls or doors put in, but let’s just see if maybe I need to give them some thickness.  [1:32:54]

I’ll just give them some thickness, and then if I go to the Door tool, now it’s letting me do that.  So, that’s a little change from what I was used to.  I thought that we could actually have the walls just be zero thickness and have the door go in, but it’s not letting me pop that in, but the point I wanted to make is that you can draw with the Wall tool just as easily as with the Line tool.  [1:33:28]

If you’re doing just a simple volume of the wall – in other words, not trying to worry about the wall assembly, whether you put in a nominal thickness like 8 inches or a foot or 200 millimeters as a thickness, or you just do it as zero and then later come back and select those and give them a thickness or give them a wall assembly type, you can draw just as easily with the Wall tool as you could with the Line tool.  [1:33:58]

So, that’s something that I think often people who say they like just drawing some lines to lay this out don’t realize that you can draw the walls just as easily as lines in almost every way, and then you can easily select those walls and give them some information later, in terms of their composition.  Alright, so let us see.  Any final questions or comments here?  [1:34:31]

OK.  Alright, so thank you for all your comments and suggestions. We’ll be returning on Wednesday to take this further.  Some of the things that we’ll be looking at would be the reporting side of it.  So, you want to get a list of your areas and tabulate them and see how they compare to program requirements.  We’ll be looking at that.  We’ll also be looking at ways that you can take these shapes that I’m just doing sort of freeform and actually tighten up the numbers so that they are nice, even units. [1:35:15]

We’ll be looking at a variety of methods for developing this further, including using the Morph tool for some 3D massing, and if we have time, we’ll even look at curtain walls and how curtain walls can be used for concept design because that’s an interesting strategy that I learned from Andreas Leitner in the Masters of ARCHICAD 2017 course. [1:35:40]

So, let’s see some comments. Thank you, Jimmy, for the enthusiastic feedback.  OK, thanks, everybody.  So, Roger asked, “What’s the status of your job board?”  So, a little side note, I set up on the ARCHICADuser website – let’s go here to ARCHICADuser here.  So the ARCHICADuser website now has a jobs board.  You can see it highlighted here as well as up in the upper-right corner.  [1:36:24]

The job board here – there are no jobs listed because nobody actually responded to my request to list it, but if we do look at resumes, which would be – these are names of people who said they have some ARCHICAD skills, and they would like to either be employed or are available for consulting or contract information.  So, these people – if you click on, for example, Dave Olafs there, who’s on our call today, Dave put this in a few weeks ago here, and here’s how to contact Dave.  [1:37:03]

So, I’m planning to promote this board and get some more interest and activity because I see that there’s just a need for ARCHICAD users to be able to connect to each other and share information about your experience, your specialties, etc., as well as for employers or firms that need assistance or need consulting to be able to post their requirements.  [1:37:36]

So, this is in its infancy. It has been set up. If you wanted to create a job here, I have to be logged in to do this. So, let’s see.  If I log in here, let’s see.  I’m logged in.  So, I must not be logged in in quite the right way, but when we’re logged in on the jobs board, you will see some options for placing a position – an offer, essentially saying that people can contact you about this.  So, I will be creating some more materials on it soon, and I look forward to helping all of you and your colleagues connect and share skills and resources.  [1:38:30]

So, thank you all for joining me today. We’ll be back on Wednesday, taking the whole topic of conceptual design – the framework that ARCHICAD gives you, the tools that will allow you to get feedback and work with your project in a variety of different ways in the early stages. We’ll be taking that a bit further, so thanks for joining me today.  See you next time.  [1:38:58]