topic How do I create a single material/layer/layout database? in Project data & BIM

How do I create a single material/layer/layout database?

Anonymous — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 21:35:43 GMT

So I have been using ArchiCAD 11 for a bit over a year and have recently upgraded to 13.

I love the program, but I have pretty much taught myself what I know and have always worked alone. As I am trying to up-the-ante a bit with my solo practice, I'm running into some firewalls in the form of bad habits I developed and/or thinks I should have learned but instead faked my way around in order to get up and running in the first place.

Chief among my current issues is trying to unify all of my files. With the crap economy, I've mainly been been doing speculative and competition-type work which involved a lot of rendering. I've been very happy with where I've come with the rendering, but now I'm actually getting commissions (thanks in large part to decent images) and need to document.

What I'm finding is that every single project has been modified to the point where no project is alike. I have tweaked various materials and settings in each file such that there is no uniformity to speak of. As I am trying to put together a series of projects for a single client, I need to unify the settings on the files. To date, I've been doing a 'save as' and then copying and pasting entire projects into my 'master' file, but this seems like a silly work-around. I'm hoping that there might be away to save all of the settings in a single file, for example, as some sort of master which can be loaded instead. I need to unify the following:

1.) Material settings.
2.) Layer settings.
3.) Layout book (still struggling with this in general).

With the material settings, the big question is whether I can edit the settings for a particular material and/or create a new material in one file and have it show up in another.

ANY HELP IS GREATLY APPRECIATED!!!

Re: How do I create a single material/layer/layout database?

Erika Epstein — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:50:33 GMT

Try using the Attribute Manager. This will allow you to add by appending the custom materials and other attributes from the other files.
If they have the same name as one already in the file archicad will add (1), (2) etc to them so they are all separate materials and you can rename them as you wish.

in the long term, when you want to customize a material for a project, copy one that is close to what you want rather than mess up the out of the box materials (and other attributes).

Have a template file that you then add to it all the customized materials and other attributes.

HTH

Re: How do I create a single material/layer/layout database?

Laszlo Nagy — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:45:13 GMT

About the Layout Book issue:
You can open the Project Structure of another Project in the Navigator and drag-and-drop Master Layouts and Layouts or whole folders from the other Project into the current one. But note that Drawings placed on those Layouts will point to the other file as their source of reference so you may want tot delete those Drawings from the Layouts.