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ARCHICAD Training Lesson Outline
Favorite Groupings
- typical room groupings
- common arrangements and assemblies
- landscaping and entourage
- any set of elements that you commonly work on together
Examples from MasterTemplate
Typical usage - quick starting point for designs
Deployment Options:
- Inside the template
- Copy and Paste from a Resource File (or previous project)
- Import as unlinked Module from MOD file - equivalent to copy/paste
- Creating a folder of MOD files for quick access
Interactive Legends
- On Plan - off to the side, use eyedropper or copy and paste (delete later)
- On Plan - on a remote story, use Trace and Reference to eyedrop (control visibility by story or elevation)
- On Plan - using hotlinked module (HLM) to control visibility, allows global update
- In Worksheets - good for 2D annotation and Objects (3D or 2D)
ARCHICAD Training Lesson Transcript
2020 | 007 – Favorite Groupings, Modules and Interactive Legends
Hey, welcome, everyone, to the ARCHICAD Best Practices 2020 course. Today, we’ll be going on further with favorites, looking at variations such as groupings, modules, and Interactive Legends. Let me know that you can hear me and that you can see my face. I’ll bring up the screen in a moment. Let me just put on my screen here, and I’ll bring up the Slack workspace here. So, Tom says, “Yes and yes.” Hey, Tom. [0:00:41]
Tom’s one of my long-time clients, going back to the original Best Practices course back in 2010 – maybe earlier with MasterTemplate. I’m not sure, and Andrej and Dennis, Scott. Alright, so we’ll be able to get going. So, hey, Gestur. Let me just bring up the other questions area for anyone who is not familiar with Slack. I see Rick Skorick. Welcome, Rick. I know you just purchased the course, so maybe this is your first session in the new course. Rick has been around for a long time in the original course and the coaching program. So, welcome. [0:01:28]
We have a new system for communicating during the call that is called Slack. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. It’s a great general communications tool for teams. You can get access to that by going to bobrow.com/slack. You’ll put in your email address, and it will send you an email with instructions. You just verify your email, and you’ll be able to access Slack, either in your web browser or there’s an app for Mac or Windows as well as for iPhone and Android. [0:02:07]
I use it for all sorts of different things, but here we found it useful for the comments that everyone can see, suggestions and feedback and follow-up questions, and then from what I’ve noticed, only about 1/3 of the messages are in the public channels, and 2/3 are actually privately, so all of you have been communicating actively with Direct Messages, which is a great way to connect, whether you’re during the session or possibly in between, to build community and help each other with things. [0:02:43]
When you do get into the Slack area, you’ll be in the general channel here, and then you can get into these other channels. If you don’t see them immediately, go to the Channels link here, and then 2020 is the one we’ll use for the training lessons, and when we do the coaching calls on Thursdays, we’ll use that. So, we’re in 2020 here, and I see all of you are checked in, and we have – it looks like 29 on the call right now, and about 8 or 10 have checked in here. [0:03:19]
So, let me just move this off to the side and get this set up. Let’s see – my notes here. Alright, so this is what we’re going to talk about, and one thing I’m interested in is whether it’s helpful to see me on screen because I don’t have to be on screen. I can turn off my webcam. I sort of figured in these earlier lessons where I’m talking a lot and not demonstrating as much that it can be useful. Later, when I’m really just demonstrating hard and heavy how to click on things and which commands to use, I may opt to turn that off, but I’m interested in your feedback. [0:04:03]
In addition, in a lot of my webinars, I use a webcam off to the side, so you’re seeing me from the side, and then I turn to talk to it, but I’ve opted, at least at this point, for this straight-on view. It’s maybe not as flattering, but it is a little bit simpler technically, so I’d be interested in your feedback, whether you think it’s useful, not useful – whether you like the profile view better than this or whatever. [0:04:31]
OK, let’s get started with the actual lesson content. So, last time we were talking about favorites and the ability to save frequently-used components such as windows or furniture. It could be anything. It could be stairs and railings – anything that you want to be able to access quickly using the Favorites Palette. [0:04:56]
Now, there are other options for saving the settings that you use frequently, and some of them can’t be done. Some of the use cases, I would say, cannot be done with the Favorites Palette. For example, the Favorites Palette, by nature, works with one element at a time or one type of element. I mean, you might select 10 walls and change them to a new setting with the Favorites Palette, but you can’t actually select a whole room grouping for a bedroom or an office and do anything with it because favorites are only one thing at a time. [0:05:39]
So, a group of elements in a room can be very useful. If you bring in a kitchen arrangement that you’ve perhaps worked out in a previous project, and the new project is similar in style, then you can pretty much have your kitchen ready to go within minutes, even if it’s a little different arrangement – even if it’s longer or shorter or a different shape, you can still take all of the components and move them around very quickly as opposed to having to go one by one and find every single type. [0:06:12]
So, common arrangements are possible. Assemblies – perhaps in some cases, you want to have a footing stem wall and rim joist and some other things – joist hangers that you’re doing in 3D, things like that that are a group or elements or rafter tails or any type of thing that you can think of. If you choose to use it as a part of your design, it would be useful to bring in several or many elements all at the same time. [0:06:52]
So, we’re going to talk about the best ways to bring in groups of elements as a starting point for working on a design. Landscaping – you could have a whole set of trees and plants and walkway things and parking. These sort of things could be brought in as a group and then moved around, and that will save you a tremendous amount of time, particularly if it’s very close to the design features that you need for that project. [0:07:26]
So, we’ll take a look in MasterTemplate at some of the room groupings that I’ve got set up. So, this will make it a little bit more visual as I just show you how they can be used, and as I said, they are a quick starting point for certain parts of your design process. So, let’s take a look in the MasterTemplate sample project because it does have a bunch of these room groupings already set up, and we’ll look at how they work. [0:07:58]
So, I see Rick says, “Prefer to see you,” so thank you for the feedback, just in terms of the video, and let’s see. Dave says, “Greetings from the Chicago Deep Freeze.” Let me just put this up here. “On screen is good.” OK, so I see a few votes for just keeping me visible during the session. “Let’s see how much sun tan you’re getting.” Well, not much these days. Alright. [0:08:29]
So, on screen is easier to follow, like the seminar. Similar, coaching calls are harder to follow for me as not on screen. OK, interesting, so I’m glad that seeing me is helpful for many of you. Webcam is not important. OK, by the way, during the live session, you can turn off – you can hide the webcam if you don’t want to see it. In the recording, if it’s on, it’ll be part of the recorded video, but if you’re watching now, I believe – I don’t think I can show you the command because GoToWebinar doesn’t show you its own interface environment. It doesn’t broadcast it, but if I go to the window – Webcams. [0:09:22]
There’s an option that I’m seeing in the menu that says Webcams, Hide All Webcams. If you choose that, then you can basically ignore my visual feed and just focus on the screen. OK, so we’ll move on. I do see someone must have typed into coaching calls here. Hi, Nick. You said hello. Please go to the 2020 channel to participate. If you don’t see it here, click on Channels, and then click on 2020, and you’ll be in there. [0:09:56]
OK, so let us move on to MasterTemplate examples for regrouping. So, here we have – by the way, I’m going to close the Favorites Palette, which is off to the side here. I can click on this star to close it or go to the Window Palettes menu to select the Favorites Palette again and close it. They’re basically a toggle on or off, and there’s a keyboard shortcut, or I set up a keyboard shortcut that I can do at any time to turn it on and off, and that’s available, as I said, under the Options Work Environment, Keyboard Shortcuts where you can set up extra shortcuts that aren’t built into the program. [0:10:47]
Alright, so here is the project as you’re familiar with. Now, if I say Fit in Window, so if I click on Fit in Window, you don’t see much different. We’re just seeing exactly all of this project, but if I go to a different layer combination instead of the floor plan – let’s just say Show and Unlock all layers. So, this is just a layer combination that will turn on a bunch of stuff. It’s going to become a mess here because we’re going to see all the landscaping and graphics and things that are in this area. [0:11:20]
Now, if I go to the Fit In Window, we’ll see that the area we’re looking at right now is just one part of the screen. It’s in the upper left here, and in the bottom right are a bunch of things that are my Interactive Legend of visual favorites, and we’re going to be first looking just at the room groupings, and then we’re going to be looking at Interactive Legends as a concept and how it’s deployed here in MasterTemplate. You can set up your own Interactive Legend. We’re going to be going through variations of Interactive Legends because they are a great way to save favorite settings and frequently-used components. [0:11:59]
Right now, I just want to say that because I’ve turned on all these layers, now this is all visible, and I can go look at what’s in there. Now, very very quick orientation. There are groups of elements in MasterTemplate in the Interactive Legends. For example, these are all wood frame composite structures, walls, floors and ceilings here. We have different variations for doors and windows – not the actual type of window as we can switch from a single window to a double hung or a slider very easily, but for different types of construction insets as well as different ways that they casing is, and you can see some subtle differences here. [0:12:46]
So, when you eye drop something in this area, you can then say you’d like a window with a sill here with this type of casing. The casing is on. The frame is not wide. The sill is on, etc. Now, we’ll just jump down here to some other favorites for simple walls, for 2D stuff, and we’ll go down to some room groupings. So, this is a set of residential elements. We also have some ones in the template for commercial – for offices and commercial restrooms and lobbies – entrances and public areas. [0:13:37]
Here, everyone can certainly relate to these room groupings. Even if you don’t do residential design, you’ll quickly get the idea. So, what we’re seeing here is, let’s say, a kitchen, and you’ll see a whole bunch of notes. This is just to help, as you look at it, to say, “Hmm, what are those elements that are being used here?” [0:13:56]
If I wanted to visualize this, I can use the Marquee tool and draw a marquee around this area and then use the keyboard shortcut or right-click in the area and say that I’d like to show the selection in 3D. Now, I actually selected something here, so I don’t want to do that. I want to just turn – see if I go here, yeah. So, show selection of marquee in 3D, and we’ll see just that group of elements that’s the kitchen here. [0:14:27]
So, I wouldn’t say it’s a fancy kitchen, but it’s certainly got enough complexity that you can understand that it would take a while to get every single element selected and placed into a kitchen like this, but if you’ve done this once, you can save it, and you can then bring it into another project and just adapt it for the context. So, here’s how we do it. [0:14:58]
We’re just going to go back to the floor plan, and I’ll turn off the layer for the labels. The labels are there, just so that you can see what things are. Blender? Oh, that’s called Blender 22, etc. The lighting – halogen here. So, I have a layer combination here for Interactive Legends with no explanatory notes. It simply turns off the notes here, so now I can select everything that’s inside here and copy it. [0:15:27]
Now, these elements here – if I go select something, you’ll see that the handles are grey because these are actually referenced from another file, and we’re going to be talking about hotlinked modules and how that works later. So, I can’t actually drag this. It’s locked, but I can copy these things. So, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go in and just, with the Arrow tool, turn off the magnet so that I don’t accidentally select the floor or the fill that’s behind it, and then just draw a selection rectangle around it. It now selects all of these elements. [0:16:14]
Copy, or just use the keyboard shortcut for copy, and let’s go back to the project. Now, this, as you recall, was down in the bottom-right area, and I want to get back to the main project area. I do have a shortcut view here of what’s called canvas limits. So, this is an interesting little shortcut in the view map. When I double-click on this, it’s going to turn on just the layers for the building shell, including the markers such as sections and elevations, and in this case, also the property boundaries – the site. [0:16:55]
So, you can see the building placed on the site. So, this instantly took me back to the building area because the settings for this view or the canvas limits view – it’s a certain layer combination that’s showing just a simplified view of the building, but it says the zoom is Fit in Window, so it’s basically this view. Quickly, we’ll go to Show Everything that is Visible in the current canvas limits on this particular story. So, that’s a quick way to do it. [0:17:29]
Now that I’ve done that, if I go and say, “Let’s get my interior design set up here,” this is a layer combination or view with a layer combination that turns off the site but allows me to see the building with partitions and the interior furnishing. Now, this kitchen here – let’s just say that I wanted to get rid of that and start over with something more similar to what we had off in that example. [0:18:02]
So, what I’m going to do is, again, make sure my magnet is not on so I can select things here without accidentally selecting the floor because I don’t want to select the stair, and let’s say that I just delete that, and the first time I make a change in a file after it’s opened, I’ve noticed that it takes 15-30 seconds just to get its bearings, and then afterward it moves quickly. The next step I’m going to do is I’m going to clear out this kitchen and say, “Well, we have a kitchen. We have a space here.” I’m just going to delete these elements, so now we have an empty kitchen. [0:18:42]
Maybe I’ll just paste the stuff in off to the side and drag it in. I’ll go Edit, Paste, and I can say Show and Unlock Related Layers. What that means is that some of the layers were perhaps on the electrical or lighting layers that are not currently turned on, and I would like to show them so I can see them. I’ll just say Continue, and it’ll ask where I want to place it. I’ll just say in the center of the current view, and I’ll keep this current view, so I won’t zoom in or out. [0:19:13]
We’ll see that it comes in here. When you’re pasting, you have a marquee indicating where it’s located. If you click within the marquee, you can move this around. If you click outside the marquee, you drop it into place. Now, this particular kitchen obviously doesn’t apply. It wouldn’t fit in there, but perhaps I might want to – I don’t know if I we can rotate this at all. I’m not sure if it would work or not. Yeah, let’s leave it in this orientation, but I could certainly select all of these things and rotate them here. We’re not going to have the island here, so I’ll get rid of this. We don’t have enough space for that. [0:19:52]
These walls are not relevant because we actually have walls already done, so I’m going to get rid of these here, and there’s a wall with a clock there, I think, floating. Alright, so now I have something a little bit simpler. Let’s just say that I wanted to get these elements here. I’ll just drag them so that this corner point goes into that corner. Alright, now obviously it doesn’t quite fit. Maybe this cabinet can be shortened to fit in there. I’m not sure. It depends on if it’s a double door or not. This is a cabinet base multi-drawer. [0:20:36]
We can move things around. Let’s say that the sink, which should be under the window, and I’ll just drag this – maybe get the center point here to be the center point of the window here, and now, of course, I’ve overlapped a couple of cabinets. I’ll put this back to be able to select things here, so maybe this is – I’m not sure, actually. [0:21:05]
Let’s take that dishwasher and drag that down to here. So, I’m not going to complete designing this kitchen here, but you can see that we can literally just take these elements and move them around, stretch them, and now if I just look at this particular section of the kitchen that I’ve just brought in – I did a marquee, and I go to 3D, and here is my thing. So, now I’ve got those kitchen elements in here, and of course I need to adjust. All the windows are going down a little bit too far, so I need to take the height of that window up – maybe take it to the top of this. [0:21:46]
Do we have a snap? Doesn’t look like there’s a snap there. Maybe there’s a snap. Hmm, OK. No snap. I can just do it visually, and then I can later tighten up the number. It’s not going to be 3’-3” and 39/64. We’ll just say 3’-3” here, and so my even measurement there. So, you get the idea that we could have a room grouping and bring it in and very quickly align it, and of course there’s problems here with this window and things, but we’ve very quickly gotten in a set of elements. [0:22:23]
There are a couple of lights that it looks like came along. Not sure what happened to the upper wall cabinets there – if they were turned off. Maybe that layer is not turned on right now. Not quite sure, but the basic idea is we have a room grouping we can quickly bring in, and let’s say I wanted to bring in the fridge and whatever is next to this. Let’s see here. What is this thing? Why are we selecting this whole thing? There’s something here. Oh, there’s a slab. That must be a Soffit or something like that above. Let’s just get rid of that, and then we’ll take these and drag them into the corner here. [0:23:11]
So, you can very very quickly – within a few minutes, end up with something that’s a good initial design for a room. Now, let’s go back to the room groupings here. So, I’ll just go to previous view here – previous view. This is a nice shortcut to know about, that you can go jump through this. Now, when I jump back to previous view and it’s empty, that means I probably now have the layer turned off that hides the Interactive Legends, so I’m going to bring back the Interactive Legends layer combination, and now we can see we’re looking at the kitchen. [0:23:53]
Now, none of this has disappeared. I just copied it, right? Now, let’s look at these other things. If you did a lot of kitchens, you could have several kitchens here. If you wanted to, you could have 10 different types of kitchens, 10 different types of bedrooms, 10 different types of living rooms. Now, these are all within the current project file, which means it’s very easy to just zoom off to the side, go grab some things, and copy and paste them in. [0:24:24]
Obviously, you need to be able to control the visibility. You don’t want to bring up the building when you’re designing or when you’re meeting with the client and have them see all this other stuff off to the side. So, if you had these components just in your project file, you would want to just delete them after you’ve decided you don’t need them anymore. That is one way to do room groupings is to have them literally in the file, use them, and then delete them when you’re done. [0:24:58]
Now, it could be in your template, so think about a template. When you start a project, you get a copy of the template. If your template has a whole bunch of room groupings that you typically use, that could be a real time-saver. Now, it will be a little larger file, but typically these things don’t take up that much space digitally, and if they save you a lot of time, and then you just delete them when you don’t need them, that can be a very, very effective thing to do. So, that’s in a template file just off to the side. [0:25:34]
I remember when I first learned about this and saw one of our clients demonstrating it. We were all so amazed. This was in Los Angeles at the Los Angeles ARCHICAD user group that I headed up for close to 15 years, I guess. Van Hohman is his name. This was in ARCHICAD 8, and he showed us his template. In fact, it was some of his ideas that really gave me the inspiration for creating MasterTemplate. So, he had a whole building off to the side of the real building, and he would literally just drag things in and move them around. [0:26:16]
Now, it was only as useful as how close that building was to the one off to the side, but since he did a lot of projects that were similar residential remodels or something, it was great. I remember he also set up – this was pretty revolutionary back in the day – all of the views that would go onto the layout sheets, or many of them anyway. He could very quickly – he said he could go measure an existing building and go put it in, and in a couple of days, he’d have this entire model. [0:26:51]
People were saying, “Do you tell your clients how quickly you can get this done?” He says, “Oh no, no. I tell them it’ll be done in 2 weeks. I come in looking like I’ve been haggard and haven’t slept because I’ve been working so hard, and then I show them what I’ve done.” So, he laughed about how much quicker it was than anyone at that point could believe that he could put this whole model together. [0:27:15]
Anyway, he had it off to the side and used eye dropper or copy and paste or just dragged things in. Other variations that I’ve seen for doing this involve putting it on another story. So, if you think about it, if this was on a lower story – let’s say you added an extra subterranean story - -2, -3, etc. – then you could use Trace & Reference. In the old days, it was called Ghost Stories, and you can then eye drop things. Now, you can’t select stuff through the Trace & Reference, but you could jump down to that story, and it was sort of like the storage room. [0:28:01]
Jump down to the -2 story and go find something, grab it, and then put it into the current story that you were working on. So, that’s another way that you can do it inside a file. Now, let me just go back to my notes and see what we’ve covered and what else is in this section. So, we’ve talked about groupings, and just sort of some uses. I’ve showed you at least one example for MasterTemplate and some in the area. I’ll show you some more in MasterTemplate, just to give you an idea of how generalized this can be. [0:28:37]
So, you can have it in your template. You could also copy and paste from another file, so since you can run ARCHICAD multiple instances and have multiple files open, you might have a reference file or a library file or a kit of parts file – whatever you want to call it – open in another copy of ARCHICAD. So, it doesn’t mess up your current file, and then just jump over to it and copy things and paste them in. Now, you can’t use the eye dropper, so that’s one disadvantage, but you can copy elements or copy groups of elements and just drop them in. [0:29:17]
So, that can be very useful, and in fact, people like Tim Ball, who some of you have followed his work, and I’ve been sharing his work and some of the Masters of ARCHICAD presentations and courses. He maintains a whole separate file for his favorites and finds that that’s very useful. One advantage of the separate file is that if he adds to it, revises it, changes it, it’s always up to date because he’s working on project A, and he has his library file – I don’t know what he calls it. I’ll just call it the library file, and that’s open. [0:29:56]
A month later, he’s working on project B – a whole different project. He opens up his library file, and it’s got all the latest stuff. So, the template idea is good, but you sort of have to keep that up to date whereas the library file may be conceptually easier. You can say you’re developing your reference library there. Now, I do recommend that you enhance your template file as you go, as you come up with new ideas, new resources, room groupings – whatever, that it could go into your template file. [0:30:33]
So, every time you start a new project, you’ve got the latest and best set of materials to work with. Now, I’m going to show you just a few other things in MasterTemplate as examples, and then we’ll look at how you could do this as a mod file or a module file that is on your hard drive in or on the server and in a folder. You can have many of them, so we’ll look at that in a moment. Let’s see if there are any comments or questions here. [0:31:05]
Alright, so Reg says, “Groovy.” Alright, thank you, Reg. Ken says, “Can one, then, compose their own room groupings and associate them in MasterTemplate?” Yes. I will show you that shortly. MasterTemplate is designed to be extensible, customizable, and really just provides a framework for you to build your own super-duper customized, Ken Brooks template. [0:31:34]
OK, Tom Downer says, “Do levels matter with two files?” Well, they can matter, but if we’re talking about room groupings, they’re on a particular base relative to the story, so when we copy things, generally, they have an elevation reference to the story that is their home. So, if you think about furniture or cabinets or walls that you might copy, most of the time, they’re going to start at the zero level of the story. Depending upon how you set up your zero level – your reference level of the story, they may be up on top of the finish floor, and the reference level is the structural floor. [0:32:17]
Basically, when you copy and paste it, even if you put it on another story, they’ll just understand that they’re in relationship to that new story. So, generally that will work. Sometimes, you will have multi-story arrangements that you do this way, and then there can be some potential issues with this building being set at 10’ walls or 3.5m walls, and this one has color stories. So, there can be some adjustment that you have to do related to levels. [0:32:51]
So, Nick says, “You cannot in Solo though, is that correct?” So, in ARCHICAD Solo, which is sold in some areas around the world, you have most of the functionality of ARCHICAD, but they’ve deliberately left out collaboration tools such as the ability to do hotlinks and to do Xrefs. That would be AutoCAD – rough equivalent of a hotlink, and teamwork – the ability to have one file open on a BIM server and have multiple people work on it. There may be some other restrictions as well. They may have taken out some of the rendering things, but overall, you can model very complex buildings. There’s no restriction on size. [0:33:38]
Now, in terms of MasterTemplate, the reference components in the Interactive Legends are brought in through a hotlinked module, so they don’t work as flexibly in a Solo environment, but there are ways to adapt it and to work around that. So, if you have some questions about how to adapt MasterTemplate to your ARCHICAD Solo environment, I’d be happy to help you personally, and I may just create a video in the MasterTemplate website to explain how you can do that. [0:34:15]
Alright, so my question was referring to what Ken asked. Room or room groupings. So, Green Duncan, that could be useful. By the way, my name’s Eric, not Bob, although you can call me Bob if you want. My last name is Bobrow. OK, let’s take a look at some room groupings here, and I see someone else typed in coaching calls. “OK, wrong channel.” There we go, so we are on 2020. Scott, glad you made it. [0:34:49]
Let us see here, then. So, these are some residential groups. Let me just slide over here, and here are some commercial groups. So, quick office with different break area, cubicles, things, a lobby, reception area, a conference room, and then some miscellaneous entourage. Now, let me just do a marquee around this so that we can focus on this area, and I’ll just say, with the keyboard shortcut, to show me just what’s in that area, bring that up, and you can see some things here. We’ll just zoom in a little bit. [0:35:37]
So, this is not intended to be a complete set of tools for creating office designs. It’s intended to be a useful starting point and a way to understand the concept so that you can then extend it there. Again, you can select groups of elements on the plan, and you can copy them, and you can paste them into your working area. [0:36:07]
Now, let’s see here. We talked about being extensible, or at least I mentioned that. So, I will go into that in a little later today. I’m going to be talking about hotlinked modules and how – say, for example, in MasterTemplate there’s a base module that everybody gets, and then there are a couple of placeholders for office favorites and project favorites, which are intended for you to use as a framework for having your own set of favorites there. So, we’ll look at that in a little bit. [0:36:47]
So, let’s go back to the floor plan here and look at some other things in terms of an Interactive Legend set. So, if we go over here, these are a little hard to tell on the plan, but they are – if I scroll down a little bit, they’re public restrooms. These are all little components – a little shower stall here, a little toilet stall. Shower seat – these are soap holders and towel things and the like, so this is a matrix – bunch of individual elements that are placed here. [0:37:26]
If we go down a little further – commercial stuff, so we have a single occupancy, ADA approved, or this 5-foot radius is indicating there’s enough space to turn around a wheelchair in this. If you’re in the U.S., that’s a critical part of getting commercial restrooms done. You can see similar circles here, so this is multiple occupancy, and these are all components that are from the standard library that you could go find, one by one, but with MasterTemplate, you can just grab these and drop them into a commercial building and then adapt them as needed. [0:38:10]
As always, this is intended as an educational tool, so you can just see what’s possible, and then you have your own room groupings there. If we go out a little bit further here, we have site and planning. Now, this is minimal. I didn’t go into putting in a whole bunch of things, but there’s a little conceptual building here. If you were putting in or doing a subdivision or doing a neighborhood and show a bunch – how many units you had, you could be putting in these little dollhouses. This is a pool. This is a tree with a little circular – what do they call that – a barrier for protecting it, I guess. There’s hydrants and things like that. [0:38:55]
We’ll just take a very quick look at this so you can see. Again, just something that you could place on the site, but these are – if you copied and pasted it, you would be able to just move it around. Things like this parking stripe here – these are not just these three stripes. This is a library part that you can actually choose how many spaces there are. So, I think, if we change this from 19 feet to 40 feet, it’s going to have – let’s go to the other orientation. [0:39:39]
I guess it’s rotated, so if I go to increase the distance, it has more spots, and there are all sorts of other options here in terms of numbering it and things. So, these are intended to be used as a starting point, of course. Now, the other thing that, in terms of favorites, that we can just talk about is that in addition to groupings, then you can just eye drop. [0:40:12]
So, we can go over here and say we want to get this car. Now, I’ve set myself up as an object with car – this particular library part, and it’s already on the correct layer – in this case, a layer for modeling elements that are visible in the 3D model as opposed to ones that are invisible because they’re just used as cutting planes or as opposed to fixtures or cabinets or electrical. These are entourage modeling elements for visualization here. [0:40:43]
If I eye drop the tree here – let’s go in there. It’s going to pick up the tree, and it’s going to be on the layer for – in this case, the tree or plant section elevation. I guess it’s not set up for landscaping. It’s set up for general purpose there, but it could be on the landscaping layer. If I eye drop the parking things there on a civil layer for site objects – hydrants and things like that. [0:41:15]
So, the idea here is that you can go quickly to a whole huge kit of parts, eye drop it, and you can place that particular element just by clicking, or let’s say that I go and get this car. Well, maybe I don’t want to place that car, but I go into this folder, and I pick a different one. I pick a Range Rover or whatever that is – an SUV or multi-purpose vehicle or things like that. So, by having this whole large kit of parts, and I’ll just zoom back out, there’s several hundred in here. It’s actually, to me, easier to find things in these types of related groups than it is in that folder structure for favorites. [0:42:10]
Now, favorites are great because they’re just right next to your project, and particularly, if you want to have a bunch of related things in one group or one folder then you can very quickly go find them and drop them in, but having this arranged in room groupings or other usage groups or element types can be a good thing, particularly if you’re visually oriented. You can see this stuff and say you’ll take one of those. [0:42:40]
There’s a classic thing about processing information, that different people process it in different ways. Some prefer reading, some prefer pictures, but even if you’re an avid reader, and even if words come naturally to you, it can use a different part of your brain when you see images, and that’s why some restaurants – particularly the ones that are mass-market and often ones that are open late at night – will have menus with pictures on them. If you go in late at night for something, and you just – you have this detailed little list of items, it’s going to be harder than if you just look and say, “Ah, that looks good,” and you just point and say, “Yeah, I want to eat that.” [0:43:38]
So, here you can look and say, “I need a cabinet like that. I need a thing like that.” So, that’s another reason why Interactive Legends can be useful. Now, I talked about having it within the file. Let’s talk about how you could have something like this outside the file. If I go and select all these elements – and by the way, you notice the little magnet icon? If I press down right now, it’s going to attempt to drag this particular colored fill background because it’s selected it. I don’t really want to select that, so I’m going to hit Escape to deselect it, and I’m going to turn off the magnet with the space bar here. [0:44:23]
I can turn it off here, or I can use the keyboard shortcut – the space bar. Press down. You see how it turns on. Let go of the space bar and it disappears. So, I’m pressing the space bar – not the Shift key, but the one you use between words when you are typing, the space. So, when I have this turned off, then I can go and click, and it won’t select anything unless I surround it like I’m doing here, or I actually get a check mark or a Mercedes. So, that way, I’m avoiding selecting this background. [0:45:02]
So, I’ve just selected these things, and I’m going to save them out into an external file. So, I’ll go here to File menu, External Content, Save Selection as Module. Now, there are different ways that you can do this, but this is the fastest, easiest one. When I say Save Selection as Module, I can give it a name. Let’s just call it kitchen style 1 here. I’m going to be saving it as a module file, which is what I said. [0:45:35]
Save the selection as a module file. A module file is a special ARCHICAD file type ending in .mod, and I can go ahead and save it in whatever folder I like. There are limited options here just to compress the file or not. Generally, I always leave that on, and I can say save. Now, let’s go and do this for the bedroom, just as a quick example here. External Content, Save Selection as Module, and we’ll just call this Bedroom Style 1 here. [0:46:17]
Alright, so now obviously I could save a whole bunch of things and put them into groups, in different folders like all the kitchen variations or all the residential versus commercial, etc., there. Now, what do you do with a module? Well, let’s go back to our project. I’ll just go back to the canvas limits here, so that took me back to the building, turned off the layers with the legends, and now I’ll go to the interior design for the first floor. Now, we can see the building here. Of course, we’ve got all the stuff off to the side that I don’t need. I’ll just delete that. [0:46:53]
So, here we have a bedroom area, and let’s just maybe delete what I’ve got there, and there’s a couple other things here. This is, I guess, a picture on the wall. Alright, so what I’m going to do is I’m going to bring in that bedroom group, but I’m not going to go off to the legend. I’m going to go to the file menu, interoperability, and merge. So, merge allows me to bring in a file from outside. So, merge – I can say anything that you can possibly merge, just allow me to select it, or I could say that I would like to only find files of a certain type, like module files. [0:47:35]
You can see now that these are available. The other ones are grey. Now, you can merge in images, and it’ll just become a picture placed in your current view. You can merge in entire other project files, .pln files. You can merge in .pdfs. Let’s just take this bedroom one here and say to open it. So, when I merge this in, it’s going to do exactly the same thing as if I copied and pasted. So, a module file, essentially, is exactly like a clipboard that’s been saved as a separate file. [0:48:09]
So, I’m going to say to show and unlock related layers. There’s probably some stuff on the ceiling or electrical that is currently turned off. I’ll say to continue. Where do I want it? Center of the current view, and now you can see that it brought in a bunch of stuff here, and it turned on some layers for lighting that are not part of the module but were just turned off a minute ago. I’ll just move this off to the side, so I can see what I’ve got. [0:48:39]
Then, click outside here. Now, again, having the walls was useful in the context of just visualizing it, but generally, I’m not going to use that there. Now, I don’t know if it’s going to fit in here. Maybe this bed that I’ve got selected – this is a bed double, but I can go in and, I think, there’s some size variations here. I don’t know if this is – I guess probably a headboard, etc. here. Well, let’s just say that this is rotated 90°, so the 6-foot would be the width. Maybe it’s going to be a 4-foot bed. It’s not going to be as big a bed there like that, so I’ll say OK. [0:49:27]
I’ll just take these elements here and drag them into this room here, and then I’ll move them around. So, we’ll take this bed in further, and I think this is a carpet. We’ll put it underneath – partially underneath the bed and things like that. So, what do we have now? I sort of did a quick and dirty thing, but let’s just look at what we have. So, you can see that it brought in the bed, the night stand, even some curtains. Now, the curtains are not on the right part of the window. Here’s the actual window there. OK, and the curtains won’t belong there, but I can go, and I can say this valence or whatever you call that – I’m going to stretch this back here or something like that. [0:50:26]
Actually, no, this is the curtain itself that I was doing. So, you can do that, and here’s 2 different types of blinds, so you can pick which one you want. I’ll say, “No, I don’t even want to do that. I’ll just do this one here.” So, very very quickly – let’s get rid of that funky picture. By the way, you can put in a different picture. You can just have it be your own .jpg image there, but you get the idea that very very quickly, I can lay out this, and I’m using the module file now as opposed to the Interactive Legends. [0:50:59]
Now, let me just select this thing. I’m trying to get it. Why isn’t it? I have put it on the magnet, and I can select this, and I can stretch this back. Yeah, I think to here. That’s the connecting angle. Let’s see. This one is the connecting angle. This one might be the length or the height. No, that changes the height there, and let’s see if this allows me to – yeah, the length. So, I can just shorten it in there, and well, it looks like I changed the proportions when I did that. I’ll just use the Shift key to lock this in and then shorten it. [0:51:46]
So, now we’ve got a molding, and of course, this would have to be dragged up. I’ll take it up to there, and now we have a crown molding on there. So, maybe I’m going way overboard for demonstrating things, but I want you to get the feeling and the understanding very quickly that these things are not designed to be rigid as you’re putting in this room grouping into your design. You’re just bringing in a set of elements that you can then pick and choose and rework in your design, and if some of them are relevant, it’s going to save you time. If a lot of them are relevant, it’s going to save you a lot of time. [0:52:27]
Alright, so we’ve looked at just how you can save this, potentially, in a folder. So, here is a bedroom style and kitchen style one etc. I can just put these into a folder. I can have groups for different uses like all the bedrooms or all the residential versus commercial, so anything you like. This is a reference library. Now, how did I create it? I took something that was already in the model, selected the elements, made sure I had all the layers turned on that would include, for example, the lighting, etc., and then I saved it as a module file. [0:53:06]
So, how can you speed this up for taking advantage of this in your own project? Go to your completed projects – the ones that you like that worked well, and harvest your favorites. So, you can harvest favorites for the actual Favorites Palette, add individual items – 5, 10, 20, 30, 50 items that you want to have quick access to, and then export the favorites like we did last lesson. Take room groupings. Take that kitchen. Take that office. Take whatever it is. Select and save them as module files, and now pretty quickly, if you’ve done 10 projects, you could have a whole set of materials that will just be so much faster. [0:53:59]
Now, I know people who say, “I just open up one of my recent projects, and I copy and paste from there.” That’s fine, but by doing it systematically, you can have a library that’s just going to be easier to work with. Now, there’s no reason why you can’t have all of those – a bunch of these room groupings in another file. That’s what Tim Ball does. He has another file with a bunch of stuff in it, keeps it open, and he copies and pastes it. [0:54:34]
So, the module file suits some people where you say, “I’m just going to get this one that’s a galley kitchen,” or “I’m going to just get this one tiny office versus a bigger, corner office.” So, if you know what you want, this is instant, and it’s something that you can reorganize and update as well. So, let me just see here. [0:54:57]
Hey, Bob. Welcome, signing in. Tom says, “Does modifying the place module affect the saved module?” Not in this case. I said merge the file using the File menu, Interoperability, Merge. That is copying and pasting, and after you paste it in, it’s independent. On the other hand, if you do a hotlinked module, then it is locked into the outside file, and we’re going to look at that for Interactive Legends momentarily. Then, if you do update it, the pro is that it updates. So, you updated somewhere else? You now have the better or more complete or revised version. [0:55:47]
The con is that in your file, it’s going to change if you change it up in the other file. The nice option is that you can bring something in that’s linked, and then if you decide you don’t want it linked anymore, you can break that link. So, we’ll look at hotlinked modules and how that works. So, Diane says, “Is harvesting from other projects going to result in library part problems?” [0:56:14]
Well, if your other project file that you’re copying from uses the same library, no. No problem. If you have a module that was done in ARCHICAD 18, and you copy some things into and paste it into or merge it into your 22 project, then it may say, “I can’t find certain parts.” So, then you’d have to load that 18 library or the migration libraries that support that. Now, many of the parts will actually automatically find their new version because GraphiSoft just keeps many of the parts the same. They’re pretty good as they are. [0:56:59]
They don’t change them from year to year, and so you won’t have issues, but some won’t be there, and so we talked a bit about migration of projects. You’d have to – in last week’s lesson or on Monday’s lesson, you’d have to do the same thing when you merge or paste it in. Now, what’s the best practice? I would say do a spring cleaning or a fall cleaning or a Saturday job of going through your library of things and bringing them up to date. [0:57:34]
So, then, every once in a while – whether it’s once a year or whenever you have a chance, you spend a couple of hours or a spend a chunk of time just bringing them all up to date, and that will mean that when you’re in the rush, working on your real project, you won’t have headaches. [0:57:54]
OK, so Iain. “Updating my template is important. I agree. However, once a file is opened, the template is frozen for that file.” That is true. A template, essentially, is the basis for the file, and you’re copying it, so if you update the template, it doesn’t change a working project file. My experience has been that projects can be active or worked on for 2-3 years. Yeah, not uncommon, and templates in various live projects will all, therefore, be slightly different. Yes, that’s inevitable. [0:58:29]
Given that projects don’t get processed necessarily within one version of ARCHICAD, Iain says, “I can see why Tim uses library parts which will be constantly up to date.” So, one advantage to that is that maybe he has one single file that he keeps a lot of his reference stuff in, and that’s the only one he has to worry about. In the same way, your template file is one seed that you start new projects with, and that’s the one periodically to add to or revise. [0:59:08]
So, Iain says, “Can you explain Tim’s method and compare it with your Interactive Legends module?” OK, so we’re going to go now. I think we’re just about ready to look at hotlinked modules and how MasterTemplate uses Interactive Legends. So, let’s see. That’s a good segue, perhaps. Alright, so by the way, how are you doing with today’s session? We’ve gone an hour. Is it clear? Are you seeing some things that you find useful? Will this make a difference in your practice? Are there things that you haven’t done or thought about or just haven’t gotten around to that seeing it today made you go, “I’m going to do that”? [0:59:52]
Alright, so Tom says, “Very helpful.” I’ll pause a minute just to take some feedback here. “Very helpful.” Several people are typing. I love seeing this. So, let me just take a sip. Diane says, “Helpful to see you remove the magnet on the Arrow tool.” Yeah, that’s one of those work process things that isn’t emphasized, but you need to know how to use it. Otherwise, it becomes much harder to select groups of elements without getting things in conflict. [1:00:44]
Marlena – “It is great info, especially as I customize MasterTemplate 22 and migrate a project in the early stages.” Excellent. Alright, so looks like Tom Hawkins is going to type in. Tom, welcome. I know Tom just signed up today, so we’re getting a few new members in here. The end of January 2019 – I will be keeping enrollment open all year long, but those of you who joined during this early period definitely have some advantages and some extra value in your purchase. [1:01:25]
So, Tom says, “Very good,” and Gestur. “Always learning something new.” I’m just so amazed with people like Gestur or Tom Downer or Diane. I know I’ve worked with the three of you over many years, and just your thirst for learning and continuing to develop your skills is admirable. I mean, I do it. I’m always learning, but this is one of the things that’s very satisfying about teaching is not only do we have the new students or the ones that say, “Well, I’ve never really learned some of these things,” and we have the veterans who are just saying, “I want just a little bit more.” [1:02:09]
Iain, another. They are always looking for how to get the most out of it. Alright. Green Duncan. “Do you get many taking up ARCHICAD from being fluent with AutoCAD? Sorry if this is an awkward question. I do a lot of detailing and adaptations to existing buildings.” Over the years, many people have left AutoCAD behind and started working with ARCHICAD. Of course, many of them stayed within the AutoDisk product family and took up Revit. [1:02:45]
We do see, sometimes, people who have been trained in Revit who pick up ARCHICAD. Maybe they get hired by a firm doing it, or they just make a decision that ARCHICAD might be a better solution. We get people from all different types of backgrounds. Overall, I love ARCHICAD. I think it’s the best tool in the world, and so I just keep on teaching people and trying to relate to this being similar and that being different. [1:03:18]
OK, Bob George. “Is there any way the module feature can be added to ARCHICAD 20 Solo version?” So, I’m not quite sure whether modules can be used. You definitely can’t use hotlinked modules, but modules – where it’s essentially copy and paste. I’m not sure if that really works. The workaround is you can always have two instances of ARCHICAD open up another project or a module, select things and copy, and then go back to your other file. [1:03:52]
That’s sort of like if you have 2 Word documents open, and you just are going into your contract from one thing and copying some text and pasting it into the other contract. Same thing, but I think that the Solo version might be able to do merging modules, just not hotlinked modules. Alright, Tom says, “There’s so much in the program that each review is beneficial.” Excellent. [1:04:19]
Chris. “I’ve used a combination of favorites and sets of objects inside modules all the time. These are part of my startup files.” OK, excellent. Alright, so let us go on. Thanks for all the feedback. So, let us see here. So, let me look at my notes for this. Alright, so we imported an unlinked module, so essentially as a paste. I’m going to say it’s equivalent to copy and paste. Alright, and we create a folder of mod files for quick access. [1:04:55]
So, now let’s look at Interactive Legends. Now, Interactive Legends actually is a term that I don’t know. I might have coined it. Certainly I’m the only one I’ve heard talking about it in years. So, Legend, we all know. It’s something that explains what you’re looking at. You know, this symbol means this. That symbol means that, or these lines indicate this type of wall. These lines indicate that type of wall. So, they’re a set of reference images with some identifying information. [1:05:34]
Now, in ARCHICAD, if you have those elements that you’re referencing in a view, and they’re set up in certain ways, you can eye drop them, and so then they become something you can interact with, and as we’ve seen, it becomes a quick way to copy the settings so that you can place in an element just like it – often in your real work. [1:06:02]
Now, you can do it off to the side, and you can use the eye dropper, or you can copy and paste, and then if it’s in the project, you may want to just delete it later. There are other ways that you can leave it in and just restrict the views so that they’re not getting in the way. Another way is to put it on a remote story. You can actually say to just give you a new story, put it below the current project, and then you can use Trace & Reference. Actually, I want to demonstrate that briefly here and talk about controlling visibility because this is a way that you can use a similar concept in ARCHICAD Solo that you don’t need to necessarily use in the full version of ARCHICAD. [1:06:49]
Now, we’re going to look at the hotlinked module idea shortly, but I also want to jump here to this because this is an interesting one that is so useful, and I think it’s so easy to implement, and in 5 minutes, you’ll get the idea. If you haven’t worked with it, it’s going to maybe change your life. Alright, so let’s look at worksheets. [1:07:14]
Let’s go back to the plan here, and I’ll just go to worksheets. So, in your project map – just quick orientation. You have stories where we put walls and fixtures and furniture and landscaping. Many of those things are 3D, so we’ll see them in elevations and sections. Some of them are 2D only, and they only appear in that particular story. Sections and elevations generally represent the building from different view points – the 3D virtual building with annotation laid on top of it. [1:07:58]
Interior elevations, similar for room groupings. Now, what are worksheets? Worksheets are 2D drafting areas. You cannot put in 3D information into a worksheet, with one minor exception – well, actually, one significant exception. That is that you can have objects that have a 2D appearance in the worksheet that carry 3D information. We’re going to look at worksheets here and say in MasterTemplate, we’ve got a whole bunch set up ahead of time that are a framework. I’m going to go and widen this out so we can see the names. [1:08:35]
Now, let’s look at the one called Interactive Legend Sections. Double-click on it. It’ll open up. Right now, the layer – we’re only seeing one element because the layer is not set up properly. In order to access the fill information here, it’s best to go usually to the view map instead of the project map and find a relevant view. [1:09:01]
So, if we go to the legends, favorites, and we have legends worksheets – actually, no, that’s not the right one. 2D Legends, Detailing, Sections and Elevations. So, this one is the legend sections. This one, so I’ll double-click here. It’ll still be the same view. Here’s the 6 in 12. This is what we were looking at a moment ago, but what are all of these elements? Well, there’s some 2D framing elements, so if I select this, this is called DET Stud 22, so it’s a stud for inside a wall, and what is this one? [1:09:41]
It’s the same type. In fact, all of these are DET Stud. They are 2D objects that have some flexibility based on whether it’s a single or a double, what dimension it is here – all of these things can be changed, and what is the – if we had a single, I guess, we can do things like see if it’s continuous or if it’s blocking or if it’s finish. You can see all the different variations here. [1:10:16]
So, in fact, all of these are just 2D elements, just with different settings. So, think about it. If you wanted to put in one of these into a section, instead of going and manually modifying the settings, you can just eye drop the one you want. Now, going off to this worksheet here is pretty quick if we maintain it in this separate window or tab. Let’s go to a section here. So, we’re going to go to a section here. Let’s go to C Section here. [1:10:59]
Now, this already has a bunch of stuff in here. You can see this is a wall with a framing in here. This is also a wall. Let’s see. I wonder if one of these has the 2D. I think I’ve got some areas where it’s just done in 2D. Come on. I want to just select the 2D element here. Did I just move something? You do drag there. There we go. I’ll put it back. [1:11:45]
So, let’s just say that I wanted to be putting in some framing here – the rim joist or whatever. Let’s go into this legend section, and I can go and say that this is going to be continuous here like this, and we go into the section and drop that in, and then select this and drag it into position here. Now, I’m not sure that that’s a legitimate thing, and obviously it’s too big, and I would have to change the dimensions here, but if I know what it is, and it’s a 2x8 or it’s a 2x10 – so this is 6x14. Alright, let’s change it to be 4x10 or something like that here. [1:12:33]
Drag it into position. So, whatever that’s supposed to be, and I could zoom in and snap, etc., but the idea here is that we can just go see the areas that we need to put in. Let’s say we wanted to put in something there. We just go here and eye drop the type of element – rotate it around so we can just eye drop. Let’s see, the 2x4 here, and go into section here and paste that in and then drag it into position. I don’t know why it rotated here, but we can drag this down to there and rotate this into position. [1:13:28]
So, we can go in and use this as 2D. Now, I can also take this as a trace reference, so instead of having to go back and forth, I can go to the view here. Let’s see – that is Legend 2D Sections and say to show as trace reference, and now, if I zoom out a little bit, you can see that this is off to the side, and I can eye drop here. Now, instead of having it off to the side, maybe this is a little bit awkward. I might prefer to have it somewhere else. [1:14:04]
So, let’s go and say that I’ll open up the Trace & Reference Palette, and I’ll drag the reference and maybe put it up here for now. So, whatever you find convenient. So, leave this here, and I could be going in and eye dropping something here – dropping it in, eye dropping something else, doing some insulation, placing the insulation here, doing all of these sorts of things. So, this is just a quick way to do it, even labels. [1:14:47]
So, if I eye drop this label here, and then I pop it in, you can see what it did here. Obviously, I’m grabbing for examples, but the idea is that we can have typical notes that you use frequently, and just eye drop them. You can eye drop other 2D symbols, and you want to have some context here. I can eye drop the human figures. I think here’s a figure, and let’s pop that in. So, maybe that isn’t the right place to do it. [1:15:41]
We’ll put it in down here or things like that. So, this set of parts is very powerful. Now, you notice that they’re all 2D – all of these things are 2D, but let’s go to another example where we can have 3D things. So, this is where it gets even more powerful. I’m going to go back to that kitchen area. So, in addition to having the group of kitchen elements off to the side, and let me just go and delete these extra things here. Let me go to the worksheet, Kitchen & Bath Cabinets, and I’ll say Show as Trace Reference. [1:16:33]
Now, this kitchen and bath cabinet – let me just zoom out. What is going on here when I zoom out? There we go. It took a moment, so this particular reference – let me just go and switch over to it. I will use this option here to flip over to the reference and look at it. So, here we have a bunch of kitchen cabinets. This note here is something that I can delete. It’s just explaining that it’s examples of frequently-used kitchen elements. Here, you can change it. I’m just going to delete it. [1:17:17]
Now, imagine that we wanted to fade out this kitchen, and we have this next to it that we can eye drop. As you look at it more closely, you’ll see this is an elevation view. This is the plan view. Now, the elevation view are just lines. These are literally just lines. Essentially, each one of these elements was placed with sort of some space around it in a view, in an interior elevation, or an elevation was produced of that view, and the linework was copied and pasted in here. So, basically, it allows you to see what this is going to be. It’s a double-door base cabinet. It’s a little corner cabinet, etc. [1:18:06]
This is another corner cabinet, so we can see what they are. If I wanted to place this into the element, right now, this is active, and I can select these things. I could copy and paste it, but let’s just go back to this kitchen. We’ll flip back to the reference, and now I’m working on the kitchen. Let’s get rid of this cabinet here, and I’m going to eye drop this one and paste it in. [1:18:34]
So, obviously, I’ll want to pull this back here to fit in whatever needs to be, but this allows us to very quickly say – let’s say we were putting in more stuff under the window. I don’t know if it makes sense, but maybe the window was higher, and so we go and pick, eye drop this one here, pop it in there, eye drop something else here. You don’t eye drop it here. You eye drop it here, and again, it’s not the right design for this area, but you can see how very quickly we can have the frequently-used cabinets. [1:19:18]
Now, cabinets will be different for each design, but you may have your preferred ones. You may have your modern ones and your traditional ones that are sort of a good base level, so you set them up the way that you prefer, and then you can instantly just get access. So, this is an Interactive Legend maintained in a worksheet. These are objects that have 3D information, but they’re placed in a worksheet because worksheets allow objects showing their view here in that worksheet. [1:20:01]
Now, if I’m in a worksheet – if I switch back to this, you notice that these purely 3D tools here are grey. I cannot place walls, doors, beams, slabs, etc. in a worksheet. So, here we have objects. Objects are OK, and here are all the 2D things, but none of the pure 3D elements can be placed or exist, frankly, in a worksheet. [1:20:29]
Now, I’m going to show you a little magic trick. See, nothing up my sleeves. No, I don’t think so. Alright, so what’s the magic trick? I’m going to show you an Interactive Legend worksheet. We’ll go to Interactive Legend worksheet, and now what are we looking at? This may look familiar from my demonstrations. This is the kit of parts that we have access to, and yet this is a worksheet. So, as I told you, you cannot put 3D elements in a worksheet, and yet, here are walls and windows and doors here in the worksheet. [1:21:20]
So, if you haven’t heard my explanation before, you may go, “How is that possible?” The answer is that it’s not possible except I’m fooling you because I have a trace & reference of the legend. So, if I turn off the trace & reference, it disappears. So, there’s nothing in this worksheet. It’s empty, but I have a trace & reference of a particular view. Now, remember when I was moving around and saying, “Let’s just zoom out and show all the layers, and let’s go find that kit of parts”? That was basically put off to the side, and I had a view that if I double-click on that view here, I’m going to go to the Legends plan, to go this view. [1:22:19]
In a moment, you’ll see it come up, and this is on the ground floor, and I can select elements. If I just zoom in, and so, for example, here’s a wall, and I can select it. Here’s some walls that are insulated or non-insulated versions of the exterior walls. I can select them, copy them. I can eye drop them, but let’s go to the worksheet here. Same thing, and I’ll zoom in on it, try to select it. It says, “This element is inactive in this view.” Why? Because it’s not really there. It’s a trace. It’s a reference to the other view. [1:23:07]
Now, you may be used to using Trace & Reference with a single color, like a grey or a red that’s faded a little bit. That’s a very common thing. That’s controlled in the Trace & Reference Palette by the Reference Color choice. Now, if I say to make it a uniform color, you’ll see that all of these are red like this. I can go and make them fainter like that. I can go and make other choices like this. I can, of course, make it different colors – blue here. Whatever you find useful. [1:23:44]
Now, I chose to make them the original color and to make them full intensity rather than faded here. So, this allows it to look just like in the real world on the plan. Now, I can eye drop from here. So, I can go and eye drop this, and it’s going to switch to the Wall tool. Now, the Wall tool is inactive. I can’t draw walls here, but I can pick up the settings of this type of wall. [1:24:17]
So now, if I’m on the floor plan, and instead of being in this legend area – let me go back to the canvas and the interior design one here, and let’s just turn off the legend that was the kitchen cabinets, and I just picked an interior wall type. I’m just going to draw. These are a couple of walls. Now, I’m going to go back to the Interactive Legend here, and I’ll go and pick a different wall type. [1:24:50]
So, I’ll pick this exterior wall one, and I’ll go back to the floor plan, and I’ll just do this here. So, I’m basically able to go back and forth and pick up different settings. This Interactive Legend can be maintained in a tab, and of course, you notice that when I jump back to it, I’m still zoomed in on a particular area? Well, that’s one of the really nice things is that I can have a huge array of components, but I’m just zoomed in on the ones that are of most use right now – picking out wall types, picking out kitchen elements, picking out any group that is set up there. [1:25:40]
OK, so Scott asks a question. “Going to 3D while on that 3D legend plan view will display the entire sheet of 3D elements, correct?” Now, let’s take a look. I’ll just go back now to the view. So, this is the real building with a few extra elements added. We’ll delete those, and I’ll back to the legend 3D all. So, this is the layer combination that turns on the legend. So, it basically makes it available for viewing, and so this is on the floor plan, and it actually zooms into a save view. If I go to the settings, it is a zoomed area that was saved here. So, quickly just jumps to that area. [1:26:31]
Now, if I go and do a marquee around here and go to 3D, we can see the entire kit of parts. It takes about 10 seconds to generate because it’s got a lot of stuff in it, and here are all the parts. So, here are all the walls – all the different wall types. Here’s some finish floor examples. All of these things – here are the room groupings. Here’s the quick dining, quick kitchen. All of these things here, so this is what I was showing earlier. [1:27:19]
Now, I do have saved in MasterTemplate for convenience some views of these areas, and this is something that you may want to do in your own template, and that is if I go to Legends, 3D Views, and I say Quick Kitchen View, you’ll recognize that. I had that earlier. Let’s look at 3D commercial rooms, so what are these? These are 3D views of cutaways. Remember, I was doing a little marquee around something and say let’s go to 3D. All I did was take a marquee of this area, take a view, move it around till I had it the way I wanted, and then say to save current views. [1:28:06]
So, I just use Save Current View here and gave it a name – custom name here, 3D Commercial Rooms, etc., and I put it into this folder of 3D Views. Now, this is a great way to have your kit of parts off to the side, quickly jump to look at things, and I can go and eye drop right here. I can eye drop that dining table round. I can eye drop this rug or carpet, etc. [1:28:39]
So, all of these things are available. So, let’s see. OK, and Scott says, “I know you will cover the assembling of your own office favorites.” OK, so now we’re ready to actually look at Interactive Legends as a hotlink module. Now, we’re at the hour and a half mark, so I’m just wondering whether – you know what? I think we’ve gone 90 minutes. Hotlink modules are a subject that has many applications, and I think I’d rather push that back into the next session, when I can demonstrate many different variations, because otherwise it’ll either take the session to be way too long, or I’ll be cutting it short in the middle. [1:29:32]
So, let me just take some final questions and see where we’re at in my notes. I think this is probably a good stopping point. So, we did look at the worksheets here. I didn’t do the remote story, so let me just give a very quick example of that, and then we’re going to save some more of this into the next session. I did demonstrate some of the worksheets for different uses here, like the section worksheet that is in Interactive Legend and the kitchen worksheet – the kitchen objects. [1:30:14]
So, let’s look at just that remote one because that one actually would be good to do. So, I’ll use that kitchen one as an example, and we’ll just set that up. So, this kitchen and bath cabinets – if I go in here, and we just copy. I’ll just go in with the Marquee tool, say Copy. Alright, now I’m going to go to the foundation of the building here. Alright, so foundation. You can see here’s the foundation plan. [1:30:50]
I’m going to create an extra story, and we’ll say Story Settings. I’d like to insert a story below, and we’ll call this Legends, so we can call it whatever we want. Give it whatever height you want, but it should be far enough away that any elements that are inside it will not go up as far as the real elements in the foundation. [1:31:20]
So, we’re going to go and say -20 feet or something like that – take it down further here. Now, when I created it, I actually have a blank workspace, and I can go paste. Remember, I copied the kitchen legends, and I’ll say just keep them in the current view here. So, what do we have here? Again, this is a 3D cabinet. This is just linework, just individual lines there. Now, if I select all of these with the Arrow tool or with the Marquee tool and go to 3D, we’re going to see here are what we’ve got. [1:32:12]
So, this is a variation where we’ve got elements that of course could be walls, could be 3D of all sorts of types on a remote story that is not part of your project there – a reference set of elements. Now, if I go back to the plan here, I’m looking at the real design, and I go right-click on this and say Show as Trace Reference. Now, I probably should move that over in terms of where it is, so it’s not blocking it. So, I’m just going to go down to this and say to move this over, but I could have moved the reference here if I wanted. [1:32:57]
Let me just – but I think in this case, it probably makes more sense to move it over. Now, you can see that it’s actually showing a reference of something else. I can turn off the reference and say, “OK, these are the real elements here,” and now let me go to the first floor and say to go ahead and show that reference. Now, they’re off to the side. So, at this point, I could do the same thing I was doing earlier and say, “Oh, I need another one of this type of cabinet.” So, I’ll eye drop it down from here, or whatever corner you would pick is what it’s going to use. [1:33:36]
So, this is the back right corner, and that’s what I would want for this particular object. Then, of course, I can drag it around. One shortcut I’m using right now that not everyone remembers or takes advantage of is that you can choose to place in objects based on a numeric setting for their angle. In other words, this is 0, and I click, and it just drops it in. You can see how the backsplash is up in this orientation, and I could manually go and change this 180, but I can also use this option here, where on the fly, as I click, I can rotate this into whatever angle it needs to be. [1:34:22]
So, this is a great setting for objects as you place them in. So, you can rotate them right while you’re placing them. So, again, I have a legend that’s on a remote story. I can turn it off and on instantly. We can have multiple stories available, if you really wanted to go further with that concept. So, this is a way that we can actually do it, even with walls and other 3D elements that you can eye drop. [1:34:54]
Now, one of the issues here is that if I go and let’s just do a marquee like this to show – if I go to 3D, we’re going to see that here’s the building. Let me go to my layer combinations, say to give me the full model of the building here. Alright, so here’s our real building, and of course, these things are on a remote story, and they’re not part of the building. They’re just referenced elements, so how do you avoid showing this stuff? [1:35:28]
Well, I can have 3D views that have saved settings, and one of the saved settings that I can do is under the View menu, Elements in 3D View, Filter and Cut Elements in 3D. This allows me to restrict my view to potentially limited stories – for example, from foundation up to the top plate, so anything that is on these stories, and it will ignore the stuff on the Legends. So, this is an option. When I say OK, these things just disappear, and now let’s say I like this view. [1:36:05]
I can say to save the view, and we’ll call this just Building Only, and right now it’s gone into a folder that’s sort of odd, but basically by double-clicking on this, I’m going to see this particular view with these layers and a restriction that says to turn off the extra story. So, by filtering it that way, we can control it. Let’s look at a similar thing for an elevation. [1:36:42]
So, we’re going to do, let’s say, an elevation. Let’s see, probably in the east elevation here, and we’re not seeing anything down below there – at least not apparently. These may be restricted. So, another thing about an elevation is that you can go and restrict their views. So, when you do an elevation, you can say that you only want to look so far, but let’s go to the elevation settings here. [1:37:20]
Let’s see. This is here, so I want to go – I think this one. Yes, so this one would be looking through the building. The kitchen would be on the other side of the building here, and if I change the elevation settings to have an infinite horizontal range, you can see some other stuff coming in. That’s actually the terrain here, and if we also go to the elevation settings and say that the vertical range is limited, this is what we actually might prefer. Let’s say it was infinite here. We didn’t do that. [1:38:02]
Now, we’re going to see these elements down here. So, by making it infinite, I have a problem. By having the elevation settings show limited and choosing something sensible like -2 feet is where I think it was set. It’s going to cut that off and now show anything on that lower story here. You can also potentially say that the horizontal range only goes from the starting point up to a certain distance and doesn’t show anything beyond that. That can be useful. [1:38:38]
So, this is the way that you would restrict it for not including those elements, if they were on a negative story is restricting the vertical range, and so for those of you who have ARCHICAD Solo and can’t do hotlinked modules for MasterTemplate, the workaround for things is to put the MasterTemplate elements on a negative story and restrict your elevations and sections to not go down as far as that negative story. You still have access to all those components. They’re just going to be hidden from view by that filter, the view elements in 3D view, filter and cut elements in 3D, and when you have that set the way you want, either that’s for the 3D views or the elevation or section settings for each of those markers. [1:39:35]
Once you have that set, then that’s what you’re going to be using for your particular elevation sections or 3D views. OK, so Ken says, “Yes, next session for hotlinked modules, and thanks for controlling length of the section.” Those were 10 minutes ago when I said I was going to finish, so I did add one more thing there, and hopefully that’s a good ending point. We will go into hotlinked modules next time, so any final questions or comments? [1:40:09]
Let me know, and I’ll take a sip. Andrej, “No more questions.” OK, the defense rests. Little joke there about if this was a courtroom. In this case, the teacher rests. Taren, “Thank you Eric. See you all later.” Chris says, “Thanks Eric. Bye for now.” Alright, so be back next Monday with the next session, and I guess I’ll continue on with Interactive Legends as another way that you can save your settings and hotlinked modules. Hotlinked modules can be used for a lot of different things. I will cover that more in another session for design purposes, but we’ll cover it, in this case, for saving the groups of elements for the legends. [1:41:20]
Alright, and then tomorrow, if you’d like to get some additional help on your personal questions, join me for the ARCHICAD coaching program calls. Send me a file if you have a question that would be easier to explain or demonstrate in the context of your work, and we’ll apply the theory in practice. Thank you all for joining me. I’ll be back soon with more. [1:41:47]
ARCHICAD Training Lesson Index by Julie Caliri