Here is a most ancient and despised bug in Archicad's wall cleanup behavior. In most cases, if two surface edges meet whose materials are the same, the line between the surfaces is eliminated. Where three walls meet, two of the walls will often form a corner, which results in a 'strong' line that will not be removed despite the matching
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Intersection priorities help the user control interactions between certain elements. Wall and beam elements have their own intersection priority; I'm calling that the element priority. Composite skins (and components of custom profiles) have their own intersection priorities. Those are skin priorities. Neither of these should be confused with the intersection group number property of layers, though that bears on intersections
Since I've needed a silo top object one time in ten years, there's a chance that among a group of people larger than just me someone will need a silo top object at least one time in the next ten. Download (AC11)
The 3D printing consultant was fine with our 3D DXF until he got to the grade mesh. He requested that we send him an STL file, which we did not know what was. It is a 3D Stereolithography file and it's common in 3D apps. Archicad doesn't support it for export. We tracked down an open-source app called MeshLab which
I added an option for an elliptical curve. Original and download link here.
On, well, land. Site model roundup.
The Working Units and Levels preferences offer two reference levels in addition to project zero. It is common to set one of these levels to sea level. (We don't use the other one for anything at this time.) With sea level set correctly, you can build your site model mesh using sea level topo data. Level dimension texts have autotext
Perhaps this site is a little graybearded to be discussing basic tools, but so it goes. I want to talk about site modeling, which is 90% mesh management, and I thought it better to break out the basics. Though site topics tend to intrude. Because the mesh tool is unchanged (+/-) since Archicad 6.5, we can also 'wish' for 'improvements'.
You know the one I mean. Three walls meet at a point, and the inline ones are different thicknesses. The corner formed with the inner wall simply must be expressed. We've had this one for-[stupid]-ever. HCTPBWIW
Location: 06 Wood & Plastic A sloped series of boards to support a flying rafter. This thing is hard to show in place; here's a section through the eave of a dormer, showing the dormer wall in elevation: The Roof Slope can be selected from a familiar list of n/12 slopes, or you can use a custom angle. You can
Location: 06 Wood & Plastic / Trim & Moulding A series of battens for board and batten siding. There are parameters for Width, Thickness, and Spacing. For a single batten, set the spacing to zero. In order that you can do a whole wall with one Battens object, you can have up to eight Holes in the batten arrangement. Turn
Location: 01 General / Drawing Tools System requirements: Accessories add-on in Add-ons folder An accessory as a special object that can be associated with another element. When you edit the element, the accessories edit themselves to keep up. This kind of automatic geometry is rare in Archicad, and welcome. Yet the accessories live in the limbo of semi-features known as
Slabs are easy. With the polygon editing palette, irregular slabs are easy. For complex section geometry such as a corrugated sheet, you need an object. But such an object is usually rectangular. There is no polygon editing for object elements. It is difficult to code even pseudo-polygon editing into an object, and still the palette wouldn't be available. More
Location: 08b Windows / Vents (A window) Frame thickness refers to the box around the louvers. Louver parameters: Thickness, Spacing, Angle. The Louver Pen should be thin. Exterior casing: Typical moulding options, or custom width and thickness. Interior casing: Same deal. Either casing can be turned off. The same Casing Reveal is used for both. Masonry Cut Depth: Same as
Most of the advice about sections and elevations applies to interior elevations as well. We do interior elevations because the larger scale lets us show more information. Some of this information is already in the model and the scale change reveals it. Some of it is fine modeling that doesn't need to be done until you start the interiors.
Location: 08b Windows / Vents (A window) Roof slope / slope angle: The familiar roof slope picker; similar to Rafters Decorative, Curved Roof, etc. The width and height of the vent are both tied to the slope. If you change either one, the other is adjusted to maintain the slope. Frame thickness refers to the box around the louvers. Mullion
Location: 11 Equipment A rather vague but configuration-complete washer and/or dryer. Stack: If on, the dryer sits on the washer... ...otherwise, they are side by side. Front load washer: If on, there's a porthole in the front, otherwise, a lid on top. Automatically on if stacked. You can set the glass material. Top control panel: The 'fin' along the back
Pen 50 is the poché pen. It is gray (80% +/- I think) in model and layout pen sets. It should be the background color of any cut fill in new construction. (Existing condition elements are white.) That said, one of the advantages of pen sets is having black+grayscale output while the much more colorful model pens help you stay
Location: 04 Masonry / Chimney & Fireplace The chimney proper is built from walls and slabs. At the top things tend to get weird, with a lot of zigging back and forth. This object should help with that, as well taking care of ending the flues. Executive summary: Build up a stack of up to eight stages of masonry. The
In our true masonry fireplaces, the hearth support is usually a cantilevered concrete slab. The hearth itself is a separate slab with its top at the level of the finish floor, usually 3/4" above story zero. This finish slab may vary in thickness, and will often be thicker than the typical finish floor. You want to see this slab in