On Land

Environment Information
At Rill Architects we run ArchiCAD on macOS. If you work at Rill, this is your stuff. If you don't, but you work in ArchiCAD, you may find something interesting. Anybody else, I don't know.
RSS
March 2007 Archive
Rectangle Profile
Pretty tricky
This is so trivial/obvious that I hesitate to point it out.

You can't rotate a conventional beam element about the long axis. (Why? Dunno.) But you can rotate profile beams. So you just need a rectangular profile.

But if it's so obvious, why isn't there such a profile in the default templates, among the faux-proof-of-concept distorted steel shapes? And why wasn't there one in our templates until yesterday? Dunno that either.

# Michel Rojkind...

profile at Apple.com. Michel is the architect of, among numerous good works, the house pictured on the AC10 splash screen. Which is built, yes, and IIRC was done in 6.5, so take that. (h/t DNC)

-James 2007-03-19-1315

Rafter Ends
Rafter Ends
Location: 06 Wood & Plastic

Further improvement on this. The 9 library is clinging to life at this point.

More»

Diamond Vent
Location: 08a Windows / Vents

A diamond-shaped louvered gable vent.

It is designed with the assumption that will have the shape of the diamond follow the roof slope in most cases. Like many roof-oriented objects, you can choose the Roof Slope from a list or enter a custom value in Slope Angle. When you change either the height or width, the other dimension will adjust automatically to maintain the angle and thereby the proportions of the shape.

I think the rest of the parameters are self-explaining: Louver Thickness, Spacing, Angle, and Pen; Exterior and Interior Casing Width, Thickness, and Material.

The vent handles a masonry condition by setting itself into the wall by the sill dimension. (Use the 'second' Construction Method button.) The sill is drawn with the Masonry Sill Pen.

Vent MO in plan
LCF Folder
Archicad 10 offers a new all-in-one library file format, the Library Container File or LCF. In Archicad 9, you could use a PLA archive file as a library. LCFs are pure library stuff, with no model space or attributes.

It is allegedly faster to load the libraries as a single large file than from folders full of folders full of individual objects. But I must say in my informal testing I haven't observed a dramatic difference among loading library folders, PLAs, and LCFs.

In addition, there's at least one characteristic of LCFs (and archives) that is disadvantageous. You can't save objects into them. So no new objects and no editing. (You could view this as an advantage from a standards point of view; nobody can mess anything up.)

In other words I considered using an LCF for the Rill & Decker Standard LIB but decided against it. There's no change in everyday library management.

But! There's a huge advantage to the LCF in one specific case: Copying libraries to a flash drive to take them home. The R&D library is about 15MB. Copying its 1300 or so items to a USB 2.0 drive takes over two minutes. Copying the same library as a 15MB LCF takes, drum roll, three seconds.

It also takes the guesswork or other syncing strategies out of keeping your home copy of the library up to date. Just bring the LCF home and overwrite the old file.

So I'm providing the library as an LCF for this purpose. The file lives at 2 Libraries / Library Container Files. I will do my best to update it when anything important changes. This is pretty often, so make sure you check it regularly.

You still need to manage project libraries manually.