2020 | 033 – Fast Track – Coordinate Methods, Constraints and the Control Box Palette

Hey, welcome, everyone, to the ARCHICAD Best Practices 2020 training course.  Today is Wednesday, May 22^nd, 2019, and I’m looking forward to sharing today’s session with you on coordinate methods, constraints, the control box, and perhaps a little bit more.  Let me know that you can hear me and see me and see my screen.  I know that there’s a little confusion about the schedule this week.  Today is a 2020 lesson, and tomorrow, we will be having the ARCHICAD User monthly webinar, which will take place at the usual time for the coaching program, 1 o’clock Pacific, and then the coaching program will be pushed back to 3 o’clock.  [0:00:51]

Of course, you are all welcome to join us for the ARCHICAD User webinar tomorrow, and in fact, I’m inviting submissions of projects to review, so I’ll be looking at projects as an overall review of what people have been doing with the idea of helping to improve organization, commenting on the great things that I do see in the projects that are submitted, and filling in some gaps or giving some suggestions for improvement.  [0:01:29]

Anyhow, here we are.  Today, it looks like we have Gestur and Jerry, Sherry, Zlatko, Jimmy, Ken – excellent, and we shall get started with today’s lesson.  So, I’m calling this section Fast Track, and so we have done a couple of lessons on this so far since we moved on from site modeling, looking at precise placement using various tools and Virtual Trace, which certainly both helps with placement and just understanding and coordinating information from different views to each other.  [0:02:13]

Today, we’ll be looking at coordinate methods, and although the basics are familiar to anyone who’s used ARCHICAD for any period of time, there are some subtle things, again, that I think are often missed and will be helpful to speed up your work to give you the Fast Track towards getting your projects done.  So, let’s look at coordinate references, to begin with, and by the way, if you have any specific questions, like you’ve been puzzled about certain things, then let me know and I will try to work them into today’s lesson.  [0:02:53]

So, when we’re drawing an element, like a wall, as soon as we click, the tracker comes up, and it may have a frame around it, or it may not.  It will show information relative to that clicked point.  So, of course, I can move my mouse, position it sort of in the way that I want, gesture towards the direction I want, and then in the default setting for the tracker, it will allow you to put in a distance, which is in the radius of the vector in polar coordinates, and then, of course, the angle.  [0:03:33]

So, if you gesture in the right direction, you can type in just the value that you want.  Now, the numbers go in based on your working units, so in other words, in the U.S., the default working unit is feet and fractional inches, which means a whole number will be feet.  In international usage, it may set to be meters, or it may set to be millimeters.  I think probably it would be more commonly millimeters.  So, I’m typing in 15, and I hit Enter, and that’s going to be 15 feet, so that’s absolutely basic ARCHICAD knowledge.  [0:04:09]

Now, if I wanted to put in an element, and let me just draw a corner here like this.  If I wanted to put in a column in relationship to this corner, of course, I could go and say to put in the column and just click on the corner here.  It places that, and then select it, and drag it into position. So, if I drag it and I move it, let’s say, to the left, -6 or actually, what would I want to do?  I probably want to say a distance in the X and Y rather than a distance just along whatever that angle is.  [0:04:48]

So, if I type in X, it will allow me to specify an offset from where I started, so I can say X -6 and Y 5, and that’s going to be 6 feet over, 5 feet up, and about 2 meters and 1 ½ meters, roughly, in that orientation.  So, that’s easy enough and pretty efficient, but if you did want to do this all in one step, you could just have your mouse somewhere and type in X, and you notice that it immediately gives you the opportunity to type in a value.  However, that number here – 93 feet, something, is not in relationship to the point that I was interested in.  [0:05:35]

So, how can I relate the placement of this column, for example, to something on screen? Let me his Escape and cancel the operation, and let’s look at moving the measurement origin. Now, the measurement origin icon – the set user origin icon – can be activated by clicking here and then clicking on a point.  Now, we have the X.  Now, if I go back to, say, the Column tool, and type in X and say -5, you can see the numbers now relate to that origin point, and the Y 4 – whatever those values are.  [0:06:18]

So, if I hit Enter, that was 5 feet over to the left because it was a minus, and 4 feet up.  So, moving the measurement origin is a simple and useful thing to do so that you can place something directly into position as opposed to dropping it somewhere and then moving it after the fact.  Now, if I wanted it in relationship to this point, I could move the measurement origin there.  The keyboard shortcut for moving the measurement origin is Shift+Option or Shift+Alt.  So, you hold down those 2 keys, and nothing happens until you hover over an element, and then you can see the X moves there.  [0:06:56]

Now, I can type in, for example, X 2 Y 1, and that’s going to put this column 2 feet to the right, 1 foot up.  So, moving the measurement origin is a very convenient thing to do, and I recommend that you get that in your workflow, just simply whenever you need to, press Shift+Option or Shift+Alt, and don’t click.  Just hover over a node point any time you have what would be a check mark or a black pencil.  It would be eligible for that.  [0:07:31]

Now, you can also do mathematics in the sense that in the tracker, you can say that you’d like to move from the point that it is located.  So, for example, another option, instead of moving the measurement origin, is to hover over a point like this, and then type in a coordinate value like X.  Now, you can see X here is 15 feet, relative to that other corner.  Now, if I wanted it to be 5 feet over to the right, I could say 15 and 5 is 20, but sometimes you’re going to have a value that’s some odd number, and you want to move it another, perhaps, odd number, and instead of doing the math in your head, you can ask ARCHICAD to do some arithmetic for you.  [0:08:22]

So, if I type in a 3 here and type a +, it moves over, and you notice that in the current version of ARCHICAD, it’s actually placing some guide lines there.  Now, having moved it over, if that’s the point that I want, I can just hit Enter, and you can see there is the column.  Let me undo that. If I go here and instead type 2 different coordinate values, like X 3+ and then Y 2+, it’s going to move over 3 feet and 2 feet and wait for me to hit Enter.  When you hit Enter on the keyboard, you are clicking the mouse.  [0:09:07]

Now, when you click the mouse, you know if you have things like a wall, you are placing one point of the wall, and then you have the opportunity to specify the other point.  Some elements will require multiple clicks to do it, but hitting Enter will always click the mouse wherever you are located.  So, this arithmetic function is very useful for lining things up in other ways.  So, for example, if I go back to the Wall tool, and let’s just say I start this wall, and I wanted to not just end in line with this point here but go beyond it a certain distance, then what I can do is I can hover over this point here.  [0:09:51]

That gives me the snap circle around that point, and perhaps I’ll move this down until I get the snap.  So, now I know that this is in line, so I’ll use the guides, which we’ve gone over extensively.  Now, if I wanted it to be 3 feet longer than that or 2 feet less, I can do that.  So, let’s just see how we do it for longer.  It’s simpler going longer.  If we’re going back the other way, it gets a little bit more complicated.  [0:10:23]

To make it go a little further, we again make sure we’re hovered over this point and then either type in the coordinate that we want to move, like the X or the Y, or if it’s showing the distance – for example, this is going directly in line there, and I want it to be a longer distance, I can just type in a value.  Notice the distance is highlighted in the tracker because it’s the most common one, and you don’t have to type D for distance or R for radius, although you can.  [0:10:58]

All you have to do is type in the value, so if I type in 3, it asks if you want me to go 3 feet. Well, if I did that, it would be a little stub line about 1 meter long rather than the current length, but I can say 3+.  Then, hit Enter, and you can see how it’s exactly in line with that column.  Now, if I were going along here, and I wanted it to be shorter, let’s see. What was this?  I think it was 5 feet shorter?  Let’s just begin.  [0:11:28]

Hover over this, get the circle, go down, have it snap, and now I’m going to say that I think it was 5 feet to the left, so I’ll do 5.  Again, when I put this into the distance, it asks if I want to just end up with something 5 feet long or if I want to do some calculations.  To do a calculation, you can do +, but you can also do -.  Makes sense.  Now, if I put a minus here in the U.S., because U.S. dimensions are often put in with a dash separator between feet and inches, we need to keep typing some more to tell ARCHICAD what we want to do.  [0:12:17]

If you were using the metric system, then a single dash or minus would immediately do the subtraction, just like the plus does, but here I’ll do 5-0, meaning 5 feet and 0 inches and then another minus, and now you can see that it moves back, and now I can hit Enter.  So, this is now stopping, of course, in line with this column here.  [0:12:42]

Now, a slightly shorter variation would be when we – let’s see.  I’ll just get that special snap here, take it in here.  I’ll just do 5--.  So, what did I do?  I hit the dash key twice.  So, I didn’t have to type in a 0.  I just hit dash-dash.  So, 5-- will give me the same thing. Now, in the international metric usage, you just need a single minus anytime you do that.  [0:13:15]

Now, another little quick shortcut, as I’ve gone over before, if you wanted this to pay attention to that point up there quickly, when I hover over it, I can just type Q, and it immediately pays attention.  So, the Q value or the Q shortcut – you could maybe think of it as quick.  Be quick about it. Just note that point. Of course, you get the circle there.  [0:13:42]

Now, if I wanted this to be a certain offset from the current position X and Y, I can do that.  Of course, the most common thing in this case is just to lengthen or shorten the element.  So, let’s see if we have any questions typed into the chat because I want to make sure it’s all clear here.  Alright, so Ken says, “Does the origin revert back to its original position?”  OK, so this is what’s called the user origin.  [0:14:16]

The user origin goes wherever you tell it to, and it will not go back to the original user origin just by itself.  It won’t revert.  There’s always the project zero and the project origin, so that doesn’t move.  You can move the user origin back to the project zero origin by the following action.  Here, we can see the origin point here. I’m going to zoom out.  I’ll just zoom out, and if we look carefully – let’s see. Where is it?  OK, so you’ll notice there’s this little X down in the bottom area.  I think that’s an X in there.  [0:15:07]

We’ll see in a moment because the origin right now is this X here.  You can see it on the screen. If I double-click on the set user origin button, notice how it disappeared from here, and I believe it is down in this area.  Yeah, you can see the origin point here.  So, by double-clicking on the set user origin, you can return it to the original project zero origin.  Now, the project zero doesn’t move.  It is essentially what everything else relates to.  [0:15:50]

So, you don’t have to move the user origin there, but if you want to coordinate things, for example, it is possible with surveys that this point may be something you use for your project as a key reference.  Then, you can always move it back by double-clicking on this.  Alright, so let us see here.  So, John says – John Dunham, hey.  “This is so useful.  I’ve always had problems figuring out these little tricks.”  Good, good. It’s amazing for all of us how many little tricks there are, and that’s why even in a course focused on intermediate and advanced techniques, it’s good to go back over the basics and make sure you’re not missing out on some things.  [0:16:38]

OK, so let’s see. We’re moving pretty quickly through these.  Alright, so coordinate references relative to the most recent click point goes almost without saying that when I click to start a wall, and I move my mouse around, the reference in the tracker is in relationship to the previous point that I clicked on.  That is often called the edit origin or the drawing origin.  So, the edit origin means that if I’m editing something, which includes drawing a new element, that’s where we’re measuring from.  [0:17:18]

We don’t even tend to think about it.  Just, I’m drawing a wall, and I want it to be a certain length, and you know it’s the last point that it’s related to.  Now, we mentioned sending a user origin here at a location, and I showed how you can type in a coordinate value even when the tracker is not showing, and it will pop up.  [0:17:39]

Now, this is different than from those of you who go way back, the coordinate palette would not accept input unless it was showing on screen.  The tracker, on the other hand, you can type in a coordinate like an X, Y, A or R, or even these values – Z or zed – you can type those, and all of a sudden, the tracker will wake up there.  [0:18:04]

Now, there is an option for the tracker to show always.  It can get in the way of things, but it also gives you useful information, so you may want to turn it on some of the time and perhaps leave it on. Let’s just see how that works.  That is available in the options, work environment, where we can say for the tracker and coordinate input that we might want to say to show the tracker always.  Now, you could always turn off the tracker entirely. Probably the only time I could see doing that is when you’re meeting with a client, and you just don’t want stuff to show up on screen while you’re clicking on things or moving things around.  [0:18:46]

So, you could turn it off just for meeting purposes.  Generally, having it on demand is the most common and useful way to do it, but always can be useful. Say OK.  Now, if I’m in any drawing tool like the Wall tool, now you’ll see the tracker is moving around with my mouse, even though I haven’t clicked anything.  Now, why would you want to do that?  Well, here’s our reference origin, and if I go back to the little things that I’ve been sketching, and I hover over it, I can see that oh, the X coordinate is 82 feet, and over here, the X coordinate is 97.  [0:19:33]

Well, actually, I’d rather measure it and say this is 15 feet long, but certainly for specific values, maybe when you’re designing certain types of things, it is useful to be able to see offsets from a known point.  Now, the project zero may be useful. Maybe it’s the corner of your building or the corner of the site that you use or you build your project around that zero, but of course, remember that we can move that measurement origin to a point. [0:20:07]

I’ll just say this point and now, as I’m moving around, I can see that this point here is a certain distance from that. Now, let’s see here.  This is interesting here.  You can see the little circle around the snap guide, and the coordinate values are related to that. If I go to this one, it’s zero, so right now, showing this, as soon as I hover over a point and then come back to it, you can see that it’s zero. It’s getting a little bit confused what point we care about.  [0:20:52]

So, there may be some little nuances here in terms of getting that feedback because it’s automatically, in this case, flipping to the most recent snap that we had on screen, but in general, turning on the tracker can be useful, just for seeing numbers, and remember that if we do have rulers showing, which we went over in a previous lesson, you can say to give me cursor projection, and then when you’re hovering over this, you can see the numbers like this 14 feet here or this one – 17, in relationship to whatever is your zero.  [0:21:27]

So, remember this is your user origin. That’s where the zero is measured if we have the rulers turned on.  I’ll turn off the cursor projection.  Generally, that’s something that I don’t use, but you may find it useful, sort of like a T-square. Be able to line it up and see the relationships of things off to the side of what you’re doing.  Alright, so turning on the tracker is something you can do. It will just stay on.  [0:21:54]

Let’s say I’m drawing.  I’ll just draw some things here. The tracker is just sitting there. It’s always on.  Now, turn it off, go back to work environment, tracker and coordinate input, and put it back to on demand.  Then there are some options for the text color or the frame color. If you wanted a frame on it like this, then you’ll see that as soon as it refreshes the screen here, you can see that the tracker now has a frame around it, and so for visibility, it may help to see it a little bit more easily in projects that have a lot on screen there.  [0:22:36]

Let’s go back to work environment.  Now, remember a quick reminder. Project preferences relate to this project, and if you give me your project, or you give a colleague the project to work on, it carries across working units, how you like to dimension where the project is located, etc.  The work environment is personal. It’s this computer, so however you choose to have your tracker and coordinate settings will only affect your computer.  [0:23:07]

Now, if you do want to save out your preferences to put it on a laptop – you’ve got it on your desktop, love the way you’ve got it set up.  You’ve installed ARCHICAD on a new laptop and want to get it to work in the same way, then you can take schemes, and you can export schemes with your preferred settings. We’ll be talking about work environment stuff more at a later time, but I just wanted to mention these settings here only affect what is on your computer.  [0:23:39]

So, there are some options here for showing parameter tags and Z or zed values, and preferring polar coordinates here. So, you can experiment with these.  These affect how the tracker works until you change it.  Now, the polar coordinates, again, is the most useful way in general because when you are drawing something, it’s asking how long it is and what angle.  X and Y, of course, are also important, but sometimes you can override things by typing in those values as opposed to defaulting.  [0:24:19]

Now, if you turn off the prefer, then I think it will show X and Y to begin with and not the length and angle here.  You can also say to show the XY coordinates relative to the user origin in the tracker. That way, I think it would remember this point here.  So, let’s just see. If I go over, and again, let’s just put the tracker one more quick trip back in here, and we’ll put the tracker on always, and now of course, we’re going to be seeing the values relative to the user origin.  [0:24:57]

So, you can see relative to this zero point, but if I go to this point here, even after the circle comes in, it’s still not going to show this. This is interesting. OK, so the distance – no, it has moved it to that user origin.  OK, so this is not quite doing what I thought because it’s still working with – even though this is the user origin, the edit origin is related to that last point we hovered over, so I think you need to be at least aware of that and possibly typing the Q value might turn off that snap point.  [0:25:49]

Say that I don’t really want you to measure in relationship to it.  Now, use relative angle measures – an angle relative to the last snap reference line. These are things that can be useful when you want to rotate something to an angle.  So, let’s use relative angle measures.  So, if I have a line here, this line is on a certain angle, right?  So, when I was drawing this, angle 15.9°, now if I hover over this and get it to snap, now this is – let’s see.  I’m trying to force this. [0:26:41]

If I go along here, and see if I hover over this, that’s now a known line, and it is showing the parallel snap on the guide line, but it’s not showing the angle relative to that, so I’m frankly not going to try to force the demonstration. I know that there are some cases where you’re trying to rotate something, and it will be telling you the incremental angle as opposed to the final angle, so these are things that if you need them, you would want to adjust them here.  [0:27:24]

I think the default is to show the polar coordinates and to enable direct numeric input. That means that we can just literally, if something is highlighted like the length, you can just type in a value. You don’t have to type in the letter, so I really like that, and the coordinate shortcuts like A, X, Y, and Z, will go into the tracker as opposed to some other dialog boxes that might be on screen.  [0:27:55]

So, I think probably we can move on from tracker controls here.  Let’s see if there’s any questions or comments before we do.  So, Ricardo.  “Does this work with slabs as well?  If you have a 3x3 slab and want to extend on the side to 5 feet?”  Let’s take a look at that, and you saw me make the tracker both the total length and the amount you’re stretching the wall.  How did I do that, and how do you get the cursor to show the crosshairs?  OK.  [0:28:27]

So, let’s go back over this one about the crosshairs and how we can do some adjustments using the tracker for things like slabs.  OK, so first of all, to get the crosshairs, you need to have rulers showing.  Let me turn off rulers, and we’ll see where you get it.  So, the ruler here – if we right-click on this, I guess it’s under View, Ruler.  So, if you say View, Ruler, you’ll see these rulers show up. Remember the zero point here is whatever is the most recent origin, the user origin.  [0:29:11]

That’s what it’s going to show. If I right-click in the ruler and do cursor projection, then we get that big crosshair, and we can sort of see off to the sides – the side and top of the screen where our cursor is in relationship to that origin, just looking up at those projections.  So, I’ll turn that off.  Now, you had a question about slabs.  So, let’s just take a look at how polygons work with the tracker.  [0:29:41]

So, obviously, you can create a polygon like a slab using a series of points, or you can do a rectangle.  That’s the most common one, so if I go along here, instead of saying X and Y, it says dimension 1 and dimension 2.  Now, dimension 1 generally is going to be horizontal, and dimension 2 the other direction is vertical on screen.  However, if you have your view rotated, this may change, but ultimately, the one that’s highlighted is the one that you can fill in.  [0:30:22]

So, let’s just say I wanted it to be 12 feet horizontally, and the dimension 2, in this case, is a positive number. It automatically just recognizes that I’m going down.  So, even though in the Y, it would be a negative value, I’ll just say I want it to be 6 feet – about 2 meters going down. Now, you were asking, Ricardo, if you want to extend it to be a different length.  So, there are 2 different ways to do this.  [0:30:55]

With polygon editing, you can go to the edge, and you can then use the option to extend or change the edge perpendicular – measuring it perpendicular to whatever angle it is. This is, of course, going vertical or in the Y direction on screen, but it could be on another angle, and now it’s automatically giving me the tracker information from the click point.  [0:31:23]

So, I just say I want it to be 2 feet longer.  I say 2, Enter.  So, it is 2 feet longer. Likewise, if I say I want it to be shorter, I just type in 3 feet, and this is just going in the direction that I’m pointing.  So, no need to do any math.  Just simply use the polygon editing option in the pet palette.  Now, that being said, let’s just say if we had a building like this, this is obviously a very tiny little piece that only has 2 walls and a slab, but let’s say that I wanted to extend this area 3 feet to the right.  [0:32:10]

I can use the marquee to include this area. Now, the marquee, as you know, has the option of thin or thick. If I do thin, then whatever I’m doing is only going to affect the current story. If I do thick, then it will affect all stories if there happen to be multiple stories with elements within this. Now, I would like to extend this, let’s say, 3 feet to the right – 1 meter. So, I can go to the edge here and move this and type in 3, and that says to just move it in this direction. Doesn’t have to be plus or minus, just move it 3 feet in this direction, and you can see it’s adjusted.  [0:32:55]

Again, the rule is that any element like the slab that has node points, the node points that are included in the marquee will move. The node points at the other end will not.  Any element like this wall that has both node points in there, moves. Why?  Because both node points moved, so the whole thing moved, but without even thinking too much about it, the wall – this lower wall, had only one point in it. That point moved.  The other point stayed in place, just like the slab did here.  So, of course, this is a great way to elongate or shorten a building easily.  [0:33:37]

Now, if I had included the column, and its anchor point was inside here, it would have moved as well. Of course, it didn’t move because it was outside, and this point here does not move as well.  So, that’s a way that we can make this a specific length longer or to the right or to the left, up or down.  Now, the variation that you probably are remembering that I did using the coordinate arithmetic is the following.  It’s very, very useful. It’s slightly complicated, but it’s so useful to remember.  [0:34:24]

If I go to an edge or a corner, and I reposition this back – let’s just say some distance here.  OK, it moves. Well, I can move this all the way back to this point here. Now, it would actually probably complain, or we would see the slab disappear. Why?  Because the right-hand side would move right on top of the left-hand side, and it would disappear, but I can say not to go quite that far.  [0:34:55]

I want to come back a bit.  So, remember that this distance here – right now, it says 14’-4” and some fraction. I can tell ARCHICAD to please do a calculation for me.  I can type in that I want it to be 10’-6” back – about 3.5 meters roughly.  So, I would do 10-6, and then say going back the other way, so don’t go as far as you did. Go back towards where I started, so I do a -, and you see that now, the guide line and the cursor have moved back that distance, and then I hit Enter.  [0:35:40]

It works.  Now, how do I know how long this is?  Well, I can use the Measure tool here, and I can click on this point and hover over this, and you can see there’s the 10’-6”, the number that I typed in. So, again, the trick is not really a trick.  Let me just undo the change here.  It’s that I’m taking the set of elements with the marquee in a certain direction and finding a reference point and saying that’s a good reference, but I don’t want to go as far as that.  Take it back.  [0:36:22]

I’ll again say 10-6 – 10’-6”, 3.5 meters, minus, and that takes it back from where I was.  I say not to go all that way. Come back a bit, and that’s what’s going to give it to you.  So, that was done with the marquee because I wanted to affect the walls as well as the slab.  Actually, if I were to just say I only wanted to affect the slab, then I could do the same thing here.  I can just go to a slab, move this over to here, and say that I’d like it to go back.  [0:37:01]

Maybe I want it to only be 10 feet instead of 11, so again, I’d do 10-0 or just dash and then another dash, and that’s going to go back 10 feet, and of course, that just said to move it one foot, in this case.  So, that’s how we’re using the coordinate arithmetic, whether we’re doing a pet palette operation with a polygon, or we’re using an implied stretch with the marquee.  [0:37:29]

So, let’s see if we have any questions here.  Alright, so I see Jerry’s typing here.  So, Ricardo, is that clear?  So, Jerry says, “If you had dimension lines attached, would they auto-update, even though they are outside?”  Yes, in general, if the dimension lines relate to the element.  So, let’s just go back here.  So, let’s just say that I’m dimensioning from this point to that point, and let’s just, for good measure, do these 2 here, and so we’ve got some dimensions.  [0:38:36]

So, if I hover over the corner of the node point of the dimension, you can see it highlights the element that it’s attached to.  So, this node point here on the dimension is referring to this element.  If I go over this point, it’s referring to that wall.  This point is referring to the end of the other wall.  So, basically, these dimensions are attached, so if I go here, and again, I’ll just take this over – 10-6- there.  So, what I did was say to move this side of the building over – not as far as this.  Please take it 10’-6” back.  Here you can see the 10’-6”.  [0:39:21]

So, the dimension is linked to the element.  So, when the element moves or stretches, then the dimension will update.  Alright, so I hope that answers it for Jerry, and I see Ricardo is happy with my explanation, and I see Taren is typing.  Alright, Jerry is happy.  OK, so Taren says, “Just verified that you can adjust the length of a wall using the pet palette adjust option by typing a plus after the dimension I want to lengthen the wall by.”  Great, absolutely, yeah.  [0:40:17]

So, it’s hitting a plus or a minus after to say that number I just typed in is not the final value.  I’d like it to add or subtract it from whatever was showing before I started typing.  So, you’re saying to add or subtract this number from what it was showing.  Alright, so let’s look at some next things.  So, we’ve got the math calculations, and I think I’ve explained that and some of the applications of it.  [0:40:51]

You can see here that you can type in 2-0- to subtract 2 feet or 2--.  So, there are some additional tracker controls that certainly are useful to know about sometimes.  Let’s take a look at that.  So, we’ll go back in here.  So, if I go and just do this here, take this up to that here?  Alright, so let’s say that I wanted this wall to be in line with the X.  If I hit X, it’s going to show me the – actually, not X.  I want Y.  So, if I wanted this to be in line with that column but on some other position, you can see how the Y says you’ve gone up 5 feet and so many inches – about 1 ½ meters to get up there.  [0:41:59]

You notice that to the right of the 5 foot, etc., there’s a check mark, and there is a little bullseye.  So, a check mark is the same as hitting Enter or right-clicking and saying OK.  So, if I do check, I’m done.  So, this wall is going in there – not very useful in this case. If I go along here, and I type in Y, and I use the bullseye, you notice that there is now a guide that projects along the Y value, so the Y value being fixed will give us a horizontal line on screen, and I can now snap to it.  [0:42:52]

So, you could have done that with the Q keyboard shortcut, which would say to mark this point and project lines from it, but it actually does give a guide line automatically.  The Q will only show that guide line when you’re near it, but this one will just show it as a guide line.  So, we’ve marked that point there.  So, that can be useful.  Now I can see where things are and snap.  I can look at other things, come back to this point, etc.  [0:43:25]

Now, another option is – let’s just undo that.  Let’s say I wanted to start the wall in line with this.  Well, if I hover over this, and I type in a Y here, remember it brings up the tracker automatically, just hitting a coordinate value.  Now, if I want to lock onto this – not just have a guide but lock onto it, I can type in Option+Y, and now you can see that as I move my mouse around, no matter where I’m going, there this tiny little dot.  If you look, it’s probably a little hard to see in the projected image, but there’s a tiny little dot that’s moving along in line.  It’s locked on this value, and you notice the Y value isn’t changing, even though I’m moving around.  [0:44:20]

So, if I then say I’d like it to be in line with this, you can see how it’s snapped to that point. Now, it did free up the values, so now, of course, I’m not locked on this.  If I wanted to make sure it was locked, I can again do Option+Y, and now you can see it is locked, so Option or Alt, if you’re on PC, with a coordinate value will lock that coordinate value for the next operation.  So, you can move your mouse around anywhere you want, and you know it is locked there.  [0:44:55]

I can say that I want it to be in line with this.  OK, so that’s the Option key.  So, if I wanted it to be in line going up and down, then I would be locking the horizontal position, so I can go here and do Option+X and then click, and you can see how it found the point in line with this but locked in on that axis.  Now, of course, the Shift key – once you’ve clicked on a point and started to draw this, if I press the Shift key, it will jump to the nearest constraint.  [0:45:33]

So, in this case, it’s jumping to the Y axis because I was relatively near there, and I can then, of course, click on points. So, that’s actually a little bit easier than the Option+X or Option+Y when you’re already drawing, but it’s really cool to be able to just say that I’d like to mark this point, and I’d like to stay in line with it for my first point.  So, with the Shift key, we can do this, but if I wanted to be in line with this point off to the side, I can hover over it, do Option+Y, and now you can see I immediately get a snap, and anything I click on is going to be in line with that.  [0:46:21]

So, hitting the Option or Alt and a coordinate – so, you hold down Option or Alt and then type the letter, then that will temporarily lock the coordinate value for you.  Limited usefulness, but I will definitely use it sometimes.  Say I want to do this in line with this. I can do Option+X, and now it is locked in, and I can snap it in line with that.  [0:46:54]

So, it can be a very useful thing. Now, if you say you don’t really mean that, and you didn’t want to lock it there, you can hit Escape, and when you hit Escape, in this case, it releases that constraint, so the Escape key will cancel something about your operation, and as a quick reminder, if you hit the Escape key multiple times, it will generally take you back to neutral, so if I hit Escape again, it will, in this case, cancel the operation.  [0:47:34]

OK, so let us see here. We’ve got this coordinate one – the bullseye. So, it’ll project that.  It’ll constrain it to that guide line, and the constraint may be released by unlocking the mouse constraint or hitting – let’s see. It may be released by hitting Escape or right-clicking and choosing to unlock mouse constraints. Remember, guide lines can be turned on or off using the Remove All Guide lines or just temporarily by using the keyboard shortcut L, which will turn off the guides that are on screen.  [0:48:17]

Alright, so I think we’ve covered some of the things in the tracker that were extra useful there.  Let’s just do a quick review of coordinate values for external reference points such as sea level, the Australian height datum, and other references as well.  So, these are set in the project location.  So, if I go here to Options, Project Preferences, Project Location – again, Project Preferences is about this project as opposed to any other project.  When I change the project location here, it only affects this file.  [0:48:58]

Now, I hit Project Location, and we can set the North direction, altitude relative to sea level, and we can set the latitude and longitude.  Now, latitude and longitude only affects how sun positions are calculated, so when you say that you’d like to see where the sun would be at 3 PM on the spring equinox, you can know that it’s going to calculate that based on where you are in the world. The altitude, however, will affect all the elevation references for terrain models as well as any references to point elevations.  [0:49:38]

So, this number here, again, is set for 199 feet. This is interesting.  I started this project from the standard U.S. Graphisoft template.  Why they have the altitude set at 199 feet in this particular location, I have no idea, but that’s what it has at the moment.  Now, this 199 again is something.  I could type in a different value, but if I were to go to any element before I place it or after I place it, I can always say that the base it at zero, relative to this story, or I can say relative to project zero here, which is the same as the story in this case, or relative to sea level.  [0:50:33]

It’s 199 feet above sea level – roughly 60, 65 meters.   Now, in Australia, they use a related level called the Australian height datum or AHD. I think it’s calculated based on where sea level was at a certain point in time, averaged over different markers and things like that.  Essentially, it works the same as sea level, and aside from the name, you can just use the same controls in ARCHICAD to do that.  [0:51:09]

So, these numbers here can be referenced at any time. If I were to say I’d like it to be at sea level, then it will say you’re 199 feet below the project zero, or if I said this was at 100 feet, then it’s going to be -99, so these numbers are totally interlinked.  Again, if I say in reference to project zero, then obviously, this adjusts. [0:51:38]

Now, there are some other references – reference level 1 and 2 – that you can use.  So, let’s just take a look at what those mean, how you set them, and how you would use them.  So, again, the project zero is most commonly the top of finish floor of the ground floor or the top of structural floor of the ground floor – whatever is your main reference for your main story.  It’s the most common thing.  [0:52:12]

Now, it could be some other reference. It may be grade outside the building.  It may be the street level near the building – whatever is most convenient for you when you’re referencing things can be your project zero, and everything you build is in relationship to project zero, and project zero is in relationship to an external reference like sea level.  [0:52:39]

Now, sometimes you have other structures you’re relating to or other constraints, and so you can go under the project preferences, reference levels.  So, the location is where it is in space, but reference levels are additional points that you can talk about, so we can’t change the sea level here because it is set in the location, but we can change the reference levels to other values.  So, maybe you were doing some mall in an urban context, and you had a reference level of the subway or something that was going underneath the mall, and you just wanted to say this subway is 38 feet – 12 meters down below grade.  [0:53:33]

We are constrained.  We can only go down to 25 feet for our parking because we need to allow a certain amount of space, so whatever that number is, you could say reference level  is the subway – Subway Ceiling.  I’m just going to say that.  Alright, so if you say that that’s -38’-6” or something like that – then you can always look at the values of anything and ask how far it is from that reference.  [0:54:06]

You can also say you want this.  Maybe we’re having some structural framing or something 5 feet above that, so you can say the structural framing needs to be 5 feet above the subway.  OK, so maybe the way I’m referring to it doesn’t make any sense, but you get the idea that there is something that is important that you’d like to be able to occasionally check on or set elevations based on, and you can set those reference levels accordingly, and there are 2 levels here.  [0:54:38]

You notice this one is positive, and this one is negative.  Either one can be whatever you want, so if I set this to be -75, you’ll see reference level 2 just goes down below the subway ceiling, and of course, I can give it a name.  So, in this reference levels dialog, I can change the names and the heights, and they will just move around in relationship to project zero and sea level, which can’t be adjusted in this dialog because sea level is controlled in your project location dialog.  So, hopefully that’s clear.  [0:55:13]

At any point, we can go and ask where this wall is in relationship to the subway ceiling.  Alright, it’s 38’-6” above the subway ceiling, so it just is a number that you can check on or use to set elevations there.  Now, when you’re putting in something like a wall, in general, the most common thing is to say it’s in relationship to this particular story, and it starts at zero or starts at some offset.  Maybe it’s a split level, or maybe it goes down below that reference of the floor, down to the top of the wall below – whatever is appropriate.  [0:55:57]

Now, occasionally, you’ll be doing something with the Wall tool or Beam tool or objects that have no reference to the floor level. Façade elements would be a common application, so we’re putting a band across the front of the building, and we’re saying that this band starts at a certain height and goes up to another elevation, so in those cases, you’re going to be just specifying it in relationship to possibly sea level.  That number there then becomes useful or relative to project zero.  [0:56:37]

So, you’re saying relative to grade or relative to my ground floor plan.  I’m putting this band up at the 28-foot level on the building, and of course, you have to coordinate that with the windows and everything, but this way, you can coordinate relative to those other values.  Let’s see if there’s any questions here.  [0:57:02]

OK, I don’t see any questions, but feel free to type something in.  OK, so we are here.  OK, so we’ve looked at just the use of the reference levels and the setting of the sea level.  Let’s just quickly go over the contour lines and grading points.  We’ve done a bunch of stuff with the mesh, but just in this context, I want to very, very quickly go over the real basics.  So, we’ll go to a Mesh tool.  I’ll just draw an arbitrary polygon here, and so the polygon for the mesh is set to have a certain reference level.  [0:57:46]

This is the height or the elevation in relationship to project zero or sea level.  So, in this case, sea level is saying that the top of this mesh is at 199.  Remember, that’s where we’re saying our project zero is, and it’s going down a certain thickness here. That thickness is just the platform, so it’s sort of arbitrary, but it gives us some starting point thickness.  [0:58:16]

Now, if I were to take the mesh and say I’d like to take this point and change its Z or zed height in reference to the mesh reference plane, I could say that it’s 5 feet up. If I say, what I actually care about is where it is in relationship to sea level, it says, “Oh, that’s 204 – 199+5.”  So, in general, for terrain models, you want to just specify in relationship to sea level here or to your AHD point, so that’s now 5 feet above.  [0:58:54]

Now, this is slightly higher than the other points there.  If we went into 3D, we would probably not see too much of a slope here, but we do see the back corner is slightly higher.  Now, when we’re doing the annotations for level dimensions, here’s the Level Dimension tool, and when we look at this, it says that it is 4’-8”, so remember this was 5 feet.  If I actually go up to this corner, it will say 5 feet, so it’s sloping up.  [0:59:32]

Now, while that is accurate, it’s describing it in relationship to project zero, which generally is not going to be helpful for grading plans because typically that’s coordinated directly to sea level or AHD, so what we can do is again, I can select the annotation here, change it from measured value to custom text.  Now, it’s still going to be measured, but in relationship not to the project zero value.  We’re going to delete that and say it’s going to be in relationship to sea level value.  [1:00:09]

So, here’s the 204, and again, I can do that for this one and say to change it to custom text, remove this, and type in the value to sea level here.  So, this is now showing that.  Now, if we wanted to do multiple ones, let me just undo these last couple of steps here. Alright, so now we can see these are showing relative to the project zero. You could select all level dimensions, so I can just do Command+A or Ctrl+A while I have the level dimension tool selected.  [1:00:53]

It says you’ve got 2 of them.  It could be 20 or 100 there.  Then, I go and select one of the annotations and go change it, so just delete this to sea level, and OK, that changed it.  It didn’t change it there.  OK, so trying to remember.  OK, so I know that we had – undo back here.  What’s the shortcut?  Alright, so I’m going to select all of the level dimensions, select this point here.  Let’s go into the settings here, and you can see that now it says there are 2 editable, and if we change, this is going to be to sea level here.  Get rid of this here.  [1:02:00]

Say OK.  Oh, it still didn’t do that. Trying to remember how we get this to work on all of them at once.  I’ll have to remember that. I know we can certainly select multiple ones, one by one, but there is definitely a way that you can get it to do a whole bunch of them on the current view at once.  Alright, so that’s a little reminder of coordinate values in terms of the external values here.  [1:02:38]

Alright, so we’re going to go on and take a quick look at the mouse constraints and the control box.  Again, review of certain things we’ve had, just very quickly, making sure we’re not missing a trick that would be helpful.  So, what is the control box here?  So, let’s just zoom out here and go to the window, palettes, control box.  So, the control box is a legacy interface element.  [1:03:20]

So, it was the standard way to do certain types of things in ARCHICAD up until the tracker was introduced, and some of the other drafting guide line controls were introduced. It still has some use, and so it’s important to know when that is the case.  So, this coordinate palette or this palette here can save you time for certain things.  You can see this little icon here. This if your guide area, and create guide line segment, etc. is also available here.  [1:03:58]

So, this is identical.  We can turn guides off or on here, and we can use the same pop-up.  So, this is really not necessary. It’s the same as up here, but this palette here, if I press down, does not exist in the standard tool box. It allows you to choose between different constraints and offsets that you might want, so let’s take a look at what these do.  [1:04:24]

If I say perpendicular, and I click on perpendicular, and click on this, now when I’m drawing a line, if I click on perpendicular to this, then it’s going to be perpendicular to that line. So, let me just show that again since I started that off incorrectly.  Sometimes you want to do something in relationship to a line on screen, and you can say you’d like to draw this, and you want it to be perpendicular to that line, so if we click on this perpendicular, click on the line that we care about, and now we know that it is locked in perpendicular to that value.  [1:05:10]

Now, if I wanted to be perpendicular to this line here, of course, you can see the snap that shows up, the little angle symbol there, and the guide line.  So, it already knows that, and in fact, I think if we go along here, it is showing the perpendicular to this value there, so this perpendicular is sensitive to the fact.  It knows there’s a line along here, and it is giving me the perpendicular snap there.  [1:05:45]

That perpendicular snap certainly allowed me to get it across here.  An alternative would be to do a guide line along here, and now if I am drawing this, you can see that it is projecting the guide line, and we can get the perpendicular snap.  So, you could hover over this and then get the projection and get the perpendicular.  So, you can definitely do it either way.  This may still be slightly easier to understand than hovering over this, waiting for this line to be projected, etc.  [1:06:19]

Now, similarly, if I go down to parallel, if I wanted to do a line parallel to this, I’m clicking, and you see it’s locked in parallel to that.  Again, if I’m clicking, and I wanted to do it parallel, I can click on the parallel icon, click here, and I know I’m locked in, and I can then move elsewhere along that.  Now, how would you do it without this? If I click on here, and I hover over this, I can the blue line. Then I’m going to get the parallel symbol.  You can see the tiny little parallel symbol, and then I can lock with the Shift key to say I’d like to keep it straight, and then I can go in line with it.  [1:07:05]

So, you may prefer one or the other. This basically allows you to say for it to please lock in what you’re pointing at.  Now, we do have some options here for angle bisector, which I don’t think exists anywhere.  Let’s just see. If I say angle bisector between this line and that line, then you can see there’s a little tiny dot on screen here, and while I could start it at this point, I don’t even have to. It’s just locked in on what would be the nice angle bisector.  [1:07:40]

Now, if I go to this point here, and I hover over it, yeah, it is showing the little tick marks, indicating that these are equal, so let’s just see, if I go to a different corner, whether we can do that.  So, let’s just go to the opposite corner here.  So, if I draw a line, just something simple here, yeah, OK, we’re getting the angle bisector.  So, the angle bisector, again, is now automatically being projected from this point if you’re starting on that point, but if you wanted to have one going off just in space, then this would be useful.  [1:08:20]

Now, the offset is one that I don’t think has a replacement in terms of the on-screen guides. We went through this in terms of the conceptual drawings section of the course, where I said you may want to do offsets from property lines or just for some interior walls or having a building start at a certain offset from another one, but an offset here?  If I say I’m offsetting from this line here, let’s see.  Actually, I forgot that when you activate this offset, you’re going to be drawing an element, and then when you complete placing it, it asks how far you would like it to be offset from what you drew.  [1:09:08]

So, for example, if I wanted a property line that was offset, let’s say, inside this boundary a certain distance, I can say to use the offset, draw a line here, and then it’s allowing me to say what that offset is.  I’ll say 10 feet – 3 meters. That’s 10 feet in from that line, so again, when you activate the offset, you’re saying to allow you to draw something, and then after you finish, allow you to input the offset.  [1:09:45]

So, again, I can say I’m drawing something with an offset, I’m picking 2 points, in this case.  I’m finished with line input, and now I’m going to offset it 20 feet or something like that.  Now, again, we can do multiple offsets using this option here.  So, if I wanted to have it go from here to here and then inset it, let’s say, 10 feet, Enter, and then I have the option to do more of them.  Is this starting from here? It’s already saying 10.  Now, I can say 20, so that’s going to be a 10-foot line and a 20-foot line, and you can keep going until you hit Escape, and then it will complete that operation.  [1:10:33]

So, the single offset and multiple offsets – there are no direct equivalents for that in the guides, although you can always draw something and then just move it, but this does guarantee that in a very intuitive way, you’re offsetting perpendicular to whatever edge you were drawing, and in this palette, we also have a special snap, which again, is a little bit outmoded in the sense that the special snap says I’d like to measure from here to here, and what is the special snap?  In this case, it’s halfway, and of course, I could draw a line to the perpendicular.  [1:11:22]

So, this is now a point from halfway between these 2 perpendicular, so what did I do?  I used the special snap point – this one here – set at the half measure.  Of course, if I use one of these other options, then it would allow you to choose which division or which of the distance points I want to use, but this allows me to draw a temporary line and use the special snap settings for it.  [1:11:55]

Now, the reason why I say it is outmoded in the sense that you don’t need it is that you can certainly go and say you’d like to create a guide line segment from here to here, and then you can go and hover over it and find that point.  If we go to the Line tool, and we zoom in on this, here’s the little snap point there, and so that’s going to be that same point that I had.  [1:12:28]

Now, the only disadvantage of this one is that this line is going to stay here.  In other words, it doesn’t just go away, so by using this option to create a guide line segment, we would later need to hover over this, go to the handle, and hit Escape to get rid of it.  So, just as a reminder, when you have guide lines on screen, there are multiple ways to erase them, and one way is to hover over the guide line, find the handle, and then hit Escape, and that will quickly remove that one guide line.  [1:13:06]

OK, so I think we’ve looked at this. Probably the offsets are the one thing I would use this for.  The other things – perpendicular, parallel, and angle bisector?  Generally, I’ll use guide lines and the automatic snaps that show perpendicular and parallel there, but this is what I still find most useful there.  Now, remember, I was just drawing single lines here, but if I wanted to draw offsets along all sides at once, I might use a polyline or a polygon. Let’s actually do the Fill tool, just to show this.  [1:13:54]

I’ll use the Fill tool, and I’ll magic wand this.  Now, let’s see that fill here.  OK, did I actually get a fill?  Alright, I didn’t quite.  I must have had something selected.  If I magic wand it, that’s now got a fill.  So, this fill, of course, traced from end to end right on top of the mesh.  I’ll undo that. Let me just go and use the offset here, and now if I magic wand this, what is going on?  I say offset, magic wand?  No.  This is not quite doing what I want.  [1:14:49]

I want to do an offset here, and I’m using – oh, I need to be in the Fill tool. Then, I can magic wand this, go to the corner here, and now – that’s interesting.  OK, so that’s actually not doing it with the fill.  Let me just see here.  We’ll just do a shape, and now if I magic wand this with an offset, no, it’s not working the way it used to.  OK, so you can manually, of course, say I want to offset this and then click on – oh, maybe I have to do the polygon method here.  [1:15:38]

If I go here, polygon, and have this offset, we’ll just do this one here and there and then do the offset here.  So, now I’m doing one offset of a certain distance or potentially multiple offsets using this one here.  So, a little diversion there, but I do think that the offset options here can be helpful.  Now, the rest of this palette just has some controls for grouping, so we can use this one up here.  It has controls for the snap guides and this distance.  [1:16:25]

So, this is the other thing that I would use here as a shortcut is the ability to say that I want to put in some windows along here. Now, this is a slab, but let’s say I was using the hotspot tool to mark out some things.  I could say that I want to have a certain number of divisions and type in the division 5, and now I’ve got 5 snap points. Well, we should have – we hit Enter, and we hover over this. What is going on here?  [1:17:03]

Divisions? Oh, look at that.  It’s dividing it along the whole distance.  You can see these snaps are divided there.  Let me just say that this is between nodes, so that’s usually what’s going to be best, so now we should have – there we go. There’s the 5.  Alright, so apologies for my slightly clumsy demonstration. The main point is that the fact you can change the divisions or the distance right here in this palette.  [1:17:51]

Say you wanted it to be every foot. Then, you can go over it, and this is every foot along here, whereas up in this area, we don’t have the option to set it.  We have to set the snap point values in a separate dialog box, so I do like having this value easily at hand when we switch from halfway to some other value like divisions. We can instantly change this without having to bring up a separate dialog box, so this would be the other thing that I think is very useful about this palette in addition to the offsets.  [1:18:27]

OK, let’s see if we have any comments here.  Alright, Ricardo.  “The inability to change all the elevation annotations at the same time brings up the question of being able to change a bunch of objects to the same layer at the same time instead of one at a time.  Can this be done? What palette is that?”  Good question.  I’ll show you that in a moment.  [1:18:48]

Alright, we have – not sure what you mean, Ken.  Oh, polyline at the perimeter.  It’s measuring the perimeter value.  Yeah, that’s what I did figure out.  Alright, Ricardo, we’ll finish up with this question here.  So, I’ve got a bunch of things drawn on screen there. Of course, they’re a big mess.  Let me actually turn off the Quick Select and just select a bunch of things. Alright, I’ve got a bunch of things selected.  [1:19:20]

If I look in the info box here, it says you’ve got some walls selected. There are 15 elements, and one of them, or the last one ARCHICAD paid attention to is the Wall tool, but it also has a dimension. It has this slab, other slabs, a column, etc.  If I change the layer, let’s say, to this hidden layer that is set to be hidden, you’ll see that only some of them disappear.  So, I’ll just undo that. The reason is that this is only controlling the elements that are in this tool.  [1:19:58]

If I go to the Wall tool and do the same thing, it will only affect the 9 elements that are walls, not all of the others.  The workaround – not actually a workaround.  The control for that is this icon – edit selection set.  This icon here used to be next to the layer pop-up. Now, it’s up in this tool box.  It is also available under the Edit menu, Element Settings, Edit Selection Set.  You can see the same icon.  [1:20:39]

Now, whether you select it from this menu, the keyboard shortcut for it, or the icon button here, it says you’ve got 9 walls, 2 columns, 2 slabs, etc. here, and we’re going to change all of them. I’ll put them on the hidden layer so they all disappear in this case, just so we can see the results instantly, and say OK.  You can see they all change, so that is the Edit Selection Set, Command+Option+T, or Ctrl+Alt+T.  So, Ricardo says, “Great, thanks. Solves a lot of headaches.”  Absolutely.  Edit Selection Set is a go-to command, either when you want to hide a bunch of things, put them on one common layer.  Maybe it’s for a scheme.  [1:21:26]

You’re saying all of these things are going to be on this scheme, and then we’re going to hide it and create a new scheme. That’s probably the most common thing I’ve used it for.  OK, so we are at a good point to finish up. Let’s just see if there’s anything else in my notes here. Alright, we did this.  So, in the work environment, there are settings for mouse constraints and guide lines.  Let us just take a very quick peek at that.  [1:21:55]

So, if we go to the Options, Work Environment, we were looking at tracker and coordinate input.  Let’s look at input constraints and guides.  There are some options if your building is not on the horizontal and vertical.  You may say not to even try to snap to them because the building is cockeyed.  Then, you can just snap to the edges of things but not to the X and Y values.  If you’re rotating the grid, then most likely you want to snap to the grid, but sometimes you don’t.  [1:22:33]

You say you want to be able to see that grid, but you don’t want to snap to it. You can turn that on and off. There’s also incremental angles.  Obviously 45° is very common, but some people will have it set to 15°, so you get 15, 30, 45, 60, etc., and it can be relative to the grid.  So, if you rotate the grid, or relative to horizontal.  So, you may find these controls helpful for being able to use the Shift key constraint and have it snap to put you on an axis or put you on a known angle.  [1:23:11]

There are some controls for colors.  There’s a control for when that snap reference will show up. Remember you can always type the letter Q to bring it up instantly, and if you’re slow on the keyboard or you have issues with your hands, or you’re just older and slower, then you may want to raise this up. On the other hand, if you’re really speedy, you may want to take this down.  The snap points can sort of go away afterward.  I guess if you don’t have that checked, that will stay for a while.  [1:23:45]

The snap range is how close you need to get before it jumps to a point. I’ve never changed that, but certainly you could.  In some cases, with sketching, you may want to have it a larger distance so it just snaps more quickly, and in other cases, you may want to make it not snap until you’re really close so you can take this down.  [1:24:09]

Some of these other controls, I don’t think we need to go in here.  I would always recommend using CAD-like settings where you click, let go, move to another position with the mouse, and click again, but in some cases, people may prefer to press and hold down and then lift up, but I think it gives you fewer – it’s harder to control coordinates that way.  [1:24:35]

Now, this is an interesting one that I think can affect Mac users maybe more than others, but it has to do with how the mouse wheel works, particularly when you’re working with the magic mouse, and the default for this, I think, was changed, and I found that when I installed ARCHICAD 22, and even with 21, I had to change this here, so rolling the magic mouse or moving my finger on the magic mouse simulating a mouse wheel will zoom, but you can also have it pan.  That’s one of the nice things about the magic mouse or the trackpad is that you can actually pan around, but by having this setting, you can use the Alt or Option key to pan.  [1:25:25]

So, while moving my mouse, my finger up and down zooms in and out. If I hold down the Option or Alt key, I can go left to right, so I’m actually scrolling left or right or scrolling up or down by moving the mouse.  So, that is something I forget about, but it can be very, very useful. Just press down the Option or Alt and use that.  [1:25:47]

Now, if you have a mouse wheel, you can’t necessarily do that sideways, but you can, I think, still get it to scroll up and down.  OK, so a quick review of those settings there.  We’ll finish up.  Alright, so Ricardo says, “Which palette was the last one you used?”  Which palette?  This one here is called the control palette. So, it is available under the Window, Palettes, Control Box.  So, that’s the one that I’ve got over here.  [1:26:31]

If I select it again, of course, it will disappear from this screen.  OK, so seeing some thank yous from Jimmy and Taren.  OK, this may be a bit off-topic. How do you keep ARCHICAD from inadvertently exiting full screen mode when you hit the Escape key?  I don’t generally use full screen mode.  Let’s just see if I activate it here.  Go there, and so now we’re in full screen mode.  It does give you more full access to the working environment. [1:27:14]

When I go up to the top, it will pop down the menus, so I do have access to the menus. If I click on them, they go away.  I have a little more space to work without it.  Now, if I’m drawing like this, and I hit the Escape key, it will cancel that operation.  Now, if I hit Escape again, it went back from the Wall tool to the Arrow tool. If I hit Escape again – I’m hitting Escape multiple times, but it’s not going out of full screen on my Mac.  [1:27:49]

If that is different on your computer – if it’s different on a PC, I don’t know.  OK, it says, “Usually, it happens when I hit Escape in the middle of a command.”  Well, I haven’t seen it, so I am not quite sure what’s causing that.  So, here I’m just going to go and click on the little green one here.  If you were on Windows, it would be on the upper right, and it would be the Restore option that you would be clicking on there.  [1:28:22]

So, let’s see.  Sorry.  I wasn’t able to answer that.  Alright, thank you, Taren, Chris, Jimmy, Ricardo, Ken, John.  I will be back tomorrow with the ARCHICAD User webinar at 1 o’clock and the ARCHICAD coaching program call at 3.  You’re welcome to attend both.  If you have a project you’d like me to look at and give you some comments just generally about the file organization or your modeling or those sorts of things, I’d be very happy to look at that during the ARCHICAD User webinar because this is going to be shared with all users who are interested from around the works, and it’s always interesting just to look at the project as a whole.  [1:29:13]

So, I look forward to sharing that with you and many other users tomorrow, and if you want to just join me for the coaching program for more specific questions, that will start at 3 with the usual link for the coaching calls.  Alright, take care, everybody.  [1:29:31]