2020 | 010 – Navigator Best Practices

Hey, welcome, everyone, to the ARCHICAD Best Practices 2020 training course.  Today is Monday, February 11^th, 2019, and we’ll be continuing on. This is the 10^th lesson in the 2020 course.  Let me know that you can hear me and see my screen, and we’ll get going.  [0:00:29]

So, I’ve got Slack open here, and I can see people are coming in.  Susan says, “Here and see you fine.”  Gestur as well. Good.  So, I notice that there’s a highlight here in coaching calls.  So if you’re in coaching calls, like Jimmy, then you need to go to the 2020 channel so we’re all in the same place.  If you don’t see that there, Jimmy, just click on Channels, and then click on 2020.  That’s where we’ll be doing all the comments or questions or feedback in the current training session.  The coaching call channel is for the Thursday sessions.  [0:01:16]

OK, and if you haven’t worked with Slack, and you need assistance, I’m going to do one more time here.  Bobrow.com/slack, and that will give you the opportunity to put in your email address, and you’ll get an email pretty quickly, allowing you to then set up a password and log in to Slack in your web browser, in just a normal tab like when you visit a website.  Later, you can download the Slack app, which is what I’ve got here, so it can run in a separate window very easily.  [0:01:56]

I know that at least one person mentioned that he’s having problems figuring that out, so I will record something that helps explain that, so don’t worry if you are still a bit confused.  I’ll try to make a little guide for that.  Alright, and I see in the GoToWebinar questions area, which I’m trying to use less and less.  I see Bob Schwenke and Frank Vanderveen. They’re saying hello, but Bob and Frank, please go to Bobrow.com/slack and see if you can get in so your comments can be seen by everyone here.  [0:02:42]

So, we’ll get started in just a minute.  Alright, so we have gone through some of the basic organizational principles for using ARCHICAD effectively for setting up your project environment.  We are going to move on from some of the favorites – where you’re saving the favorite settings, Interactive Legends – where you’ve got quick access to frequently-used components,  the notes, legends, and specifications – where you have quick access or saved frequently-used notes, and now we’re going to be looking at the general structure of the Navigator.  [0:03:34]

I’m sure most of you have been using ARCHICAD for a while and that you use the Navigator all the time.  We’re going to start with some very, very basic, quick review of what Navigator’s about.  Sometimes it helps just to start and think about what this does.  Then, how do you use it as well as possible?  How do you really take full advantage of the power of the structure ARCHICAD?  [0:04:00]

So, I’m showing you the old course right now – the old Best Practices course, the classic one.  We are now up in Week 8 of the 30 weeks of the Best Practices course.  Now, it does get slower later on because we have a whole lot of detailed explanations of tools and methods, but we’re moving along pretty quickly.  I’m pretty satisfied with the speed.  Here we are in the second week of February, and we’re at this point.  [0:04:36]

So, let us go on.  I’ll bring up my notes here for today’s session.  So, I’m calling this Navigator Best Practices.  So, the Navigator is a section of your ARCHICAD interface that has several components, and I’m going to be just doing a quick review of what they are and what they’re for, and then various options for the Navigator. The key principles that you need to keep in mind here, and some of the best practices advice that I can give you, so let’s take a look in the context of a project here.  [0:05:19]

So, in any ARCHICAD project, integration the Navigator palette, we have 4 different icons on the right side.  Now, if you don’t see the Navigator palette, it is possible that you’ve closed it, and you can go.  First of all, you can drag the Navigator to a new part of the screen and change its size by grabbing the top part – the title bar is what it looks like here, but when I dock it, it should be able to dock here to the side.  When you dock it, it may have a different look – in this case, of a little horizontal line.  It doesn’t show the name Navigator, but it says that.  [0:06:11]

Now, you can change the width of most things on your screen – most palettes on your screen by going to the side. You’ll see the little icon for stretching it.  When it’s docked, this is the way it looks on a Mac.  It looks a little bit different on a PC.  You do have controls for the width, but in this case, I can’t change the height because it’s docked, and it’s taking the full height along here.  [0:06:35]

Now, you can turn the Navigator on or off under the Window menu palettes, and you can see Navigator.  You can even have a keyboard shortcut for the Navigator to turn it on or off, and you see how that disappears.  Now, in ARCHICAD 20 and above, there is what’s called a mini Navigator.  I think that’s the term.  It will show up in the top right of any window.  If you press down on this, you can get temporary access to the Navigator, so you could – particularly if you were on a small screen, you could have this turned off entirely and then just open it up when you need it.  [0:07:16]

That could be a very effective way to maximize your screen space because you don’t need to have this open.  If you’re working on a whole bunch of stuff on the plan, you don’t need to have the Navigator taking up space until you need it.  Now, if you do use this here, as soon as you click in the working area, it will disappear.  If you want it to stay, you can either go to that Window Palettes menu or the keyboard shortcut, or you can use this button here, which is called the Project Chooser, and you can say to show the Navigator, and here is our Navigator coming back in its docked position, wherever it was earlier.  [0:07:59]

Now, let’s look at the 4 main sections here and just talk quickly about what these are about.  The Project Map – if I close up all of these folders here, we can see the skeletal structure.  These are different view points of your project.  So, a project is a building on a site, or it could be multiple buildings on a site, but it is one file that you can move around in and get different information and views from it.  [0:08:38]

Now, this one file might reference other files, but inside this one file, there are stories.  Each one is a horizontal level.  There can be sections, which will be basically defined by section markers that cut through the model and look in one direction.  There are elevations, which are similar to sections but have different conventions for the markers, but almost identical.  Essentially, these are 2 different groupings of cutting through the model and looking in a particular direction.  [0:09:14]

Now, just like sections and elevations are very, very similar except for their name, and essentially you group them based on your use, worksheets and details are similar.  They’re 2D drafting areas that can be created either individually – say, “Just give me a new detail view point or a new worksheet view point,” or you can place a marker that defines that particular view point, and it will then copy some information from whatever you’re looking at.  [0:09:45]

So, these 2 are very similar except for your use of them.  Interior elevations are a special case of your elevation.  It’s another variation where you may frequently place a single marker that points in several different directions and gives you views of the adjoining walls.  3D documents are an interesting variation that not everyone takes advantage of.  When you have a 3D view, you can define not only, “Here, I’m looking from here, and I have certain layers turned on,” but you can turn that into a drawing that you then actually dimension, put on notes, and place on a sheet, and just like an elevation, it can be updated and stay current with the model and have a context of scale and dimensionality that is different than a rendering, for example.  [0:10:41]

It’s a 3D working drawing document.  Now, 3D views – these are view points that are looking at your model in a perspective or an axonometric type of manner.  Schedules, as we know, are reporting on the data in your model.  Well, typically they’re individual elements like doors or cabinets, but you can also have schedules that are reporting on quantities of things like how much dry wall or bricks – how many bricks, etc.  [0:11:10]

Project indexes relate to the sheets in your project, so you can have a list of all the sheets, either totally or just the ones that are being submitted, printed, and given use.  The indexes also include views, so you can get a list of all the views that you’re working with in the project, and I think there’s something else as well – another type.  [0:11:39]

Lists are an older format of quantity takeoffs.  They’re much less-used in recent years, and I’ve heard that GraphiSoft is going to be sort of phasing them out, but we will look at those at some point.  Info is some limited text-based palettes where you can actually save some information about either the project as a whole or references like the name of the firm or the address of the project, etc.  Then, there’s some links in the Help.  [0:12:09]

Now, these are all project viewpoints.  In the View map, we’re looking at arbitrarily organized folders with information that helps you to see the view points in the way that you want.  So, you can create these folders manually, of course.  Some of them will have subfolders.  Folders that have this type of appearance – you can create them any time you like.  You can change the name of them any time you like, and the contents of them can be moved around freely.  [0:12:47]

Now, within these folders, we can have clone folders, which act similarly in that you can open and close them, but they are actually linked to one of the view points in your project map.  So, for example, this preliminary design clone folder – and you can see this little curved arrow here pointing at it.  That is referring to the plans or the stories, actually, of your project, with certain settings for what layers and scale and other context. It will give us useful views for preliminary design purposes.  [0:13:27]

So, the View map basically refers to view points in the Project map with certain settings.  Each clone folder or each view has settings that we can say various things that essentially define how you’re going to look at that view point.  So, a view is a way of looking at a view point.  The view point source here, in this case, is the top story of this project, or if I go to this one, the second floor.  The view point is here versus the second floor.  [0:14:04]

Once you define a view, it’s locked into a particular source, but you can edit all of the other attributes, including the way that it’s named here.  Now, we want to use views as much as possible and view points as little as possible because the views are well-defined. You could look at the view points in many different ways, and the classic example of that is if we go down in this section to the construction documents, and we look at the first floor plan.  That’s what we’re looking at now, whereas if I look at the first floor lighting and reflected ceiling plan, we’ll see a very different view of the same story – the same source story, but with different layers, different model view options, different graphic overrides, etc.  [0:14:58]

So, the view point of the first floor – the ground floor, is the same, but it can be seen many different ways.  Ceiling plan, site plan, furniture plan – you know, all sorts of different variations there.  Now, as we move on, just conceptually and very very quickly, the layout book is a way of organizing sheets, paper.  Each one of these layouts has a defined size, so there is a boundary here.  [0:15:36]

The contents of it can be graphics.  They can be little drawings that are indexes – lists of things.  They can just be plain text that we put here. When we go to, say, this floor plan here, we can have multiple drawings on a sheet.  Now, the sheet, in the layout book, has a master. The masters are down at the bottom of the layout book, and they define.  For example, if I go to this one here, they define the size of the paper, such as 24” x 36”, so what would that be?  Probably like an A2 sheet or something like that in metric.  [0:16:19]

I forget all of the A-size sheets because I don’t use them much, but this sort of a medium but full-sized plotting sheet here, and so it includes the definition of the sheet size here.  It includes some things about the margins, how drawings are arranged, and internally, or let’s say on each sheet as opposed to the settings, there can be some graphics.  There can be some preset information.  This would be something where you would put the architect’s seal on it, and then there’s updatable information like the layout number or ID and the layout name, which can be formatted in a variety of different ways.  [0:17:06]

So, the layout sheets are pieces of paper, and they can be different sizes.  You can have ones that are small for printing on a desktop printer, taken to meetings or submissions of different types, and they can, of course, be full-sized drawings, like this one.  These would be even bigger versions of the sheet.  Now, as we move on to the final one, the publisher sets, these are groups of output items.  [0:17:40]

So, publishing in ARCHICAD’s standard terminology means that you’re taking stuff from your computer for use by others.  Now, you can publish sheets.  So, you can publish a whole set of sheets and print them or send them to the plotter.  You can also publish and create a .pdf version of those same sheets, and in many cases, you can create .dwg or other output versions of those paper sheets.  [0:18:21]

Now, the publisher also allows you to output views, so a view of a plan or an elevation or a 3D view.  These can equally well be compiled into a set of pages in your publishing output.  So, they can be sheets, which have a defined paper size and often a title block background, or they can be just views.  So, depending upon what you need to do, publisher will help you.  [0:18:53]

Now, each one of the publisher items here – if I go up to the top level of the publisher, you can see this little up arrow here.  Each one of these has a defined setting, so for example, BIMX Pro – if I go to publishing properties, it will say it’s going to save files, and publisher can print or plot save files, or in some cases can actually upload something for sharing directly to the Internet, and there are various options when it has multiple items – whether it’s going to be a single file or multiple files and other things about where it’s going to be stored, if it’s going to be stored on the computer as opposed to printed or plotted.  [0:19:37]

So, each one of these, like layouts to .dwg.  If we go here, it’s going to create a real folder structure with a bunch of individual sheets, each inside folders for plans or elevations or a detail drawing, etc.  It has a path there. If I go to layouts to .pdf or a similar large project setup, it’s going to create a single file, and its format is going to be .dwg rather than .pdf.  [0:20:10]

So, those are typical ones for output, but another variation, as I mentioned, is views to .dwg.  We’re going to still save them to a folder structure, and they’re going to be .dwg, but they’re going to be the views from the View map, so individual drawings, essentially.  So, those are our 4 categories or headings in the Navigator, and we’re going to look at some of the principles for how data flows and for when you use each of these as we go through this lesson.  [0:20:50]

Now, before I leave this quick overview of the whole Navigator, I’ll point out this button here, which is called the Project Chooser.  If I press down on it, we get a number of different choices.  It’s a shortcut for bringing up things like the Drawing Manager.  So, the Drawing Manager is a way of seeing all to the drawings that you either have placed onto layout sheets or that you’ve brought in as an external drawing from outside.  [0:21:19]

These could be a .pdf that you put into a worksheet or a .dwg that you put into a worksheet.  Something like a site survey might be a drawing you place in, so those would be external files that you place in, and then most of the drawings in the Drawing Manager are usually going to be the views that you placed onto layout sheets, and the Drawing Manager allows you to see the status of them – for example, these are OK.  These need checking. That means that ARCHICAD says, “You know what? Some of the elements that are seen in that view may have changed.  I can’t quite tell.”  [0:21:59]

There are other ones that say Modified because it knows that it’s been changed.  Now, in the Drawing Manager, we’re going to be spending a little more time on this later, but you can select one or multiple ones here, and you can do various things like update them, and if I click to update these drawings, it’s going to take a moment and go and regenerate, for example, these elevations, regenerate the drawing list, etc., and now they’re up to date.  [0:22:29]

Now, just as a quick tip here, you rarely need to bring up Drawing Manager, in my experience.  You mainly need to do it when you’re going to be outputting your drawings.  When you say you need to print out a set to take to that meeting, or you need to get a set out for submission, then Drawing Manager – going here and selecting all the drawings and saying to update them all would be a very useful thing to do because you want everything to be up to date before you print or save as a .pdf or export in some other format.  [0:23:06]

So, Drawing Manager is used there, and you can sort by different columns. We’ll look at this more later.  So, this is one of the options here.  I’m not going to bring up the Drawing Manager Change Manager right now, but if you did have a project that had gone through various issue sets, then you can have reports and look at the changes since the last issue.  These 3 sheets have been changed. We have some bubbles on there. We have some notes saying certain things were changed, to highlight it for management purposes.  [0:23:40]

So, you can bring up the Change Manager.  Now, a variation of the Navigator is the Organizer.  So, the Organizer is like a double-wide version of the Navigator. You can see the similar icons at the top here.  Now, the left side of the Organizer is essentially exactly the same as the Navigator.  The right side is a subset of it because you’re allowed to drag things from left to right.  You can go and say, for example, that you want to take this view of the first floor preliminary design, and you want to put it on a particular sheet.  [0:24:16]

So, you can drag things over.  You can see what drawings are on which sheets, and you can move things around from one sheet to another.  Now, we won’t see the Project map here because we can’t drag anything into the Project map, but in limited cases, you could say that you’d like to drag just a view of this first floor up into a particular layout sheet.  Now, generally, it’s not a good idea to drag it from the Project map.  You want to do it from the View map. We’ll be looking at that a little more later, but you technically can do that.  It will carry over whatever the settings are here.  [0:24:59]

So, on a quick, ad-hoc basis, we want to get a few new views established.  You can select a view point, set up some settings here, and drag them over to the right.  Now, some people prefer to have the Organizer instead of the Navigator because it does allow access to these organizing capabilities.  Now, if you wanted to do that, you could change the width of these parts as needed. You could go and say that you’d like to hide the Navigator here, and then I could bring the Organizer and dock it on the side of the screen here, and then of course, just adjust this as needed.  [0:25:45]

So, if you have a large enough monitor, this can be a very effective way to have access to everything that you have in the Navigator and then some. So, for today, I’m going to go ahead and hide the Organizer and then use the mini Navigator here to say that I’d like to show the Navigator.  So, we’ll just have that back where we were looking.  [0:26:13]

So, Scott, I’m just looking at some notes here, so feel free to give me some feedback on this.  Hey Bob, I’m glad you made it over to the Slack channel.  Alright, so comments from Scott about Tim Ball’s course on working drawings without details in the Masters of ARCHICAD training series.  “Love the Organizer.  It’s my standard operating procedure.”  OK, and hi, Chris.  [0:26:42]

So, feel free to add your comments as we go or any questions here.  So, Ken Andrews, I see your note from earlier.  You’re traveling again, but on your iPad, there’s no Slack.  That’s fine.  I believe you can access Slack on the iPad, and you can jump back and forth between – as you know, you can double-tap the Home button or swipe up from the bottom of the screen to get your multiple different apps, and you can jump back and forth.  With the modern iOS, you can do multitasking, and you can actually have part of one window open, like the Slack window off to the side of where you’re looking at the view.  [0:27:35]

So, I won’t demonstrate that today, but that may be something that I can record a little video to show you how that works on an iPad, for example.  So, let’s see.  I see a question.  “Is there a way to add smart text to the publisher side of the Organizer?”  OK, so we’re going to be looking at what’s called Autotext, and there are many different variations, but we will be looking at that as we get into layouts.  So, whether it’s on the master layout, where you say you want this to automatically show the layout number – so it’s on the background title block, but it automatically updates for whatever sheet it’s on.  [0:28:17]

Also, the print date – whatever date you’re outputting, it will have that on there, and other smart text can be done, including scale and things like that.  I’m not quite sure what other smart text you’re referring to.  I don’t think you can put smart text into the name of a publisher set, so you can’t reference automatic information in the names of the publisher set, so maybe that’s what you’re asking about.  I don’t know of a way to do that.  [0:28:50]

OK, and he says, “Yeah, in the titles of publisher sets.”  Eric Gedney – quick note, I did look at your questions about the Railing tool and address them in a coaching call a couple of weeks ago.  I’ve been meaning to send you an email to say, “Hey, look here,” and I haven’t gotten around to it, so drop me a note, and then I’ll remember to send you a link to where that particular call was. I did spend some time looking at your questions, and I apologize for not responding in my support email system to you, but I’m glad you’re on the call.  [0:29:34]

Alright, so moving on.  We’ve looked at a high-level for what these are for, and let’s just see my notes here.  So, I’ve described these different parts of the Navigator.  I showed the Organizer and mentioned that it allows you to organize the structure of a project.  I didn’t really get into demonstrating that yet.  Let me just talk about the key principles here, that information flows from left to right.  [0:30:08]

I mentioned that, in the context of the Organizer, that it actually removes the Project map on the right side, so you can’t be dragging into the Project map there, but basically, when you are creating new entries in your Navigator, they can be manually created in many cases or created from an action that you do by dragging something over or by creating a marker.  [0:30:45]

So, we’ll look at what created an element in the Navigator list.  Now, when you drag something over like a detail drawing – the view point of a detail drawing into your View map, it will know where it came from. When you drag a view point of an elevation into the View map, it will know that it came from that elevation.  [0:31:11]

Now, that source of the view point has a name, and it may very well have an ID as well, for sorting purposes. Those are inherited if you use the automatic naming options.  So, we’re going to be looking at the details of that.  Now the point that I’m going to make as I demonstrate the details is that if you think early on about what something should be named on the sheet, like this – I’m going to call this an Eave Detail.  [0:31:44]

So, if you call it that, then it will just have that name carried along, and so, in general, as I talk about best practices and principles, the more you can organize from the beginning the way you need it later, the less work you have to do, the less rework you have to do.  If you don’t know the name or decide to change something later, oftentimes it’s best to go back to the source so that it flows through as opposed to just going on the sheet and saying you need to change the name of this drawing.  [0:32:18]

So, let’s take a look at how information flows from left to right, and let’s just see here.  OK, so yeah.  I see your note, Christian.  Let me go and demonstrate some of these things here.  So, I’m on the lighting and reflected ceiling plan here.  If I go to the Project map, it is the first floor, the ground floor of this building, but of course, the ground floor can be viewed with a variety of different settings.  [0:32:56]

Now, what are the settings of this view?  Quick review.  There are many things down in this area down below.  I’m just going to open this up, change the size of the Navigator so we can see all of them.  There are navigation aids on the left side here.  Then, we have the settings in the quick options.  So, just a very very quick review, for those of you who are newer, if I use the previous view, you can see that I was off-center.  If I go back to next view, it centered it, so it is a sequence of the views.  [0:33:40]

I can click here to zoom in.  So, that was clicking once on it, and then two clicks there, but of course, I can also roll the mouse wheel and press down the center mouse wheel to pan around.  This icon here zooms to fit in window, and actually, I was pretty much centered in that.  Now, the scale – we can go to one of the Define Scales, like 200%, and it’s going to be much bigger, or down to 20%, and it’s going to be much smaller.  This is based on ARCHICAD’s estimation of the size of the project as it would be on paper, relative to this particular screen.  [0:34:25]

Now, its understanding of screen resolution is limited. It doesn’t really know if the image I’m looking at is on a laptop screen or a big monitor. It just knows something about how many pixels there are, and it makes sort of an assumption of it.  So, these are relative.  20% may not be accurate.  I’ll just put it at 100%, and this is perhaps as big as it would be on a piece of paper.  That’s what it’s thinking is here.  [0:34:56]

We have options for rotating the view, and I won’t be demonstrating that right now, but these are all temporary changes to what I’m looking at.  Now, the enduring changes in the sense that I can navigate all around, and these won’t change unless I change them, have to do with scale.  So, the scale here – for example, right now, if this is real-world scale, and we can imagine that it is, this text is fairly readable.  Now, if I changed my scale from ¼” to a foot to 1/8” – so let’s just say 1:50 going to 1:100 – then we’ll see the building gets much smaller on screen, but the text stays just as readable.  [0:35:42]

Now, of course, this text has gotten all cluttered because everything is closer together, but the text stayed a certain size, and that’s the common setting for ARCHICAD’s text and labels and other annotation is to say, “How big do we want this on paper?”  So, the scale, of course, determines how it’s going to fit on a sheet, but the sizing of the text, in general, will remain legible at a standard size – whatever you say in points in the U.S. or millimeters in other parts of the world.  [0:36:20]

Now, I’m going to put this back to the ¼” scale, which it remembers is one of the previous scales here, or we can pick it out manually to that.  Now, as a side note, while I can change it here, and sometimes you do need to look at things in different scales, that’s not the same as just zooming out – making it smaller here.  So, that’s roughly what I was looking at earlier, but you notice how the text just got smaller with it.  When I roll the mouse wheel, it’s changing the magnification.  [0:36:56]

Now, when you place the drawing on a sheet, it knows what scale it’s intended to be, based on the view settings.  So, the view settings define – is it at ¼”, or is it at some other scale like 1:50, etc.?  Sometimes, you want to have sheets that you print in smaller sizes.  In other words, you have a full-size plot set, and you want to print it out on smaller pieces of paper.  There is an option in the plot output to say to scale everything down.  The text may get harder or even impossible to read, but you won’t have that issue of everything going all over the place.  [0:37:37]

So, that’s a little side mention of scaling.  We’ll spend a little bit more time on that later.  We do have the option, of course, of changing the layer combinations.  Layers are going to be what is shown, so, for example, when we’re doing a ceiling plan, we’re showing the lights up in the ceiling area and other notes related to the ceiling.  We have some options here for partial structure display, so most drawings will say “entire model,” but when you’re doing a structural drawing, you may say, “Show only the core of the walls or core of only the structural, load-bearing elements.”  [0:38:13]

Pen sets will affect the colors that we see on-screen, and if we have true line weight, the weights are the heaviness of the lines.  The Model View Options will determine how things are drawn.  For example, in a ceiling plan, the doors are not shown with a swing.  The doors and windows are not shown with details for the sill and glazing, etc.  The graphic overrides have other override possibilities where you can make certain things disappear, make them white, change the color, or change other things for presentation graphic purposes.  [0:38:52]

Of course, we have our settings for if it’s a remodel project, is this the new state, the final state where we’ve got this little add-on, or is it the original state where this didn’t exist?  We have some dimension settings that are related to a level of accuracy and the style of those dimensions.  Is it down to the ¼”, or is it down to the 1/32 of an inch?  [0:39:17]

Obviously, in a standard plan drawing, we would have a certain level of detail appropriate for the contractor – the carpenters, and they would laugh if you had it down to 1/64 of an inch, but if you’re doing a cabinet drawing and millwork drawing, then you might have it at a much higher resolution, and if you were doing a site plan, you might vary it and say we’re going to have it in a different format because we have these very large – the property lines are a certain dimensional style.  [0:39:53]

So, all of these things that we see here are included in the View settings.  So, when I go and create a view here, and let’s just say I want to create a view.  Instead of using a clone folder, I’ll just say to give me a new view.  When I say to create a new view, we’ve got options that inherit everything that we saw down here.  They give us the option of inheriting the name from the Project map, so first floor, as well as the ID, or overriding that.  [0:40:29]

Now, it’s very common, when you have certain view points, to override it.  For example, a ceiling plan, we might say Custom, and we call this First Floor RCP for reflected ceiling plan, and maybe we don’t need an ID for this, so we can say None, or we could do Custom if we wanted to have some other variation here, like RCP-1 or something like that.  [0:40:56]

All of these options can be changed afterward, but when we create this, it will lock in the source, and it will use these settings. When I create this, it will put it at the bottom, if I have no view highlighted or just below whatever view I have highlighted, if there was one.  Now, this view here has a custom name with these settings, and of course, I can double-click on it at any time, and I’ll just go and say that if I jump back to the first floor plan here, it’s got a different style, different layers, different model view options, and here is our RCP.  [0:41:37]

So, this is all very basic, and I know that 90% of you who are watching are pretty darn clear on it, but I did want to just do it for those 10% or 20% of people who are still a little vague on just what these view settings are.  What are they about?  It’s so important to get clear on it, and even if you use it all the time, just to think about it a slightly different way may be helpful.  [0:42:01]

Now, when we place this view on a sheet – so, if I go to a sheet, instead of going to the masters, I go to a sheet here, and let me just go and right-click on this sheet in the layout book.  So, let me just get a new layout for demonstration purposes, and I won’t worry about putting in the name.  I’ll just go ahead and create it so we have a place to work.  [0:42:32]

So, if I go back to the View map and drag this onto here, it will have the – oh, and that’s an interesting thing.  For a moment, it said something odd, like North Elevation.  Then, it thought for a moment and updated it to say First Floor RCP, which, of course, is the name I had here.  Now, in this case, the name from the view is being used in the drawing name.  The drawing name here – if we go to the drawing settings, says to use the drawing name from the view.  So, again, we had something set in the project map that we ignored but we could have used that just said first floor.  [0:43:29]

We customize that to say First Floor RCP, and then it shows up on the layout with that name.  Now, we could also, of course, customize it.  Now, here’s where I want to just emphasize best practices.  If I want to create a new view point – so let me go to a section here.  Let’s say that I want to create a detail of an eave.  So, when I go to the Detail tool, if I click with it set this way, it’s going to create a marker that’s linked to something that already exists, but the most common setting would be to create a new detail view point.  [0:44:18]

So, when I say to create a new detail view point, it’s going to create something in the Project map with a name.  Now, if I just leave it as Detail, then later on, when I place that or create a view of it, and I create that view on a sheet, it will just say Detail, and that’s not very descriptive, so I’m going to say that I know ahead of time that I’m going to do an eave detail.  So, I’ll just say Eave Detail.  Alright, so I’m thinking ahead of time here.  I’m not going to worry about the ID right now.  We’re going to look at IDs in a moment, but I will create a new detail view point, and these markers will refer to that view point.  [0:45:02]

Now, once I’ve actually placed it on a sheet, I can switch it to say it’s going to refer to the drawing of that viewpoint placed on a sheet.  Now, when I go and click to outline the area that I want and then use the hammer to say this is where I’d like the cull out to be, well, we have a little problem here, and that is that the detail marker was set for a style that’s not appropriate.  Now, when I select it, you can see that it’s still referring to this.  It’s just got a very funny style.  [0:45:37]

Let’s look, in this case, at the detail marker type and change it to, for example, maybe change it to detail.  Let’s do it to built-in detail marker.  So, when I choose this built-in detail marker, we now have something that, if I deselect it, you’ll see that it’s at least usable.  It’s not the same style as this, but it is calling out the detail – the D01, which I had not paid attention to, and the box around it.  [0:46:15]

Now, this has shown up in the Project map as a new detail here.  It may or may not have a view.  I’m just going to close these up so we can talk about where the views show up.  At this point, if you don’t have clone folders set up, then there will be no view, and you need to go open up this.  I’m going to right-click on this and say to open this detail that’s being referenced with the current view settings.  [0:46:54]

So, the current view settings would be the scale here.  Actually, it brings over the Layer settings and other settings that we have down here, but it did automatically double the scale, saying, “Well, if it’s a detail, then you will likely want it bigger.”  Now, as you should know, if you’ve worked with ARCHICAD for any period of time, this is all lines now.  So, these are all lines here as opposed to walls, and this is a fill as opposed to part of a ceiling assembly.  [0:47:31]

So, we can go and clean this up, and I’m not sure what is going on here, but if I selected this, I could go and make this come down to be a little cleaner.  Take this line and pull this down to here if that was what we wanted, and I’m not quite sure how you would deal with this insulation or how you would draw it, but obviously, this is editable as 2D linework.  [0:47:59]

Now, this detail – you can see it has the identifier as D01 and Eave Detail. If I want to save this as a view to place on a layout sheet, then again, just like I had this new one for the RCP, I can say Save Current View, and I’m probably going to want to use By Project Map.  So, that’s actually going to carry it over.  Now, when I do that, that means that if I change it in the Project map, it will also change it here.  [0:48:36]

So, I’ll leave these settings alone.  These ones here are basically saying that you can’t really touch those.  It’s not editable.  So, it’s not a real warning, other than, “Hey, why can’t I change it?”  It’s because details don’t use structure display.  You can’t change on the fly from showing the full wall to showing only the structural core of the wall, etc.  So, I’m going to create this, and you can see that it now shows up here.  If I go to the sheet and save this sheet if I wanted to put this detail on it, and I drag it here, we’re going to have this set up at that half-inch scale, which may not be appropriate.  [0:49:17]

Maybe it needs to be bigger, but it’s going to inherit that name.  Now, if I go back to the Project map, and I select this here, I can change it.  Let’s say Special Eave Detail.  So, I’m changing it here in the Project map.  It changed it in the View map because it was using the Project map name.  It changed it on the layout sheet, and of course, if you were paying close attention, you may have seen that the title changed here.  [0:49:54]

So, by setting it up in the Project map the way you expect to use it on the sheet and using that as your general SOP – your standard operating procedure, this will mean that if you ever need to find where that special eave detail is, and you’re looking somewhere in your View map, and you don’t know where it is, the name matches.  I’ve seen many times that people have sent me in files for coaching program review where we’ve gone to look for something in the View map, and I see a whole bunch of views with the same name, like First Floor, First Floor, First Floor, etc.  [0:50:35]

Well, these are all different views of the first floor, but they weren’t named so that someone could see what they are, and the same thing for details.  It might just say Detail, Detail, Detail in the View map.  So, in order to be able to say which detail it is or which view is relevant, a.) it’s good to name the views so that you know what they are, but b.) if you name them in the Project map for things like details or elevations, etc., then it’s consistent, and you don’t get confused. You’ll save time.  You won’t waste time on that.  [0:51:17]

So, let us see here.  Questions.  So, Christian says, “Just discovered that if you drag a view from the Project map to the View map, that it does the same thing as Save Current View.”  That’s correct.  If you have Organizer open, and you drag from the left to the right, you’re then adding a new view.  If you’re going from the Project map to the View map, it’s whatever is the view that you drag.  If you drag the view you’re in, then it will be Save Current View.  [0:51:57]

In the Organizer, you can drag other views or other view points around, so it might not be the same as Save Current View if you grab something else.  Taren, “If I want to draw a new, independent detail, so I need to create it first in the Project map, then save it as a view in the View map, or can I create directly in the View map?”  You have to create it in the Project map because a view point has to exist in order for a view to be defined.  [0:52:24]

Let’s take a look at that. If I wanted to create a new independent detail – so, let’s talk about independent details and independent worksheets as compared to linked details and linked worksheets.  So, in the Project map, we have details and worksheets.  Let’s just talk a little bit about best practices for this.  Details and worksheets perform almost exactly the same functions. They are 2D drafting areas that can have representations of your 3D model.  You know, a detail of your section, the foundation, or whatever or your site plan that came from a .dwg 2D drawing.  [0:53:19]

The difference I suggest you consider for worksheets and details is that if you call it a detail drawing on your sheets, use the Detail tool and have all of the ones that are in this group – this folder of details – be things that you comfortably can refer to as a detail.  Anything else that is a 2D drawing, whether it is a site plan or survey, whether it’s something from a manufacturer like a cut sheet .pdf, whether it is a wall section, an enlarged view of a particular part of your project or large kitchen plan – which you could do, in many cases, with a live view.  If you wanted to have a 2D view, you might do an enlarged lobby or enlarged kitchen using a worksheet.  [0:54:18]

These are all things that are not details, and so you’re going to typically have quite a few details in a project. The number of worksheets may vary, but this is a good balancing act to say that details are all in one area.  Worksheets are in the other.  Other than that, they work much the same.  You typically place a marker down with the option to create a new view point, and the marker defines a certain area on screen, and that new view point copies over the 2D graphics.  [0:54:54]

So, they’re very very similar in that basic functionality.  Now, I demonstrated briefly how to create a 2D drawing of an existing part of your model – in this case, a little piece of the roof eave.  If you want to create an independent detail – basically start from scratch, then in the Project map, you right-click on the Detail folder and say New Independent Detail, and then give it a reference ID and a name.  We’ll just call this New Detail here.  [0:55:35]

It will show up in the list.  You can then set up your scale – you know, whatever scale you want.  1:5, maybe 3 inches to a foot and things like that.  Now, as an independent detail, it has no source.  It’s just something that you draw.  Possibly you paste in something.  Maybe you import a manufacturer’s .dwg and explode it so you can edit it, or you even just bring in something from another place, like a pre-existing detail, and just drop it in one way or another, but it doesn’t have a source in the project.  [0:56:17]

Now, when you are using it, you’re going to do 2 things, typically.  You’re going to place this independent detail as a view onto a layout, so it shows up in an output sheet.  You will often, and probably most of the time, have a callout somewhere in your project saying, “There’s a detail of this.  You’ll find it over there.”  So, you’re going to place a marker that refers to that detail view point or the detail view or the detail on the sheet, and there are different options for doing that.  [0:56:54]

Now, what I just did, where I said to right-click on the Detail and say New Independent Detail, I can do the same thing on a worksheet.  Right-click on that folder and say New Independent Worksheet, and it will create a new 2D work area for you to draft or paste in information.  I think I can also go on any of the subitems – in other words, any individual detail, and New Independent Detail is also available there.  [0:57:21]

Now, you can rename details with the right-click here.  You can also highlight it and rename it down below under the Properties section.  Same thing with worksheets.  Now, if I go to the View map, here is that special eave detail that I already created.  If I right-click on it, there are some options here to rename it or redefine it with possibly different settings for the scale or layer, etc., but there’s no option here for creating a new independent detail.  So, the only way you can create a new independent detail or worksheet is to go to the Project map, either in the Navigator or the Organizer, and right-click on Detail folder or a detail in the View map, or the same thing work worksheets.  [0:58:12]

So, that is a fairly in-depth explanation of how you would create a new independent detail, and you need to do it in the Project map here.  OK, so Eric Gedney.  “Where does ARCHICAD keep the odd name that comes up when you go to Custom?”  OK, that’s a good question.  So, if I go here – let’s just say that I’m going to say new independent detail.  Well, here, it’s whatever was the last one that I did.  Remember, I created New Detail?  It says, “Well, maybe you want to say New Detail Number 2 or something like that.”  [0:58:51]

So, it just carries that over.  It did automatically increment the reference ID, so that’s convenient, particularly if you start a particular series, whether it’s D for detail or something else like RF for roof detail, and then you can have RF1, RF2, etc.  So, it will automatically increment, but of course, I can go and, after I create it, I can go and renumber this or rename it.  So, it does pick it up there. [0:59:23]

Now, if I were creating a new view, there’s nothing in here right now, but if I just say Create a New View, it asks if I want to pick it up by the Project map or if I want custom.  Well, in this case, it seems like the custom starts out with whatever was the name in the Project map.  So, it’s a good starting point, just like I had the ceiling plan, and it said First Floor.  I said, “Oh, OK, I need to make it custom.”  So it said First Floor, and I could just say RCP.  I didn’t have to type it all out.  [0:59:58]

So, it will inherit that from the source name.  In that case, the source was the first floor story, and the custom was something that started with First Floor, and I just edited it there.  Now, if we’re talking about the custom names on a sheet – so, if we go back to this sheet here, and I go and place a drawing, we can place a drawing by dragging and placing a view on there, or I can literally go to – let’s see. I’m on this here.  I can go and drag a drawing onto a sheet.  No, I’m sorry.  I can’t drag it from the icon here, but with the Drawing tool active, I can click, and it says, “What drawing do you want to place?  [1:00:48]

Do you want to get it from outside ARCHICAD, or do you want to get it from a view?”  Just go and grab arbitrarily the second floor interior design one, and I’ll say to place it.  When I do this, it will be the same as grabbing it from that view in the View map, but maybe that’s a little bit easier sometimes to find.  Now, what did the name come in as here?  Right now, it says Second Floor, and this is truly on the second floor of this building here, but let’s look at the name of it.  [1:01:27]

It says name only.  If I go to custom, what will it say?  In this case, it’s blank, so of course, I could say Second Floor Furniture Plan or something like that, and when I put that in there, we’ll see that show up in a moment down below. Now, that was the name of the drawing on the sheet.  Now, perhaps, one of the things that you may be a little bit confused about is when we go to a custom – let me think. In the drawing name here, it didn’t have anything odd here, right?  [1:02:15]

If I eye drop this here…  Now, when I eye dropped it, I used the keyboard shortcut for that.  If I go and I place another drawing – so I just click with the Drawing tool, and I just say to let me go get the roof plan.  Alright, so totally different drawing.  It has certain settings here.  This is the schematic version.  I’m in the main design phase for sketch and schematic.  I’m going to place this here, and it will come in, and it will look rather different here.  It’s overlapping that detail, but it still says Second Floor Furniture Plan.  Why is that?  [1:02:54]

It’s because when I eye dropped this drawing, it remembered that I preferred having a custom name, and when I placed in a new drawing, it says, “Oh, I’ll place that drawing in there, and I’ll give it that name that you asked me to give it.” If we go to this sheet, you can see that there are 2 drawings that both have the same Second Floor Furniture Plan.  Obviously, that’s not appropriate.  If I double-click on any one of them, you can see it highlights that, or if I double-click on the other one, you can see it highlights it.  [1:03:32]

So, you can find out which one is which.  “Oh, that’s the wrong one.  Yeah, that needs a new name, and I can edit it here, or I can edit it in the Settings.”  Now, if you want the settings to automatically pull the name from the view, then you need to carefully edit that.  So, I’m going to delete this.  I had this text selected, and so that made this name here – it deleted the name, and now I just put in a couple of garbage characters here.  [1:04:15]

I’m going to click on here to select it, and now the focus is on the sheet, and I can just delete the drawing.  Now, I want to place the drawing and have it pick up the proper name.  So, what I’m going to do is before I place the drawing, I’m going to switch the name here from Custom, which was the last one that I used the eye dropper for, to 5U.  So, now when I use this and when I place it – let’s just say I get that same roof plan and place.  It’s going to be smarter and say, “Oh, OK.  I got you the roof plan,” and that’s the name there.  [1:04:58]

So, hopefully that explains for Eric’s purposes placing a drawing on a sheet there.  OK, so that’s the odd name that keeps coming up when you go to Custom.  It’s whatever was the last one that you set, either manually, or you used with an eye dropper.  OK, alright, so question about how to bring standard details from another office source to apply.  Good question.  Let me hold that for a moment.  Thanks, Eric.  [1:05:28]

So, what is a linked detail or worksheet?  Good question.  I’ll look at that.  Let me see about Eric’s question, if that relates to it.  Same question.  ”When placing a drawing on a sheet, can you try going to the First Floor RCP plan and doing Custom to see if this long name is there?”  Alright, so can I go to the First Floor RCP plan?  Alright, so this drawing on this sheet here.  Let me go to the Drawing settings.  [1:05:59]

Alright, so it’s picking up the name from the view.  So, the name on the layout sheet is based on the view name, so it’s not custom here, but if I right-click on this and say to open the source view, then I can go and look at this source view here, and if I switch to the View map, we’ll see that it’s highlighted that particular view to let me know that this is the view I’m looking at, and this view – the settings are custom.  So, the custom could happen at the end, on the sheet, or it could happen in the name of the view.  [1:06:41]

The source was First Floor.  The name of the view was First Floor RCP because of the view settings.  The name on the sheet was based on the view, so generally, to simplify it, for view points that only have one drawing – very commonly detail drawings will be like that.  You create it, you place it somewhere on your layout set, and it’s just there once.  It has certain settings for the layer and the scale.  Then, it’s best to name the view point how you want the title on the sheet.  [1:07:21]

On the other hand, for view points that have multiple views, like the first floor – the ground floor, we’ll have a floor plan, a ceiling plan, a structural plan, an electrical plan, etc.  Then, you obviously can’t.  There’s only one view point.  That’s the first floor level, the ground floor level, but you’re going to have multiple views.  So, maybe one of them will have the name First Floor, but the other ones will have custom names like First Floor RCP, First Floor Electrical, etc.  [1:07:54]

So, you have to use custom names for those views, but then, in general, the name of the drawing on the sheet – I would say 90% of the time, you can probably have it be the name of the view, automatic.  There are going to be some exceptions, but that is probably something to aim for.  OK, so hopefully that answers the question from Eric Gedney.  [1:08:22]

Now, he says thanks.  Good.  So, how to bring forth standard details from another office source to apply to this specific project.  I’m going to defer that, Ken.  I know it’s an important question, but right now, I want to focus on just rules of using the Navigator.  I will give you a short answer.  If you have the details in another project in ARCHICAD, and you want the details that are going to be placed on your sheet here to be linked to that project, and knowing that if you did update them in that other project, they would update here, then you could actually bring in a view from the other project, and it would be linked.  [1:09:13]

On the other hand, if you wanted it to not be linked, you could bring it in and then break that link, so there is a concept of something that’s automatically updated or something that’s manually updated or something that’s embedded.  Basically, “Hey, it came from somewhere, but I just want to manage it in this project.”  So, that’s one way of doing it is to use the Organizer and the Project Chooser to find another project, and I’ll give you the 30-second demonstration of that.  [1:09:47]

If I go to the Organizer here, and that’s my double-wide view, which I guess has gotten docked in there.  So, it’s a little bit confusing.  Let me just move it off to the center here so we can see it separately.  In the Organizer, the Project Chooser button allows me to also browse for another project on my hard drive or on the server.  It’s an ARCHICAD project, or if you have a BIM server or a BIM cloud, then you can actually browse for a teamwork file. [1:10:28]

When you do that, and I’m not going to do it right now, it will put the information here for that project, and you can literally drag details onto sheets from there, and you can also use this when you have a site plan and you want to bring in views from the site plan onto a project that has a building on the site or vice versa.  You can have the building have drawings that are being brought into a file that has the site plan and possibly several buildings.  [1:11:03]

So, you can bring them in.  So, that’s the simplest way.  There are other ways that you can actually save those details in a way that you can bring them in sort of one at a time from separate files.  I’ll be looking at that much later in the course, when we look at best practices for detail creation and management, and Ken’s point.  You’re right here.  Interesting.  It’s getting hidden here by the ARCHICAD palette.  [1:11:41]

Standard details could be a template item also, so that you can open that particular template item.  So, a template – MasterTemplate is an example of something that has a lot of premade things in it, and some of the things that I haven’t really tried to put in because it’s impossible to anticipate the details, but if we look in the detail map here, there are some example details here.  So, this example source detail.  This is a detail.  [1:12:14]

Now, it may have absolutely nothing to do with your project, or you may say, “Hey, that’s actually a pretty decent detail.  I’m building something just like that,” but this is something that was in the template.  You could have 5, 10, 50, 100 of these details all in the template so that they can be dragged onto sheets, and in fact, you could have one or more sheets in your template with premade details.  [1:12:47]

So, in that scenario where you’re doing residential projects night and day, and you have a typical one or two sheets that you use most of the time, in the template, you might as well have those sheets with those details, and those details existing independent of the model.  So, they’re unlinked, and you basically, as you are working on the project, you can just verify.  “Oh, I need these.  No wait, that one doesn’t apply.”  You can either delete it, or you can edit it to make it apply for the actual current project.  [1:13:29]

So, if your projects are relatively consistent from one to another, then having standard details within the project is great.  Obviously, you’re going to, over time, develop lots more details in your library of past projects, some of which you may want to grab later on.  “Oh, you know what?  We did a roof like that in such and such project 2 years ago.”  So, then, of course, you would want to grab that detail, either for study or literally just to use it, if you’ve decided that it’s very relevant to the current project.  [1:14:10]

So, I see a question from a while ago from Scott Buchanan.  “How do I get on Slack?  I missed a lot of these trainings.”  If you’re still on, Scott…  Let me see if Scott is still on.  Yeah, you are.  So, to go on to Slack, great, you’re there.  So, to go onto Slack, bobrow.com/slack, and you will then be able to put in your email address.  You’ll get an email that says, “Hey, we got a request for you to join the ARCHICAD training Slack workspace.”  Follow the instructions, and within a minute or two, you’ll be connected up on Slack.  [1:14:54]

In terms of having missed a lot of trainings, no problem.  They’re all in the member area, and the member area – for anyone who is a little vague on it – is found on the ARCHICADtraining.com website.  It’s a new website that I set up just this year, and you should have gotten a login or welcome email that allows you to get in and to watch these videos, so they’re all waiting for you any time that you want.  [1:15:30]

OK, so let’s see.  What other questions here?  Alright.  Linked details and worksheets.  Let’s look at that, and then Bob says, “The functions it dropped down from the Project Chooser are different in ARCHICAD 20 Solo.  I’ve tried to insert layout sheets from one project to another using Chooser, and it just doesn’t work that way.”  So, Bob, unfortunately, you opted for the budget version of ARCHICAD, ARCHICAD Solo. That’s fine because I’m sure you’re working on your own. You’re not working with other people, and so that’s why you opted for that, and it is a bargain.  It’s something like half price of the full version.  [1:16:14]

GraphiSoft cuts out some of the ability for projects to communicate with each other, so the most basic thing is you cannot use the teamwork functionality that allows you to share multiple people working on the same project.  You can’t bring in AutoCAD files as Xrefs.  So, you can import them, merge them, but you can’t bring them in as a reference that can be updated.  You can’t do hotlinked modules, where you can say you want to have this unit in a condo, and you want to repeat it 5 times, then develop that unit further in all 5 copies and update.  [1:16:49]

So, you don’t have that, and apparently, you don’t have the ability, in the Project Chooser, to go get things from another project.  So, how do you work around that?  As with most of those things, you can have 2 instances of ARCHICAD open, and you can copy and paste from one project to another.  It’s not a live link. Once you paste it, it’s now an independent copy, but you can do that.  [1:17:17]

So, if you wanted to have a detail from one project into the other one, you’d go to open up that other project manually, select the stuff, copy, and in the new project, you would create a new independent detail, and then you’d have a place to paste it in, and then you can proceed.  OK, so Bob, you’re saying, “No you can’t,” what?  Open up 2 instances of ARCHICAD, I’m guessing, might be the case.  If you’re saying that, please clarify that.  [1:17:48]

So, there are two possible interpretations for “No, you can’t.”  One is “I don’t know how to do it,” and the other is “It’s blocked,” so I don’t know whether you’re trying something in one way, and it can’t be done in another way, and I don’t know what the answer is, so I’ll wait just another minute.  So, Bob, just hit Enter.  Let me see what you’ve got there.  Don’t try to do a whole big explanation. We’re all waiting.  [1:18:47]

“Yes, you can open 2 instances.  You just can’t move one layout from a project to another.”  You cannot move a layout from a project to another.  You can open a layout or a detail drawing.  You can select all the items on that detail drawing and copy.  In terms of a layout, well, if you think about a layout, a layout is a view.  A layout typically has drawings placed on it.  You can’t copy those drawings and paste them onto the other layout, so you would have to go to each detail, copy, go into the new project, create a new detail window, and paste.  [1:19:30]

Then you can create or place that view of the detail onto the sheet.  Now, Eric Gedney says, “You can move the contents of a layout from one to the other.  However, you can’t copy drawings from one project to another. You can only use the Chooser to do that, and obviously, ARCHICAD Solo has some limitations there, so that’s what I do.”  [1:19:58]

OK, so I think maybe you’re saying you are doing what I explained.  So, we will move on there.  OK, so in a coaching call, I can look at some more details of that process.  Let’s move on to this high-level explanation, and we’re almost at the hour and a half mark, so I want to finish that up here.  So, let us go to my notes here.  [1:20:27]

Alright, so we did go through the information flowing from left to right and the automatic naming option.  I said to set useful view point names, so they will flow downhill from the Project map to the View map to the layout sheet or from the Project map up from the View map to the layout sheet, in some cases.  So, you can set it in the Project map.  [1:20:55]

Now, when we’re creating the marker, I demonstrated that as I create the detail marker before I actually clicked, I gave it the name that I wanted.  I should have also had the marker type set to whatever callout would be good.  It happened to be set to one for – let’s say if you cut through a wall and wanted to have a sort of wall section or something like that, you could use that marker style. [1:21:23]

Now, clone folders are a very, very powerful feature, and I think I will just do a short explanation of them now, and then we’ll see if we need to continue on with them in the next class because they may get a little more complicated than we have time for, and I guess we’ll definitely want to look at Project map/View map in the next one, so let’s see if I can do the clone folders today.  [1:22:00]

So, I’m in the View map, and these 2 views were created one at a time, just with a particular view point on screen with certain layer settings, etc., and I said Save Current View using this little icon here.  I believe you can probably do it under the View menu. I can’t remember now.  I always do it through there.  It uses Save Current View.  [1:22:34]

If I’m creating details like this, I can do that, but it’s better, in most cases, to have a clone folder for detail drawings.  So, what is a clone folder?  If I highlight this item here – this says Detail Drawings Clone, and I look at the settings.  The source is details.  It has a particular name here.  Now, the word clone refers to the fact that it’s always going to have a copy of the source.  It’s always going to have every single item in the source.  It’s going to be cloned over, copied over to this particular folder.  [1:23:20]

Now, it is a folder that contains subitems within it.  Initially, whenever a new item is created, it’s going to have a particular layer combination – in this case, details and worksheets, which turns on most of the layers except for some of the layers for non-printing and referencing that aren’t needed.  Details have a variety of scales, but as a good medium-range default, it’s set as 1 inch to a foot, which would be about 1:10 in metric standards.  [1:23:52]

It has a particular set for the pens and the Model View Options, and dimensioning it set to be a higher level of detail than you might see on a floor plan, because if it’s a detail, you’re going to be blowing it up, and you may very well want to have some very fine dimensioning information.  So, this is a preset for every time you create a new detail.  It will show up in this list here.  [1:24:22]

So, if I open this up, that special eave detail is here as well.  So, what’s the difference between this one here and this one?  Well, it’s interesting.  Slight difference in visual appearance.  We can see some line weights.  Let’s go back to the special eave detail here and see what the difference is between this.  If I go to the Settings, this is set to be 1 inch to a foot.  If I go to this one and the settings, it’s set to be half-inch to a foot.  [1:25:02]

Now, I don’t know if there’s anything else, but that’s what I noticed right away, so when I have something at a different scale, as we saw when it zooms in or out, certain things are going to change their relationship.  So, text, as you zoom in or out with the mouse wheel, will just get tinier.  Line weights will get thinner, going down to a certain minimum on screen for hair line.  [1:25:29]

On the other hand, if I change the definition of the preferred scale, then the text sort of locks in, based on keeping it readable.  Now, this is 295% of half-inch scale.  So, if I put it as 100%, this is what it looks like.  Now, we’re not seeing any really heavy lines. If I go to this one – special eave detail here, it’s at 50% of the one-inch scale.  If I bring it up to 100%, then this is what it’s defined.  So, they actually are identical except that this one is set at one scale. That one’s set at the other.  [1:26:19]

Separate from the fact that these two are different, and one of them might be preferred, the fact was that I didn’t even think about it.  This just showed up in the list.  So, when you’re creating a callout for a detail marker, and you say you’d like to create a new detail, and you place it, it will automatically appear in here.  As long as it shows up in the Project map, it will show up in the clone folder for that folder of the Project map.  [1:26:51]

Then, I can say, “You know what?  Actually, this one shouldn’t be 1 inch to a foot.  I really need it bigger because there’s just going to be a lot of stuff I need to put in there.”  So, you go to the settings, and you say to change it to, say, 1 ½ inch to a foot.  That’s 1:8 in metric, which you wouldn’t use, but it’s not going to be a little bit bigger here, and if I go to the 100% here, we can see that’s the size.  So, now if I put text in there or some more details, it’s going to have a little more space to define things.  [1:27:28]

So, I just changed the setting for this particular view in the clone folder to the 1 ½ inches to a foot.  The clone folder itself still is 1 inch.  So, obviously some details are going to be at different scales. This is 3 inches to a foot. Here, I’ll open that one there.  So, this is one that’s actually used in the sample project.  There’s a balcony outside.  One of the walls, and you can see the sort of siding, or actually, what is that?  Cement plaster of this, and all of this is information.  This is literally from that particular project context.  [1:28:15]

This is a 3 inches to a foot.  If I go to 100% scale, we’ll see this is very readable, and I think Scott Bulmer for actually drawing this up for me because although I know how all the pieces work, I don’t know how this particular detail would work in this project context.  So, he drew that up for me when I was creating MasterTemplate sample project this year.  [1:28:52]

OK, bottom line is what is the advantage of a clone folder?  It will automatically create views that have a certain standard setting, and then you may need to tweak them a bit, but it’s so convenient.  You don’t have to go save them.  They’re all in a nice group. They’re all organized.  It saves you time.  If we go to something like sections here, how many sections do you have in a project?  Well, you might have 2 or 3 in a tiny little project.  You might have 10 or 20 in a big project.  I don’t know.  [1:29:28]

You know better than me how many you’ve ever done – the most in a project, but basically, whenever you draw a section marker, and you create a new view point, this section clone folder will define a new view based on having the right layers, the right scale – whatever you prefer, 1:50 or quarter-inch to a foot.  All of these settings will be in use, and in general, we’ll just say most of the sections will have the same settings.  [1:30:01]

So, it’s very convenient.  You don’t have to remember.  You don’t end up with duplicates of each other all over the place.  It’s just a very, very powerful feature.  The same with elevations.  For the most part, those elevations will have a similar scale and similar layers, etc.  Now, details – obviously, we change scale frequently.  Worksheets?  There may be more variations in terms of worksheets, but in general, I recommend that you use the clone folders for these purposes, in terms of sections, elevations, 3D documents, interior elevations.  [1:30:41]

Interior elevations are a perfect example. If you use interior elevations for your project – which you probably mostly do for most projects, I would think.  You might have not just 2 or 3 or 4 rooms. You might have 5, 10, 20, or hundreds of rooms that you’re doing, and each one of these is going to have the settings based on what layers, what scale, and all of this stuff, so it just automatically is there, and then you can literally – without having to spend any time, just drag them into a layout sheet and with the auto-arrange option – particularly useful for interior elevations, it will put one row of drawings for each one.  [1:31:29]

You can literally drag in 10 or 20 rooms, and it will create multiple sheets, all neatly arrayed in rows, if you have the settings optimized.  They’ll be pretty good almost immediately.  Now, one variation is, of course, when we have different plans, so those were all one clone folder for one view point.  So, one clone folder for interior elevations or one clone folder for sections or one clone folder for details, but plans are based on the stories, and of course, as I’ve gone over many times today, we have a floor plan, a ceiling plan, an electrical plan, a furniture plan – 3, 4, 5, or it could be 8 or 10 types of drawings for each story.  [1:32:23]

So, when I want the MEP for mechanical/electrical/plumbing plans, and I double-click here on this, this has got certain layers, and if I go to the second floor, it’s got similar layers, etc. for the upper story, etc.  Now, some of them may not be relevant.  Like, we may not have a MEP drawing for the roof.  So, there’s nothing up here because there’s nothing on those layers on that top story, and there may be some variations for the basement systems plan.    [1:32:56]

Maybe that’s not relevant or has some different versions of it.  In this version, we just have a crawl space, so I don’t know that we would have one there as opposed to a full basement.  So, when you have a clone folder for stories, you may very well want to rename the certain views to saying that they’re not applicable, and of course, you do want to have custom names for these things because inheriting the name and just saying Second Floor doesn’t say Second Floor Mechanical plan or whatever.  [1:33:31]

So, for the stories, this is very useful if you have multiple stories. It’s less useful if you just have a one-story building, and there’s a floor plan, and there’s maybe a roof plan, but it’s got totally different settings, and maybe there’s a foundation plan.  So, clone folders are useful for setting standards like how my ceiling plans look, how my electrical plans look, etc.  They become particularly important when you have multiple stories.  [1:34:02]

So, imagine a 20-story building.  You set up the standards once, add a bunch of stories, and all those views are there.  So, the variations I mentioned in terms of scale for details and in terms of naming, but if we look at the floor plan here…  So, the floor plan – this first floor plan standard has certain settings.  ComDoc, floor plan. I go up to the next floor here.  This is the same scale – quarter-inch, but it’s got a different layer combination.  ComDoc floor planning with low roof, because we wanted to turn on this roof from the lower story. These roof elements show up here, so it’s different than the ComDoc floor plan.  [1:34:50]

If I just switched it to this here, we’d see that that roof disappears.  If I go back and put it to this one here, then that roof will come back on there.  So, when you have a clone folder, you can, in some cases, say this is not needed. In some cases, you’ll change the layer combination, and in other cases, you may change the scale and the name for that.  [1:35:20]

So, clone folders are very, very powerful.  You can save so much time creating those views, dragging them onto sheets.  You know that they’re already pretty good.  They’ve already got standard settings.  The one caution in terms of the clone folder is that while I could go into this special detail that’s an independent detail – I could open this up, and I could right-click on this and say to delete it.  It’ll say, “Deleting this view is not undoable.”  [1:35:57]

So, here’s the View map.  I can delete this.  I didn’t actually delete the view point.  The view point, which was defined by the marker, still exists, and it’s still in – what was that in?  Special eave detail. That was in this one here.  We’ll open it up at the right scale – in this case, 1 ½ inches to a foot.  So, I can delete those independent ones, and I can move them around and organize them into folders, but if I right-click here on this, you notice it doesn’t allow me to delete it.  [1:36:31]

In earlier versions of ARCHICAD, before – I don’t know, version 20.  Somewhere in there.  You could actually say to delete, and then it would say, “Oh, you’re trying to delete a view in the clone folder.  We can’t delete that one view.  Do you want to really delete the entire folder of views?”  If you were saying, “I don’t know. Yeah, go ahead.  Delete.”  Then, bang, you’ve lost your entire folder of views.  So, that could cause confusion.  [1:37:06]

The view points would still exist in the Project map, but you would lose those views, and the drawings on the layout sheet might be unlinked, and that could cause some management issues.  So, GraphiSoft realized, “You know what?  Let’s not allow someone to even select that.”  You notice this X is grey here.  Now, the order of the views in here is not – I can’t drag this down.  You notice I can drag this down to a new place in the View map, and what it did was it actually made a copy.  This special detail can be copied here.  [1:37:44]

That’s what I did with the detail drawings.  Where is it?  Well, actually, for the worksheets active.  So, for the worksheets in this particular sample project, I dragged ones that were active into here, and that made a copy of the view.  So, since you can’t drag these and reorder them, the only thing you can do when you drag it is to possibly put it outside a copy of that.  [1:38:19]

Now, what’s the order?  The final thing we’ll talk about here is the order.  You notice these have little prefixed.  D00, D01, etc.  Those are based on the numbering here.  So, if I wanted to put something in a different place – if I click on this, and I say EX00 instead of 03, you notice how it jumped up into position.  If I change this to A, then it will jump up.  So, it’s going to sort based on whatever the prefix is here.  [1:38:54]

So, now, in terms of best practices for organizing particularly details and worksheets where you have multiple ones, I would suggest that you think about the groupings that you want.  So, for details, if you wanted to have roof details grouped together, you might start with RF.  If you wanted to have foundation details on, you might do FN, or other abbreviations.  You could do FOUND-whatever for foundation, but you might just want to have a 2-letter abbreviation for it.  [1:39:26]

So, just group your details by putting an ID that has a prefix that’s unique, like RF for roof, and number them simply based on however you would prefer to see them organized.  Then, ARCHICAD will sort the Project map that way, and then in clone folders, it will use the same thing.  Notice that that weep screed detail is now A00 here because I have it automatically managed.  [1:39:57]

Now, you could renumber it here, so let’s just do Z-1, and now in the clone folder, this view has a different name, but it’s not actually reorganizing.  I don’t think it will reorganize.  If I close this and reopen it, no, it’s still in the same order as it is here.  So if I wanted this to go to the end, I could change it here.  Let’s just drop it to a Z-3, and what we’ll see is that it jumps down to the bottom here, and it also goes down to the bottom here, but I do have a different number here because I said I wanted to make it custom.  [1:40:38]

Now, if you manually change this, it makes it custom, and the only way to put it back to automatic is to go to settings, where we can say, “I don’t want to manually put it back to that.  I just want to put it into Project map.”  So, that’s the way you can get it back to the automatic is using that.  So, let’s see if there are any final questions before we finish up.  I think that covers the use of clone folders fairly well.  So, Bob.  “Finding how to change to Organizer from Navigator, which I lost when upgrading to 22.  See, even I can learn after all these years.”  [1:41:13]

Alright, so Bob is in his 70s and has been using ARCHICAD for about the same length of time as I did.  I think he said he started in ’89 as well.  Diane.  “In your example of the roof view, NA.  Why not just delete it in the clone folder in an effort to keep the clone folders more manageable?”  Because you cannot delete views in a clone folder.  That’s what I just went over for the last few minutes is how clone folders are always a copy of the view points in the source folder.  [1:41:53]

So, since there is a roof story, I can’t delete the roof view in the mechanical clone folder.  All I can do is just change the name so I don’t get confused.  Now, you could create individual views of the mechanical plan, on the floor plan, and maybe you just have a one-story building, and the clone folders don’t help you.  You could just use individual views, particularly if you’re doing single-story buildings.  [1:42:29]

If you do use clone folders, it is convenient if you do add more stories. They come in, but maybe, if most of your work is one-story, in your template, you just set up the plan views as views, not as clone folders with views inside.  So, alright, Chris says, “Got to go.  See you next time.”  We have gone an hour and 45, which I’m sorry.  I just kept going, but I can’t help myself.  [1:43:01]

Alright, Tom Downer typing.  Scott, Susan.  So, we will finish up here.  So, hopefully, Diane, that clarified both the limitation there and your option, which might be to simply not use clone folders for the plans.  Use just saved views in your template, if most of the time you’re doing a single-story building.  That might be even more efficient for you.  [1:43:28]

Andrej, good night.  Diane, “I’ve never used clone folders,” so use them for sections, elevations, details, worksheets.  Maybe for you, don’t use them for the stories and the variations of the floor plans.  Alright, so Tom says, “For worksheets and details, can’t you delete in the Project map?”  If you don’t want that detail anymore, you can delete it in the Project map.  If you have a marker that created that, then you have a choice.  Do you want to delete the marker as well that called out that detail, or do you want to leave it, and then it will be unlinked?  [1:44:10]

I think we’ll look at linking and unlinking of details next time as well.  So, OK.  Diane, thanks.  Reg, Taren, Ken, Tracy.  Thanks, everyone.  Be back on Wednesday and Thursday for the coaching program call.  If you have specific questions for your project or just want some more detailed explanation on everything that I’ve covered or haven’t yet covered, please join me on Thursday as well.  Take care.  [1:44:42]