2020 | 022 – Conceptual Design – Start Simple Then Add Detail (Part 1)

Conceptual Design - Start Simple then Add Detail (Part 1)

Hey, welcome, everyone, to the ARCHICAD Best Practices 2020 training course. Today is Monday, April 1^st.  Happy April Fool’s Day.  We’ll be continuing on with our studies of conceptual design in early modeling approaches today.  We’ll be conversing on Slack, as usual, so please log into Slack and let me know that you’re here and that you can see my screen and hear me, and if you are on the GoToWebinar questions, we’ll have you switch over.  I don’t see anyone on that, so we’ll just get going here.  [0:00:51]

Alright, so we’re going to be looking at conceptual design approaches.  There’s a lesson that I did in the earlier Best Practices course that I looked at and thought, “You know what?  This is really very well put together.  It does give a lot of explanations for things in a way that still makes a lot of sense.  However, the interface has changed for a lot of things, and so it’s important that even though the concepts are – I’m going to be going over very similar strategies, that the concepts are shown in the current interface.”  [0:01:37]

Depending upon how time works out, I may extend the content of this lesson to look at some additional ways that we can just take this further.  So, this is from Week 11, and we’re finishing up the 11^th week of the original course, and so I’m excited that we’re making good progress.  Here we are, just 3 months into this course, and we’ve gotten that far.  [0:02:04]

So, let’s look at, in ARCHICAD, a couple of quick ways that we can represent a design, in terms of massing, and add some differentiation, delineation in the early stages, when you’re not really ready to make big decisions or firm decisions.  You just want to have a sort of clear workflow for going from simple idea to a bit more pinned down design choices.  [0:02:42]

So, here we have just a simple project. I’m going to go and actually take this.  Let’s go to our Quick Layers here, and I’ll just temporarily hide those section markers so that they aren’t in view, and let’s just go to the Slab tool.  Now, in terms of massing, there’s many different ways that you can do it, but certainly it’s worth taking a look at just drawing a shape. Let’s just say that this is 42 by 24 here.  OK, so this is a certain size.  [0:03:27]

Now, if we go to 3D right now, this is just a slab. It could be used for slab on grade.  I think concrete floor on gravel or something like that – let’s just say for massing purposes, I’m going to make it a simple composite here – maybe not gravel.  We’ll just call it generic exterior, and we’ll take it up to the 10-foot level – whatever that next story is here.  So, this is now a one-story building, and let’s go back to the floor plan now here.  [0:04:06]

Let’s see, in terms of the stories, what we’ve got.  So, if I go to the Story settings, 10 feet is fine.  So, now if I go up to the second floor, and I wanted to draw a mass for what the second floor would be, it would be helpful to look at the ground floor and line things up.  So, I can right-click on the first floor here and say to show as Trace Reference.  So, now we can see this.  [0:04:35]

Now, if I try to select it, as you know, it will say this element is – let’s see. If I try to select it here, it’s inactive in this view because it’s actually on the remote story, and we can turn it off and on using the Trace and Reference icon here or the keyboard shortcut.  Now, I’m going to pick up the settings of this so you can eye drop things that are on a remote story.  Now, in this case, I don’t want it to be – if we say relative to the current story, I don’t want it to go down below this story.  [0:05:10]

I’ll just say that it starts at this story zero, and it goes up to the next story there, and let’s say that this was not going to be the same outline as the lower story.  So, I’ll just do it partway, and we’ll look in 3D here.  So, we can see now that we’re getting just a little bit of delineation of a shape of a building here.  Now, if we wanted to, let’s say, make part of the building have a different surface to differentiate this.  This is a two-story mass, and we want to connect those two together, and we want to have this separate.  [0:05:58]

Then, we could make the outside surface here different, but we can’t do that if this is one slab.  So, in order to make this separate, we would need to split this lower slab.  Now, if I go down to the ground floor here, well, now all of a sudden, we can’t see the upper story.  I could right-click and say to show the second story as the trace reference.  That would work, but there is a nice shortcut in the Trace and Reference palette or Trace and Reference menu, and that is that you can choose a reference instead of a specific view or viewpoint.  You can say it’s above the current story or below, or, in this case, what’s perfect is the previous story.  [0:06:48]

So, now, when I say previous story, and then I go, let’s say, to the first floor, or if I switch between them, you can see as I go up to the second floor, we’re seeing the first floor. When I go down to the first floor, we’re seeing the second floor.  So, that’s a really useful thing when you’re going back and forth between stories, to say that the trace reference, when it’s turned on, will show the last story you were on.  [0:07:15]

So, now I can go to this slab here, and I might split it using this little icon there, and split it in 2.  So, now this piece – for example, I might say that I’d like to go and differentiate the outside surface – we’ll say outside surface here, and let’s just give it a color, red.  Something like that.  Now, if I go to 3D, we’ll see that oops, I made actually the top surface red.  I was thinking incorrectly.  Let’s go here to make this red.  [0:07:53]

Maybe I’ll make the whole thing red and put the top there.  So, now this is just an example of what you can do if you wanted to have a mass, develop it, and start to delineate that this is going to be one type and that’s going to be another.  Now, the client may not like the red.  You may not like the red.  You may want to put in, instead of a color, you could put in a surface.  So, for example, I can go into the overrides here, and let’s make the outside something like a brick color instead of red.  Alright, so that’s now just a dull brick color.  We’ll make this one brick as well, or maybe we’ll make this concrete or something like that.  [0:08:38]

So, we’re getting just some delineation. Maybe we want to have something that actually has some texture.  So, of course, we can go in, and instead of doing a color of brick, we can do a surface that would be – what is it?  Masonry – finish here, or that would be one type.  Let’s see.  Where did the – it’s interesting.  In the U.S. version, I forget.  I’m getting this mixed up. Where have they put the normal brick surfaces – the ones that look like that?  [0:09:21]

So, it’s not under masonry here anymore.  Ah, all of a sudden, I’m feeling lost when I’m looking at this.  Now, by the way, if you’re looking at these colors, you can see the ones that do not have a little picture icon are just going to be simple colors. The ones that have a little picture icon here do have a texture map, and so – ah, where is the brick?  [0:09:54]

OK, we’ll just give it a stone finish there so it stands out in a different way.  OK, so now, let’s see.  This is, of course, a massing model with slabs.  You could do the same thing with the Morph tool and get more options for tilting and defining things, but if you really want to have a little more detail as you’re doing it, then you’ll want to, at some point or even right away, just do it with the Wall tool.  [0:10:25]

So, how would you do that?  Now, I could go and select these 2 elements and pull them down so that they are no longer massing elements.  So, for example, I could go and say that the top is at zero.  So, now it’s just going to be a slab right here, and then I can put in some walls.  So, again, I can go to the Wall tool, say that I just want a simple shape here. We’ll just give this a generic exterior, and I’ll draw this in a box like this.  [0:11:07]

We’ll go back to 3D, and well, of course, this lower slab now has a different surface on it, but again, these walls – we would potentially want to separate them out the same way we did.  So, again, if I go to the floor plan, and I take these 2 walls, split them like that, and now take those 2 plus this wall here, and we’ll say that we want to – maybe I’ll just make this out of…  Do we have a masonry non-structural here?  Let’s see what this looks like in 3D.  [0:11:07]

OK, so there is a brick face to the masonry – non-structural. It’s going to give me some type of a brick texture here. If we wanted to just delineate it, or of course, we could make this a little bit less pronounced and do something with some sort of concrete like that.  Of course, these stand out, and we would want to coordinate this lower slab here to be the same. So, say this is concrete – structural here.  [0:12:35]

OK, and we’d want to tell it to turn off the override so it would match there.  OK, so we’re looking at just quick ways that you can be drawing and then changing things and how you need to slice things and reference things from story to story. Let’s look at some things about putting in windows – some openings because obviously, having the walls in place as opposed to a slab allows one to do that.  [0:13:07]

When you put in a window, the standard default window – if I pop this in here, and these are a little bit hard to see.  So, let’s just put this back to the generic exterior again – maybe give it just a simple outside surface of some differentiating color. Alright, now when we’re looking at this, how do we want this window to look?  Now, right now, this is a casement window.  If we’re putting in some concept fenestration, we may not want to specify or have it even imply that it has got a particular opening direction or type there.  [0:13:54]

So, we may want to go in here and, for example, instead of doing a casement, we may want to put in just a fixed window here. We may want to go and actually turn off some of the other details.  For example, frame and sash.  Let’s see.  I guess – what am I doing here?  I want to go and – I guess fixtures and fittings.  OK, so this is without casing. Sometimes you may have these with the casing here. So, you can decide if you want to simplify this, and you want to have a uniform color because right now we’ve got this darker color there. That can be set up with the model attributes.  [0:14:48]

Let’s see. It’s model attributes for the frame here.  Let’s see.  Model attributes for the window – we can say that I want to do uniform window surfaces, and that will make all of this the same, and maybe we want to make it lighter, just to be a little bit less pronounced here. The glass is still separate, but this checkbox here makes all of these go to the same – all of the frame and the sash divisions would be the same.  [0:15:20]

Now, the reason why I’m going through that is because I want to say here – and let’s go get this slab here to be over it, and I want to have the same override.  I want to have a very simple look here.  So, this is color 10. By the way, if you want to paint this, you can look up the color tan like I just did and say that you’re going to change the color here on the slab, but there’s a really nice option for quick changes to these things. [0:16:00]

If we go to the – what is it?  It’s the window, palettes, and it’s called surface painter.  This was introduced, I think around ARCHICAD 18 when Cinerender came in, and I believe that we can pick up – let’s see. We can pick up – what the heck?  Interesting.  So, it just snapped into position here as a palette. That’s not quite what I wanted to do, and I’m trying to get this palette to unlock here.  Let me go to the palettes – the quick – I apologize.  Sometimes my things just don’t work quite so smoothly. I’m trying to get – so, if the surface painter is open here, I can maybe just hit Escape.  [0:17:10]

OK, I’ve hit Escape to get out of that mode, and this palette – oh, here’s the controlling thing, the surface painter.  OK, so I just wanted to have it as a floating palette.  It’s just a little bit more convenient, but I’m moving a little too quickly to control it. If I use the eye dropper here, I can pick up this setting, and what you’ll see is that it’s highlighting the fact that this is the color tan that we have.  Then, I can say I’d like to paint this color that I’ve got highlighted onto one or more surfaces, and then I can click, and you can see how that just made the setting for the slab have that same surface.  [0:18:02]

So, what it did was for eligible elements like slabs, walls, columns, beams, etc., where you have a building material that is going to be seen unless you override it, this will override – in this case, the outside edge of the slab, with the desired surface. It’s the same thing as going to the override command for the element, but you don’t have to actually go select the element ahead of time, and you don’t have to select the surface from a list. We’ve got this alright highlighted here.  [0:18:46]

So, for example, I can go in and apply it to this.  So, that applied it to the entire slab.  Remember, this upper part is a slab, and I can do it to this base here, to that slab there. So, you can see how I can go around the building and make things have a uniform appearance.  Now, it is a little bit limited in the sense that with slabs, you can have individual faces be different from other faces.  You know how you can select a slab, and you can say the outside of it is a particular color or a surface, but you can also say that this face is a little different.  [0:19:33]

So, what I’m going to do right now here – I’m going to pick up. We’re just going to clean this up a little bit. Let’s say we wanted to make all of this one color, but then we’re going to change the color on this side.  So, I’ll go and eye drop this color here, and then I’ll paint on that one. Let’s see. We should be able to eye drop this color here, which is generic exterior, and then I’ll paint it. Oh, OK. If I hover over it, you can see how it would paint the entire slab there.  It’s giving me a preview of that.  [0:20:20]

So, what I’m going to do is actually be a little bit more selective on this. The surface painter is great, but it does have limitations because in this case, we can’t change just one surface of the slab at a time.   So, I’ll close that up. I just wanted to make sure you were aware that you could use this because it can be very powerful, but let’s go and hit the Escape key to get out of the painting mode or just click that button again, and I can hide this palette as well.  [0:20:56]

It goes back to this little icon button, which is in the standard toolbar for the U.S. version, and it can be added to the toolbar for international users.  Alright, so let’s go here to the Slab tool or the Slab element, and I’ll go to the edge.  Now, the edge here – you see the blue line is the reference line of this particular slab.  In order to change one surface versus another, we need to go to the edge.  On the plan, it’s just going to be the outline polygon, but in 3D, we have to go to this edge as opposed to down here.  [0:21:34]

When I go to this edge, I can say that I’d like to change this face as a custom edge, and let’s say the color is going to be – what do we have here?  Concrete?  No, we had generic exterior, I think.  We’ll say OK. So, now you can see that this matches.  So, you can override that, and of course, I’d want to do it for this lower slab here and go again to the blue line, press down with the pet palette choice, pick the one that says custom edge here, and then again, we’ll take the generic exterior and say OK.  [0:22:25]

You could do other things with this.  You can even tilt the edges here, and you can apply it to all edges or just the selected one – different variations are available there. OK, so I won’t go around the back to do that, but you can see that with this combination of the surface painter or surface overrides, we can end up with fine-tuned control, even in a concept model.  [0:22:54]

Now, if I go to this window, and I eye drop it, or actually, I drag copies of it, in this case. Let’s just say I want to drag copies.  So, you know that you can go to the Edit menu, Move, Multiply, and if we wanted to have things evenly spaced, then that would be fine, but we can also drag multiple copies, which is something that I think I forget is available, and you may as well.  Dragging multiple copies can be done where I click on a point and say I want to put one here and one over here.  [0:23:33]

You know, something like that.  Now, if this was a wall, we could pop it up in here, but we can’t actually put it in a slab. That’s one of the limitations here. Now, I hit the Escape key when I’m done there.  Now, let’s say that we wanted to have a couple more copies. So, I’ll just drag a copy.  So, I can do Command+D and then an Option key or Alt key to say that I want to – let’s see Option on Mac.  I think it’s Ctrl on Windows to get the little plus sign there. [0:24:09]

If you do Option+Command on Mac, then you get that double plus.  So, that’s the keyboard shortcut.  You do the Drag command, and then do Command+Option on Mac or Ctrl+Alt on Windows, and then I can, for example, say I want one here and one there.  Alright, and then hit the Escape key when I’m done. Alright, so I’ve just put in some things roughly to indicate that I’m expecting there’s going to be a wall partition here. We’re going to have 2 windows within each room, but now let’s talk about differentiation as we make decisions.  [0:24:46]

So, we’re working on this, and let’s say to make one of the windows in each of these sections here a little bit bigger.  So, I go and change the width there. Now, remember when we do that, the window is anchored at whatever point we’ve told it to – either before or after, so if I undo that, and I switch this to the corner anchor and then make it the 5 feet, then they’re both going to be locked in, in this case, on the left corner.  [0:25:21]

So, if you find that when you’re changing the size that it moved around in a way you didn’t expect, you can change the anchor before you change it. Undo and then change it again to get that effect.  So, I’ll put it back to the center anchor here because I think that will be a little bit better for this demonstration.  Now, they got wider around the center point. Now, as we are playing around with these things, we might say we’d like these two windows to be a different type of window.  [0:25:57]

So, actually, let’s go to – I want to keep it in a certain sequence of demonstration.  These 2 windows – let’s say that we wanted to have some mullions – some dividers here. So, I go into the Window settings, and I can go to the section where it is the – where is it?  It’s the frame and sash. No, I’m having a little hard time today with the window settings. There we go. Just in the plain window setting. So, horizontal, vertical grid. We can set up this to have some grid.  Of course, I can type in how many values or how many dividers I want.  [0:26:46]

Now, this is keeping the same size.  It’s keeping the same style, and so even as a concept, we’re just seeing a little delineation, but not drawing attention to the window in the sense of making it stand out as having a casing or changing some other style for it.  We want to do that, even when we’re switching to a different window type. So, with these, I put in dividers. These other larger ones? I’m going to switch them to a different window type.  [0:27:23]

So, for example, if I wanted to go to a slider here, when I make this a slider – and by the way, this is 2 of them. What’s going to happen is it’s going to switch them here. The size actually, in this case, stayed the same because it was the default, but you can see the style here changed.  The frame has a different material or a different surface.  [0:27:56]

Now, I’m going to cancel this because I don’t want that to happen, and let me just make this, say, 4 feet wide.  So, we want to maintain that 4 feet, say, instead of 5 feet.  So, when I switch this from the current window here to the slider, what I’m going to do is use the special option called Parameter Transfer within the library part.  So, if you use the keyboard shortcuts for the syringe tool – so, you know the eye dropper picks up settings.  The syringe injects them, and the eye dropper has a keyboard shortcut of Option on the Mac or Alt on PC.  [0:28:41]

The syringe has a keyboard shortcut of Option+Command, and on the PC it’s Alt+Ctrl.  So, if you hold down those two keys – I’m holding down Option+Command, and then I move it on top of or browse around in this area where I might switch it to a new window type. If I hold it down and then click with the syringe, you can see the syringe icon here.  You can see that it switched to the slider. It kept the width instead of switching it to 5 feet.  It kept the style here, which in this case, is what we wanted.  [0:29:19]

We wanted to just maintain whatever style was chosen, and we say OK, and you can see how instantly it just sort of slips in there with another design decision, but without modifying some of the original attributes there.  Now, as we’re working with these windows, perhaps we decide to put a nice casing around the whole thing and have a sill here.  [0:29:49]

I can go to the Window tool and select all windows.  Now, of course, you can be more selective and say that the windows in this area change, but those windows over there don’t, but we can go in, and even though some are sliders and some are fixed, if they’re all from the same library – let’s say, the standard Graphisoft library for your version, then you can usually go in and pick up some part of the window.  For example, the fixtures and fittings. We can say that we want to add a casing outside and inside, let’s just say.  [0:30:30]

Let’s go, now that I’ve chosen that. I can go down to the casing, and let’s just say I want to make it a wider piece here. So, we’ll make it 4 inches.  It’ll stand out on both sides just a little bigger, just to stand out and maybe at the top as well there.  So, I just want to – whereas this is the 4 inches, and 4 inches here.  So, by doing that, I’ve changed the style of all of these windows at once.  [0:31:13]

So, the main point here is that as you’re starting your design, you’re going to be indicating some ideas. We’re putting in windows here. The door’s going to be located there. We’re going to have these partitions. We’re laying some things out, but you can start out with some very simple concepts – just simple openings that don’t indicate the size. Well, it’s going to be some windows in this room. Then, later, you’ll say we need a bigger window or smaller ones. In the bathroom, we need a window that doesn’t go down as low for privacy concerns.  [0:31:47]

So, you’re making some decisions there. Later, you may make some more decisions about the style. Now, of course, you can make decisions early on. You know that this is a colonial house in New England that you’re doing a remodel on, and you want to match those windows – the new windows to the existing style. That’s fine, but in other cases, you may want to start out simpler for a variety of reasons.  One is you haven’t decided, and the other is you don’t want the client to think, “Oh, the design is really – looks like you’ve laid everything out. You must be done,” when you haven’t actually made those decisions.  [0:32:27]

So, you want to have placeholder or simple elements to avoid misleading the client that this is all figured out.  Now, let’s see if there are any comments as we’ve been going.  Alright, so Jimmy makes a point from a while ago when I was trying to find the brick. It’s in masonry – structural. It seems like masonry – structural was a CMU rather than brick, but that’s – I’m not quite sure. They’re reorganized the surfaces in the U.S. version, and it’s just one of those things where you have to get used to where you find them.  [0:33:11]

Alright, so don’t see any questions. Please add some comments if you think that any of this is useful, if it’s giving you some ideas for things that you could do, because that’s, of course, helpful for me to know that I’m on the right track, and if you have any other ways that you approach similar concepts, please feel free to add them to the Slack conversation because I think we can have this as a dialog a little bit, even though I’m the one who’s presenting.  [0:33:47]

Alright, so I see Jimmy and Sherry Weaver are commenting. So, Jimmy, always great stuff. Thank you, Jimmy.  Appreciate that.  Let’s see what Sherry has to say, and I’ll take a sip of my coffee. No tea today. It’s my coffee.  Alright, so Sherry says, “Is there a way to change the casing on all the windows in the library, not just on the project?” Unfortunately no, Sherry.  The library has defaults that are set up by Graphisoft, so basically, when you flip to a library part, like when I flip to that slider, and it said, “Oh, 5 feet wide, 5 feet high, and these surfaces in this style there,” that was set by Graphisoft.  [0:34:42]

You could technically go and create a copy of the library. You could go and open up every single part that you wanted to change and change those defaults, but you’d have to literally go into every single library part and redefine that and resave in your own private copy of the library. So, essentially, it’s impractical for things like windows because there are dozens of windows, and it just is not practical, but you can have favorites.  [0:35:17]

So, we talked about favorites before, and that would be the preferred approach is to have favorites and/or and Interactive Legend kit of parts with your favorite settings already embedded, and then, when you select an favorite, you’ve got the casing the way you want it.  So, because of the parameter transfer option that I just reminded you about, you don’t need to have a favorite for every type of window.  You just need to have favorites for a few types of windows and a few sizes, and then, when you want to put in a different type of a window, then you can start with one of the favorites and then use the parameter transfer – the syringe, within the library part to switch to another type of window, but with similar settings.  [0:36:06]

So, that way, you keep the casing the way you prefer.  So, favorites is the way to go for that.  So, Monica – hey, Monica. You’re about to ask me to show favorites, so we’ve gone over that quite a bit earlier in the course, but basically, the favorites menu is available from this little tool icon, or you can go to the window, palettes, favorites to turn it off and on, and you can also set up a keyboard shortcut to do that.  Now, the favorites here – if I double-click on window cased opening, that sets up my window for, in this case, an empty opening, just with a casing around it.  [0:36:49]

If I double-click on window double-hung simple, that’s going to be this particular type.  So, if I click to place it – let’s see if I pop this in here, you can see that here’s my double-hung, and very briefly, if you, say, want to set up your new favorite, if I select a window or any element that I want to use as a favorite, I can select it and use the plus here in the bottom of the favorites palette. You click plus and say that this is simple fixed window here. [0:37:30]

Now, that shows up here, and favorites – you can have folders. So, for example, you might have a folder for residential favorites and another for commercial.  You might have one for modern and another for classic or historic buildings or something like that.  So, you can organize these things in as many subfolders as you find useful, but of course, you could have one folder with all your window favorites, and as long as you name them in a way that’s very clear, then you can manage with that as long as the list doesn’t get unwieldy.  [0:38:10]

Alright, so that’s a quick review of the use of favorites for this particular purpose. I’m going to close the favorites here, and remember I can always bring it up by clicking on this icon or using the keyboard shortcut or the menu, and, in fact when I hover over the Window tool, and I press down here, we can select and activate any of these, meaning I can say that I’d like to put a window like this cased opening, and I can click on it or double-click, and now that’s working.  [0:38:42]

So, I don’t even have to have the – by the way, there’s no glass here. That’s the back wall. This is a cased opening as opposed to this, which is a window here.  Now, you can access it from this little pop-up here, or the same thing from this little pop-up, but you can’t edit favorites when you’re using the pop-up. You have to have the full favorites palette.  [0:39:12]

Alright, we’re going to move on to a different section of this lesson, where we’re going to look at some interior layout and some strategies for quickly designing a kitchen.  So, let’s go to the floor plan here.  So, we’re on the ground floor. Now, if we were going to put in a kitchen in this corner – well, maybe let’s pop in a couple of windows. We’ll just say to put in a simple window here.  Say, there’s going to be a window here in the kitchen, and there’s going to be another window here – something like that.  [0:39:53]

We’re going to have some counters going around this way, so I’m gesturing with my mouse.  How would you do that?  Well, you could use the Line or the Polyline tool and just say sort of about here, and let’s say it’s 2 feet for a basic shape of the depth of the counter, and I want to take this over. Now, when I take it over, I could just sort of eyeball it, or I could go to where it meets this interior face and then say, “Well, I want it 2 feet back.”  [0:40:27]

So, you may recall that I’ve been talking about some keyboard shortcuts with the tracker tool to allow you to offset things.  I was using that with the marquee to say that we want to change this from this side of the building from being a sort of funky distance from the other side to being a nice, even number. So, I used a plus or a minus sign to say to move this over a certain distance. Well, here I’m going to do it in context of drawing something right in the middle of my operation.  [0:41:05]

You can see that this like is going 15 feet and a fraction inches.  I want it to be back 2 feet.  I want it to be a nice, even number, so that the counter that I’m drawing has got that depth.  So, what do I do?  I type in 2. You notice that the distance has changed to 2.  If I hit Enter, we have an actually just short little line – 2 feet in length. It wouldn’t go anywhere near this length. It would just go equal to the depth, so it would just be a short stub, but if I type in 2 feet 0, and then a minus, and actually a second minus.  Sometimes, with the U.S. units, you need to have 2 dash separators – either 2-0-, which would be 2 feet 0 inches minus, or you can just do 2--.  [0:42:02]

Now, if you’re in metric, you don’t have that annoyance.  You just type in – let’s say 2 feet would be roughly 600 millimeters or something like that.  You would just type in 600- or .6-, whatever it is, but I hit the minus twice, in this case, and now you can see it’s moved back 2 feet from that face, and so I can just hit enter. So, that actually drew that cabinet.  [0:42:31]

Now, I’ll just take this down here, and then I’ll take it over.  Alright, so now, if we were having a plan – maybe that looks a little excessive here, so we’ll just go and use the Marquee tool and bring this over like that.  Instead of using the Marquee tool, where I’m stretching things, and maybe there are some other things that are in the way, I can select the Polyline, and just like we can modify polygons like a slab, I can go to the edge and use the offset.  [0:43:08]

So, I can choose to offset and then pull this in or out as needed, and of course, this line shortened, and this line moved when I did that.  Now, it turns out, you can do it with the Line tool.  I’ll just demonstrate that. If I have a line and another line, and these are totally separate, if I select these 2 and possibly other lines as well, I can go here and use the same option here. So, even though these are separate lines – even though this is a separate piece than that, if you select them both together, you can edit them like you edit a polygon.  [0:43:46]

I don’t recommend it in this particular context because I’d rather have a polyline, but certainly there are times when you do have separate lines, and all you need to know is that you can select multiple ones that are connected and then edit them line a polygon. In fact, you can do the same thing with walls.  If, for example, I take these 3 walls here – even though they’re not a polygon, I could go and stretch this out.  So, I basically selected several walls that were connected and I went to the edge of one of them and edited it like a polygon, and the other ones just stayed connected as would be a natural type of editing there.  [0:44:31]

Alright, so now we have something that on plan, if you were just simply sketching something out, it would represent that we’re going to have windows here, and we’re going to put cabinets there, and you’re not worried about which cabinets are going to be or how it’s going to lay out and which ones are going to be drawers and which ones are going to be doors.  You’re not worried about any of that, but if we were to look in 3D, what would you see if we were to stand here and look there?  [0:45:02]

Let’s just make sure the camera settings are at eye level.  So, 5 feet or – what is that?  About 1.7 meters or something like that would be roughly eye level for an adult here, looking across towards there.  If I have the camera selected, and I bring up the 3D window here – actually, what we need to do is right-click and say to show either all in 3D with that selected. Then it’s going to switch the 3D window view to that position.  [0:45:42]

So, of course, while we drew a little line on the plan, saying this is where the counters are, in 3D, it doesn’t look like anything.  So, how would you – just as easily as drawing the line, create something that would show a mass so that your client would say, “OK, Alright, we’re going to have cabinets here. We’re going to have an island and a picture window there – that sort of thing.”  So, how would you do that? Well, let’s start out with the simplest thing, which would be to create a slab that’s just going to be the volume of the cabinet.  [0:46:13]

So, in this case, I’ll say it goes from zero feet to 3 feet, just to be simple, and we’ll say that it’s going to be wood, and I’ll just say trim.  So, it’s just sort of obviously not structural.  I’ll go in here, and I could draw a box.  Now, if I go to 3D, we’re going to see this box. I could then go and select this and say I’d like to use the editing pet palette to add another section to the polygon and go from here down to here.  [0:46:52]

Now, you can see this is all one polygon. Now, there’s an extra node point here that won’t get in the way, but sometimes, you just want to edit this and reposition the node and just put it on top of this other one, and now we can have something that doesn’t have any differentiation.  So, now when I go to 3D, now we’re going to see that OK, there’s some cabinets, and maybe we need to make these windows adjust their bottom.  [0:47:20]

So, we take the bottom up, and I’ll just snap them in here. Of course, maybe they need to be up above, but let’s just say that that’s a starting point.  Now, it doesn’t really look like cabinets, but you can tell that alright, there are going to be cabinets here, and if you put in an island, you start to just get a feel for the space. Let’s add some more detail without worrying about individual cabinet bodies.  Let’s put in a countertop with a little bit of an overhang.  [0:47:52]

So if I go here and drag a copy – so, I’m going to do Command+D, Option, and I’ll say to drag a copy up to here, now of course, that doesn’t make any sense, but let’s just take this top down to something. I’ll zoom in on it, and it’s not snapping, and we don’t really want it to snap. So, I could, just very quickly, go and pull this out and, of course, I can just do this without typing in values. So, it’s just a quick concept – maybe, of course, we’d want some differentiation visually because it is looking too much the same.  [0:48:48]

So, if I select this and go and, let’s just say that it’s going to be something – what would be good here?  Not tile.  Do we have stone?  Alright, stone – finish here.  Something like that, so we can do that. Now, of course, I could say that the 3 feet is actually the top here.  I don’t really want to extend it up, so I’ll just drag it down. I’ll just do Command+D and drag it down here in 3D, and maybe the thickness of this needs to ideally be a nice, even number – 2 inches thick, whatever that is.  [0:49:33]

So, I type that in, and then I can go into this down here and say it has to fit underneath, and of course, I can go on the plan and be more specific about the offsets because that’s way too big an offset here. I was just doing it very quickly with my eyes. So, I can go again.  Here’s the option with the tracker.  I’ll say I’d like to take it as far as this point but then back 2 inches.  Now, there’s 2 ways to do that. We can just move it back here and then pull it out again 2 inches. That’s fine, or remember I can go up here and then say 2 inches minus, and sometimes you need an extra minus in the U.S., and now that’s the 2 inches. [0:50:25]

Maybe I take it out here 2 inches. Now, I could have done the offset in all directions 2 inches, but then it would of course bury itself in the walls, and so then I’d have to pull those back, but those are all just fine-tuning your process.  I want to show you just the different ways that you can do it.  Alright, so now we have some extensions there.  [0:50:53]

Now, what if we wanted to have a backsplash? We want to indicate that there’s something on the wall here. I forgot what it’s called in other parts of the wall.  Is it updraft?  I think something like that – up something.  Upskirt?  I can’t remember.  So, let’s go and use the Beam tool. Now, the Beam tool can be used for structural beams but can also be used for finish elements very easily.  Now, I could use a wall – a little tiny piece of wall here, but there are some complications in terms of how the walls might try to connect together.  [0:51:32]

One wall is the little piece, and one wall is the big piece, and how do they work?  If we simply set up a beam, then we know that it’s not going to interact with the wall as a sort of co-equal element.  It will just sit next to the wall.  So, let’s say that the beam is going to be – I’ll just make it 2 inches thick here, and then I want to make my line that I’m drawing to be 1 inch off from the center.  So, what does that mean?  [0:52:10]

That means I’m going to be drawing the line of the face to the wall and the full thickness of the beam will be sticking out from it, and it’ll be going from – let’s say, the 3 feet to 3’-6” – something like that.  I mean, I know sometimes you’ll have very tall ones, and sometimes you’re going to have very short ones, but let’s just do something modest to start out with, and what is it going to be made of?  Let’s make it the same stone finish here.  [0:52:39]

Now, I can go and literally draw this to here. Now, that beam – I had set incorrectly.  You can see it’s going down, and it’s also facing the wrong way. It went into the wall.  So, I need to say that it’s 3’-6” and going down to 3 feet, so when I pop those in, I need to keep those in mind, and then, in this case, we need to flip this, and unfortunately, I don’t think we can just flip this here in 3D directly.  We can mirror it – either on plan or on 3D.  [0:53:26]

So, if I do Command+M and draw this line, I basically am going to flip it on its own axis here, and you can see it took what was in the wall and put it outside the wall there.  Now, because of the way that my settings – in order to do it again, I’m going to take it this direction this type as opposed to other directions.  Oops, I need to go and eye drop this because it’s going to be – I need it to be up at that level there.  [0:53:58]

Let’s see here.  That didn’t work. When you’re snapping to points like this, it’s actually going to set the top height in terms of the beam, but I don’t think you can change the reference of a beam to be the bottom.  You know how you can change the slabs to have a reference at the top or bottom or at the top core or bottom core?  Beams – Graphisoft hasn’t done that because beams, let’s say, are used mostly, or at least as far as Graphisoft is concerned, beams are used for structural purposes, and the top height is what things rest on, and that’s the reference.  [0:54:38]

In this case, I’m using it for a massing idea.  So, let’s just go back to the floor plan and create that. So, I’ll go and draw this beam, and here you can see that the body is at the wrong side.  So, I’ll go and take it going here. I need to make sure I’m snapped in nicely to this. Here’s a snap point.  It’s not the point I want.  It’s really this one here. Let me just go and start it where I can snap it and then maybe shorten it if I need to.  [0:55:12]

We’ll go in here and take another one here.  I’ll just use the Shift key to lock it and perhaps take it down to here.  Now, if we go to 3D, let’s see what we’ve got. Oh, interesting.  So, my settings – I don’t know what happened. When I went back to the floor plan, the settings for the beam settings were different.  So, you do have to pay attention to these things, ideally. I’ll just say to drag this point and take it down and snap it into position.  [0:55:53]

So, what I like demonstrating is how you can go back and forth and work in 3D and use an approach that I often take, which is just to put something out there, snap it where you can, and then just don’t worry about it necessarily being the right elevation. Just move it to the right position and stretch it to the right heights.  Sometimes it’s more mentally taxing to just figure out the numbers than to simply just put something into place and then just adjust it.  [0:56:27]

Alright, now obviously this one here – we want to go and shorten that beam so that it’s not bumping into the window casing, if we did have that.  So, we’ve just adjusted these things and got them to be as needed here.  I don’t know if there would be a snap for that, but something like that would work.  Now, another way that we can do this is we can actually create a complex profile that has all of these elements, and then you can literally just draw it, and it can have the backsplash, countertop, the cabinet body, and even more detail – for example, like a kick down at the bottom.  [0:57:09]

So, how would we do that?  Variety of ways to do it, but the simplest is just to cut a section through what we’ve already done and create a complex profile from that. So, I’ll go to the section tool here, and we’ll just cut a section here.  Actually, we already have a section, so I don’t need that.  I’ll take this section here, which showed up as soon as I clicked because it asked if I want to turn on the layer that’s hidden.  I’ll say yes, let’s open this, and here we can see the shape that we’ve got. [0:57:47]

So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to select these elements here.  So, you can see it selected the masses.  So, we have this slab that turned the corner.  This countertop slab turned the corner, and just this backsplash here – I’m going to copy them. Why am I copying them?  Because I want to paste a version of them into a complex profile and virtually instantly have something that I can use for massing purposes.  [0:58:24]

So, here’s how we do it. We go to the options, complex profiles, profile manager – wherever profile manager is in your menu structure.  Sometimes, it’s moved around.  Graphisoft has been changing it, and I’ll say I’ve got a custom one here, which I want to edit, and I will then paste what I just copied in here.  Now, you can see that it’s pasted a whole bunch of stuff.  I’ll go grab this bottom-left corner and put it on the origin point and then click outside.  [0:59:01]

Now, did it get it on the origin point here?  Yeah, it looks like it did, as I zoom in and out. It certainly is right on there.  So, I don’t want to have this piece that’s not really part of it. I don’t want to have that piece, so I’m just deleting all of these extraneous things. Now, the extra heavy linework came from the section view, where it was actually just copying the outlines that the section was drawing in a heavier linework.  [0:59:36]

They will be ignored when you have a complex profile because a complex profile will always draw linework around things. I don’t have to worry about it. It is a drafting line. I can turn off drafting lines so I’m not seeing it, and now I’m seeing what we would have in a section.  So, let’s just add a kick here. I’ll just go in and say to use the minus – the Boolean minus for the polygon editing, and we’ll just go here.  I’m not going to be precise. I’m just going to do a little shape like that.  [1:00:12]

Let’s say what is this made of? Well, it’s wood trim.  That’s fine here. As a matter of fact, these are both fine here. I could unify them, so these are 2 different fills, and if you want to just sort of make it read better, you could unify them. We can go to the Edit menu, reshape fill consolidation, and then while there’s a bunch of different options, we could say to merge identical adjoining fills and say OK.  Then, we should see that now, this is just one fill that perhaps I just simplify the linework down like this.  [1:00:57]

Now, that’s not essential. It probably would have performed pretty well without it, but this will give me a little bit simpler editing ability if I ever wanted to do things.  Alright, so I’m now going to save this for use with the Wall tool. It’s fine, or the Beam tool, and say to save. What are we going to call this? We’ll call it Cabinet Massing 1. So, we might have more than one style there.  OK, so now let’s take a look at this on plan.  [1:01:31]

We’ll say that we were starting over, and we go to the Wall tool here, and in the Wall tool, you say you’d like to do a complex profile and pick the Cabinet Massing 1.  Then, we’ll just draw – say, just a couple of things.  I’ll draw going here and then back, and we’ll take a look in 3D, and you can see that this is now – even with the added kick, it’s just instant to create that.  So, you wouldn’t be able to get the cutout for a window if you were doing it that way.  Maybe, of course, you have the window above the backsplash, just depending upon how it works.  [1:02:27]

I guess probably most of the time, you would have the backsplash stop on either side of the window, but you might need to have a different version that you would put underneath windows there, but you can see how fast that would be, and you can create one that didn’t have the backsplash to use for an island – just whatever you feel would be helpful to create variations, and then you can literally just draw them like that.  So, pretty efficient thing.  [1:02:59]

So, let’s see if there are some comments or questions on this.  Alright, so Diane.  “When I turn grid lines on, I don’t get all the blue dotted lines or circles that you get on guides.”  Alright, let’s look at how guides are turned on, and then Taren, “In general, when do you use the Line tool, and when do you use Polyline? Is there a ARCHICAD equivalent to SketchUp’s push pull for reshaping and articulating basic shapes in 3D?”  [1:03:24]

Alright, these are good questions, and Monica, “Once it’s done, in what project will it be saved, always there to be used on another project?”  Good questions.  Let’s just answer those one at a time. So, Diane’s question about getting the dotted lines and circles for guides. Alright, so I’m going to go back to a drafting view, which is the plan or a section or an elevation or a detail as opposed to 3D views.  So, on a new plan, I can draw lines. There is a control here for whether guidelines are visible.  [1:04:03]

So, if I hover over a point and wait a moment, you can see this little blue line that comes up. The guide lines changes over the years. Before ARCHICAD 15, they were one way.  ARCHICAD 15 until maybe 18 or 19, they were another, and then around 19 or 20, they changed to this style. So, we have this little mark here. If I move over to the side, you can see that it’s saying, “Oh, perhaps you want to be in line with it.”  [1:04:32]

I move away.  No. Move up? It shows up.  Very convenient. I can say I’d like to line this up as I go along here. Now, if I turn this off here, now when I hover over this – oh, there it is. OK, so it’s not there.  So, I thought it was this one. This is guides here. Interesting. So, we turn that off, and I thought that’s what would turn that. So, here’s the circle.  Let’s just see if it stays there.  If I go again, yeah, they’re there.  [1:05:18]

OK, so let’s see. I thought this was it, but this definitely controls whether you have – so, if I draw a guideline segment – so, this is actually just drawing a guide line. You can see this orange guide line, and I can draw another segment here.  So, we can do guide lines that we can snap to. We can also drag guide lines from one of these options here. So, I can snap to it. These little indicators at the top, bottom, and sides, are turned on and off with this guide line icon.  [1:05:59]

You can see that now, all those guide lines have disappeared, and I turn them back on, and they do show. So, that’s guide lines as opposed to guides. Now, guides – remember where we have those?  Is it under views here? Guide lines.  No, that’s guide lines. Guide line options. Where are the guides – snap guides?  OK, trying to remember that.  That’s interesting.  [1:06:36]

Options, Work Environment, let’s see.  On-screen view options here, perhaps the next control to the right.  OK, so Michael says, “The next control to the right.”  I don’t think that actually is.  This is the snap ones here, but maybe you’re right. If I hover over this, you can see that’s a guide line. Let me turn this off here.  Alright, if I hover over here, you can see that there’s no snap.  [1:07:09]

If I turn this on, you can see the little snap point.  So, that snap point here, I’ve got the circle and turn this off, and we don’t.  OK, thank you, Michael. Brilliant.  So, basically, these are the guide lines that you can either draw manually here, if you have this turned on.  You can either draw it manually, or you can go grab one from the top, bottom, or side, and just have it line up, for example, with the edge of something there whereas the snaps here – when those are turned on, now we have this blue circle and the implied lines – the dashed blue lines.  [1:08:03]

So, these are snaps, and the other ones are guide lines there, and so snap guides and points.  So, a snap guide is the blue lines or the blue circle around things whereas the guide lines are the ones you manually draw or pull out there.  So, now I’m clear, and thank you for giving me some help there.  Alright, let’s answer the other questions in order, and then Chris has another comment.  So, Taren says, “In general, when you use a line tool, when do you use Polyline?”  [1:08:41]

Alright, so you can use a line tool anytime you like, of course. It just goes without saying. That’s one line.  You can connect it there.  These are two separate lines.  You can also do a polyline geometry method with the Line tool, and then I can draw, for example, as many of these as I like, but when I’m done, they are individual lines whereas the Polyline is always unified.  Now, with the Polyline, I can draw only one line if I want by clicking an extra time there, or, of course, I can draw as many of these segments as I want and then when I select it, they’re all together.  [1:09:28]

So, probably polylines are the more general one. If you wanted to say you’ll use polylines for everything, and when you do a single line, you just do the first point, a second point, and click a third time to say there’s no more points.  That’s fine. Now, when would you want to have them individual?  Well, when you maybe want to say that you’re going to have this line solid and this one indicate something else, so we’ll make it dashed or something like that.  So, each one is independent.  You can do things like that.  [1:10:04]

You may want to draw a box, for example, of ones like this.  We’ll have a box here and then remove this one whereas if I have a polyline, and I draw a box, then when I select it, I’m selecting the whole polyline.  Now, there are ways to remove one part of a polyline, and in fact, you can go back and forth.  So, if I select these 3 lines here, I can go to the Edit menu, reshape, unify. That will take individual lines and turn them into a polyline.  [1:10:44]

Now, they’re a polyline.  In the same way, I can go to this polyline, go to the Edit menu, reshape, and explode, and I’ll turn off Keep Original Elements. Now, what do we have here? We have 4 separate lines.  So, you can explode without keeping the copy, and you’ll have the individual lines, and you can unify. So, when do you use them? It’s really up to you, but mainly if you want to edit them as a whole, if you want to treat them sort of as a combined entity, then the polyline is best, but think about other cases here where I might want to go and extend this to another place.  [1:11:37]

Take this line and extend it to here. So, when they’re independent lines, you can do that. If it was a polyline, it wouldn’t.  I couldn’t select this and extend it to here because it’s basically all of those lines connected.  So, those are some observations about lines and polylines and how you can switch them back and forth and do some basic editing operations.  [1:12:08]

Now, by the way, these guides here that are sort of getting messy, and maybe this element itself – I’m going to get rid of them. How do I get rid of the guide lines?  You can right-click on a guide line and say to either erase that one, or actually, Erase Guide Lines allows you to click, and you can click on as many as you like here and keep clicking. When you hit the Escape key, you’re done.  You can also right-click on it and say to remove all guide lines, and then they’ll all just disappear, and then separately, if you do have guide lines like these ones here, you can also just temporarily turn them off so they don’t show up on screen and turn them back on.  So, that’s another option for you.  [1:13:00]

OK, so is there an ARCHICAD equivalent to SketchUp’s Push/Pull tool for reshaping and articulating basic shapes in 3D?  Well, the polygon editing that I’ve been demonstrating here and there is available for doing push/pull of a certain type. So, I’ve been demonstrating things that on plan would push or pull an edge of either a polygon element like a slab or a series of linear elements like walls or lines, and so you can edit them that way. Now, if we’re talking about in 3D, of course, I can change the height of things, and that’s essentially like a push/pull of a certain type.  [1:13:52]

Now, if you want more freedom with that, then you can either create a morph or convert one or more elements that you’ve already drawn into a morph, and in the Morph tool, it’s very much like Sketchup in that you can just draw a line and a surface, and that splits it.  Then, you can pull one part of the surface that’s divided by that line and pull it.  You can do a lot of delineation right on screen in 3D.   [1:14:21]

I don’t know whether it’s identical in terms of the capabilities or not.  I think that it gives you many of the things that you might find familiar from Sketchup, but it’s obviously going to have some differences. That would be that the Morph tool that gives you the rough equivalent of the Sketchup.  Now, the Morph tool is great for massing, just like Sketchup is great for massing, but the Morph tool wouldn’t be the primary things you draw walls with because you can’t actually put windows into a morph. You can only put windows and doors into walls.  [1:15:00]

So, there you have it. Alright, so Taren says, “Thanks.”  OK, Monica’s question.  “Once done in one project, will it be saved?”  I guess you mean like that complex profile of the kitchen cabinet.  “Will it be saved there to use on a different project?”  So, again, we’re talking about something you’re developing in a project that is a resource within that project. It is called an attribute.  The attributes – I’m going to have to stop for just a moment.  [1:15:46]

OK, my apologies.  My wife had an urgent message for me.  OK, so this element here is a wall with a complex profile that we created earlier.  If I want to get this into another project, I can literally copy it and go to another project and paste it, and when I do that, it will not only bring in this little piece of it, but we’ll bring in the definition.  ARCHICAD is very good about bringing in attributes like complex profiles, building materials, surfaces, layers from one project to another – and you can select many elements and copy and paste them in.  [1:16:49]

Managing it – there can be complications if you have something on a layer that exists in one project and doesn’t exist in the other, it’s going to add that layer, and that may not be included in your layer management.  In other words, your layer combinations may not know about it, so you have to be careful, but it is a fantastic, quick way to just bring in things that you created in one and just paste it into the other.  [1:17:13]

For a more formal tool to do this and to manage it fully, you go to the Options menu, Attribute Manager, which is directly under the Options menu or sometimes under the Element Attributes command off in a side menu.  Attribute Manager lets you look at a variety of attributes, including the complex profiles here, and you’ll see that there’s that cabinet massing that I just created, and you can go and save out the profile in a separate file and then store that separate file onto your disk and then go and bring it into another project.  [1:17:58]

You can have multiple ones over here, and likewise, we could, in another project for your template, go open this project, where we’ve added some things, go grab some stuff from this project.  We would say Open using this little Import icon, and then bring those in, and you could them append them or bring them in in a variety of ways.  So, I will be doing a full training on Attribute Manager, but that’s the way you would manage it more fully, but copy and paste will do a pretty good job for most things, if you just want to get going with it.  [1:18:39]

Alright, so Chris says, “We could use the kitchen tool. It’s very flexible.”  So, I’m not familiar with the kitchen tool. This may be an add-on. Perhaps you can tell me about it, or possibly it’s in the library, and there are some options there.  Let’s just see. Chris, maybe you can tell me if we have this in the library. So, if I go to the Object tool and open up the Object tool, and let’s just type in Kitchen here, and it’s searching.  [1:19:18]

So, there are obviously a bunch of just cabinets that are tagged as being for the kitchen, and I’m trying to see if there are any kitchen layouts. Alright, here is a kitchen layout – L shape and kitchen layout – U shape.  So, let’s just take a look at the U shape one and see what it has. Well, obviously, it’s got some basic massing for the shapes here.  You can choose what types of elements are going to be included. In other words, are you going to have a refrigerator or not, an oven, etc., and do we have U shape?  [1:19:59]

We have different shapes in here.  Alright, so this is the kitchen layout. Chris says I’m on the right place, so Kitchen Layout – L shape or U shape here would be the ones that I’m seeing in the current library. Kitchen Layout 17 was obviously from an earlier library, and maybe there’s some other ones down here, but these ones are possible.  So, if I said a custom one here, then we have some attributes, and we can choose different things.  [1:20:45]

So, if I just say OK and I drop this in, alright, so let’s just drag this into position here. So, it looks like you can change or move some points in and out. Whoa, that’s interesting. So, I can move this around and do some interesting adjustments.  Let me just undo that.  I was trying to get this shorter here.  Alright, so we can take it shorter there.  So, we can do different adjustments like this, and so I’m just snapping, using the magenta diamond shapes or hotspots.  [1:21:40]

So, these hotspots are the ones that are editable as opposed to the black dots, which you can hover over and snap to, but you can’t directly edit.  So, you’re going to look at these and say, for example, to press down on it and use the option to move that node point, and you may look and see that there is a guide. It says refrigerator position.  So, let me just move this over and say we need some space for our doorway or something like that.  [1:22:16]

This guide – in this case, it doesn’t have a name that I can see, but we can see that it’s pulling out the upper cabinet.  So, certainly that is a very powerful resource within the ARCHICAD library, and maybe  it is preferable to this. If you find this useful, I think that in the early stages, just being able to put in simple cabinets like this is very powerful and probably simpler than this, even though you could turn off all of this delineation.  [1:22:58]

Let’s just take a look at this in 3D.  I’m just going to drag these over a little bit, so we’d see the in our current 3D view there.  OK, so we can see the shape. So, yeah, definitely has a lot more flexibility than I recalled earlier.  So, good to know about that. Thank you, Chris, for sharing that resource.  So, that is in the standard ARCHICAD library. I’m working in the U.S. version.  Chris is in the UK, so it’s definitely available in the other international versions of ARCHICAD.  [1:23:38]

OK, let’s see some other comments or questions.  So, Roy says, “Hi, Eric.  Can you offset a single line?”  You can drag it any distance you like. You can’t offset it.  You can drag a copy of it if you wanted to have that equivalent, so that would be the way you would approach it.  OK. Diane says she got her lines turned on. Alright, Geraldo.  “In the Kitchen library parts, is there the possibility of having shelves with a custom distance between each other?  I know it is possible with drawers, but I’ve not found it with shelves.”  [1:24:16]

I am not sure.  We’ll take a quick look here.  So, I’m back in ARCHICAD here. We’ll go to the Object tool, and we’ll just pick – instead of kitchen, where would we have one where we have different shelves?  So, certainly, in a wall cabinet, we’d have that.  Let’s see here. So, let me just see.  Can we turn off the door?  I’ll just custom panel.  So, I’ve turned off the door by saying I want to use a custom panel, and I don’t have a custom panel.  By the way, this is a way you can define a door for cabinets, or you do a similar thing for doors as a whole, where you create a shape that defines a specific type of door panel, and then the panel is something that you can choose from a pop-up, if we had one defined in this project.  [1:25:28]

When we do this with nothing selected, now I can at least temporarily see the spacing of the shelves.  Now, we have the door. Let’s go here and say the cabinet as a whole, number of shelves – we can choose 3 here.  So, it does change, but it looks like it’s all uniform. So, I don’t see any options here. So, probably the workaround, Geraldo, would be to have zero shelves and just draw in individual slabs, for example, to put them in. That would be my quick workaround. I don’t see a way in the current library parts to do this.  [1:26:12]

Now, there are libraries that you can get that you pay money for from different sources. One of them is CADImage, and I believe CADImage has a cabinet tool that gives you a lot more detail and a lot more flexibility, so if you find this is just one of the limitations that maybe you want to work around, and you want more detail, then you might want to check out CADImage Cabinets.  [1:26:42]

Alright, and Geraldo says, “Good idea.” “How to snap a dimension to the center of the window?  For some reason, the other day, I could not.” OK, so we’re getting really far field from the focus of the training, but I will answer that one more question here on the plan. So, when we’re talking about a dimension, and we go to the Dimension tool, I can generally find a snap point at places like the corner of the wall or the inside corner of the wall here, click to say I want to place a reference.  [1:27:27]

Now, you see that the round circle when I’m on a point that ARCHICAD recognizes.  Now, when I go to the corner of the window, you can see a black pencil, and when I brought my mouse over it, it highlighted the window.  You can see that as I bring it back over there, it’s highlighting the window to indicate that this is a corner of the window.  [1:27:58]

Now, if I wanted it to be the center, I don’t see any snap.  I move it down. When I bring it to the center point, we can see the black pencil, and that is going to snap to that center of the window. You can see the round circle, and let’s just say I’ll bring it to the corner of this slab and bring the dimension here. Now, sometimes, with windows, depending upon how they’re facing, and I’ll just undo this here.  If I go here, you may notice how this window doesn’t have any snap in this corner.  [1:28:39]

It does have it here, so let’s just see if I had the window facing the other way – right now the window is facing a certain way. If I were to flip this here, and now let’s go to the Dimension tool and hover over it. No, it’s still got that there. So, let me put in another window, pop it in here. Alright, now we’ll go to the Dimension tool and – no, it’s still snapping there. It’s not snapping to this point.  I thought it had to do with which way it was facing, but you can see that it’s snapping to one edge.  [1:29:30]

Now, it may have to do with which way the wall reference line is. So, let’s just do a quick check of that. If I were to temporarily switch this wall reference line – let’s say that I use the Edit menu, reshape – no. Let’s see. Edit menu, reference line and plane, modify wall reference line, and let’s say that I put the reference line on the inside face.  So, sometimes you’re going to have the reference line for a wall on the inside, particularly if you’re doing an as-built interior measurement. Then, you might say, “Well, this is what I know is the wall face is here.”  [1:30:10]

I do that, and now, if I go to the dimension and snap from here and go over this – no, it’s still got that.  OK, that’s interesting.  So, we may just try one more time to see if I can force this to be working the way the problem you have – if I go here, and I’ll pop this window in here, and now I’ll go to the Dimension tool and – no, it’s still doing it, and when I’m hovering here, you can see this little black pencil, but it didn’t actually highlight the window.  [1:31:03]

So, while this would precisely snap, it’s probably snapping to the line that we’re seeing rather than the window, and if the window were to move, it wouldn’t update. So, that was definitely a side diversion from the main part of the lesson here, but basically, when you’re doing the dimension tool, best practice is to hover over an element node point and wait for ARCHICAD to highlight the element that you want so that you know that it’s snapping to that element, and if that element moved, the dimension would update.  [1:31:43]

Sometimes, in some cases, your windows – you may have to go to the other center point to snap there. OK, so Ken says, “Drag the window, and it should change the dimension value.” Yes, it should, so we’ll just do this here, there, and I’ll just do this, and if I take this window, and we drag it here, you can see how the dimension does update.  That’s just undo that there.  OK, so let us see here, in terms of my outline. I think we’ve gone to an hour and a half because I answered a bunch of questions, but of course, that’s really important – I feel – to not only do what I’ve prepared but also clarify things and elaborate based on your questions and your input.  [1:32:42]

Alright, so my brief notes here have to do with refinement by selecting these. I didn’t do the find and select.  I selected all windows to be able to modify them. I do just quickly want to touch base on find and select, so we’ll go there. We did all of this. We did all of this.  OK, we haven’t done the group of elements brought in from a module, so let’s just take those 2 things that I missed for my outline.  [1:33:15]

So if we go to 3D, and I’m just going to go to my View menu, 3D view options, and instead of being in a perspective, which we were looking inside the kitchen. I’m going to go into an AXO view, and there are keyboard shortcuts for that.  Now, with the AXO view, we’ll see that I’m on the outside of the building.  Now, if I wanted to change all the walls here to be a different appearance, of course, I can go in one by one and select them, but I can also go in and use Find and Select.  [1:33:54]

So, if I go to the Edit menu and say Find and Select, Find and Select – which is also a keyboard shortcut of Command+F or Ctrl+F for Find, so pretty easy to remember. I can say to select everything and it selects everything we can see visible there, or I can say I would like to select all walls, and now that’s going to be just selecting the walls, or I can use the eye dropper and click on the eye dropper here.  Let’s see.  Eye dropper here.  No, I think – Oh, I can use the eye dropper on this.  [1:34:36]

Then, I can add properties. Let’s see.  I can add – let’s just say that the surface.  So, I just typed in part of the word surface, and I can say the outside face surface is colored tan. So, what it did was I just added a criteria for Find and Select based on just hitting the Add button, saying that what I’m concerned about or what I want to find are things that have the same surface that are walls, and by using the eye dropper, it picked up the settings of the wall that I had selected.  [1:35:23]

Now, I do plus here, and you can see these 4 walls are now with a color tan, and I can go and say that I’d like to change this from the color tan to the color sand or something like that, so now it’s a little different of a color here. So, I can do a Find and Select to change these elements.  If I do the plus here, you’d notice that it selected nothing because it was still set at color tan. If I eye drop this, you’ll notice that it changes, now to the same.  So, I could go in here and make any other change.  For example, I could make these walls thicker here.  [1:36:13]

I could go and select them and actually change them to a – interesting. So, I’ve got these walls.  I can change them .  Oh, that’s interesting. These are not letting me change to – where do I?  Oh, back here.  Change to a composite.  I can change it to a complex profile. We can do various options here. So, the Find and Select is very useful for being able to say that I’ve delineated my model in a certain way. I’ve made certain ones one color and certain ones a different color.  [1:36:58]

You could be having things on different layers. You could be having elements with different named definitions like wall type a, wall type b, and then with Find and Select, you could easily select everything that had those names. So, we’ll spend some more time in the next session talking about other options for delineating things further using Find and Select or redefining the elements.  So, I wanted to just make sure we touched on the Find and Select.  [1:37:32]

You could also, for example, if I eye drop this window here, now it’s saying, “Alright, so you want to select all windows?  No problem, I can select all windows,” or I could say that I want to select all windows with a name. This would be library part name, for example, fixed.  Now, this would be all the fixed windows.  So, you can see how they are.  [1:37:57]

We can be a little bit more specific, but not fully specific.  For example, I don’t think I can pick up the settings of the windows that are fixed which have a mullion pattern.  I don’t think that we can add that. Let’s just see if I say grid, because it’s a grid.  No, you can see grid isn’t there, and mullion isn’t there, so we can’t pick parameters that aren’t part of the general set.  [1:38:25]

The mullion or grid pattern is set up within the library part, and I don’t think Find and Select has an option for picking that information up.  Let’s just see if we do have it now. Parameters and Properties – no, I think the same thing.  I don’t think we have it here, even though you could list it in a schedule, you can’t do it in Find and Select.  [1:38:49]

Alright, the final – that piece, then, has to do with bringing elements in from a module. So, you saw how I laid out a kitchen with lines, with slabs, with a little more definition with massing and with a complex profile  and a library part, which was actually impressive what it might be able to do, in terms of just laying in L shapes or U shapes or common arrangements, but let’s look in the sample project for – let’s go back to an interior design for a floor here, and so we have a kitchen here made out of these pieces.  [1:39:41]

Well, if we were starting over, and we didn’t have these elements, let’s just go with the Arrow tool and turn off the Quick Select and then draw a box here to select everything that’s included. Maybe we don’t get rid of the word Kitchen, but now I’m selecting all of the cabinets. That would be one way to do it. I could draw a marquee and select all of the objects within it, and I’ll just delete it, and in a moment, it’ll delete them. Right now, we’ve got the spinning ball.  [1:40:18]

What I’m going to do is just bring in a new kitchen from our module. Now, I did demonstrate this in an earlier part of the course, where we talked about saving your favorites and having modules here, but I just wanted to briefly show it in this context.  If I go to – this is MasterTemplate, so this is going to be in the legends and favorites, and in the legends plan for copying quick rooms, I go to 3D all here, or we’ll go to zoom in on – let’s see. Here is a kitchen. So, these are some elements that are set up in this template for use to either eye drop or select things to copy.  [1:41:10]

For information purposes, I’ve got a lot of labels here that are showing the names of the library parts, just so you can quickly say, “Oh, we have a blender. Cool,” and things like that, but if I turn on a different layer combination here, then you can see this has turned off the labels. So, when I copy this, the labels won’t be part of it, so I’ll go now and copy these elements, copy them, and go back in a moment to my view that I had here, and I’ll paste in these elements and move them off to the side because I have to do some adjustment.  [1:42:01]

Now I have a whole kitchen layout with some placeholder walls that I can get rid of here, and I can get rid of, for example, this countertop or an eating area, and there’s some other things that are off to the side.  So, I can easily just get rid of the things that I don’t want, and then, for example, take these elements and drag them into the kitchen.  [1:42:34]

Now, they’re not going to fit in this kitchen, and the idea here is that we would pick and choose. So, for example, we certainly don’t want to have this go past the door, so we can pull this back over there. We can select these elements here that are currently in line with the door and get rid of them.  So, we can basically, for conceptual design, have groups of elements – typical rooms, and bring them in for your next design or for a design, and so if you did a lot of custom residential, and you had a bunch of beautiful kitchen you designed, one way that you could speed up your next design is have some of those kitchens in a file, and maybe you could say, “Oh, the Smith house.  That was a good one.”  [1:43:36]

You could copy that kitchen and bring it in as a starting point, or you could have a file that literally had 10 or 20 different kitchen designs from your projects, and they’re just sitting in a file, and you can literally open up that file, go grab the most relevant one, and paste it in, and then move things around. So, that is another fast way to get designs.  This would apply to hotel units, could apply to bathrooms, offices, lobbies – anything that would be a design type where there are may different elements and having a bunch of them brought in all at the same time would save you time in early design.  [1:44:25]

So, please keep that in mind for being able to speed up your early design process, and I think you will find your work going a lot faster when you can reuse the work you’ve done in previous projects in later projects.  Alright, let’s see. I think we’re at a good point to stop here.  OK, so I think I’ve covered all the questions.  Please add your comments if you found anything particularly interesting.  I always love to hear that.  If you think there’s something you’re going to use because now you’ve seen it, always love to see that.  [1:45:11]

Do add general feedback about the course into the feedback area.  Be back on Wednesday continuing on with the conceptual design, probably finishing up this section before we get into other areas of ARCHICAD usage.  So, appreciate your comments and your attention, and I wish you the best using ARCHICAD in the Best Practices manner. It’s my pleasure to share them with you.  Be well. Take care, and thanks for watching.  [1:45:48]