topic Re: Best way to create resuable note blocks in Libraries & objects

Best way to create resuable note blocks

Anonymous — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 14:34:14 GMT

Good evening

We use many generic note blocks to be placed on different sheets in our drawings

We can of course create GDL objects for each of the note blocks but on occasion we need to change the contents of the notes. While we can explode the object it then reduces it down to single lines of text which is less than ideal

We are looking for suggestions on how best to do this

Many thanks

Eric

Re: Best way to create resuable note blocks

Dave Seabury — Thu, 21 Dec 2017 16:02:23 GMT

Eric

I think you, I and a host of others wished there was a better way to
handle notes inside of archicad. Our work around is to have a worksheet
(or separate pln) with the notes ie wall 1 wall 2 wall 3 etc. When a note
needs to be updated we open the note gdl, delete the existing 2d script,
copy and past the edited script and reload the library.

Kind of a pain, but it works.

David

Re: Best way to create resuable note blocks

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Dec 2017 20:43:08 GMT

Thanks for your comments.

I have also tried creating mod files but it appears you can't bring them in into a Layout so you either have to bring it into a story then scale it down to suit

It seems overly labour intensive for something relatively simple. I have been using Vectorworks of late and it can be achieved quite simple. It wouldn't be so bad if when exploding an object it turned all text into single lines of text

Re: Best way to create resuable note blocks

Lingwisyer — Fri, 22 Dec 2017 04:53:49 GMT

Can you define relative positions in GDL in reference to the bounding box of text? Haven't come across this in GDL yet in my short experience, but I've seen similar things done in LUA. If so, it should be relatively easy to script a set of filled boxes that size to a text parameter.

Ling.

Re: Best way to create resuable note blocks

DGSketcher — Fri, 22 Dec 2017 12:21:42 GMT

Confused why you need to use GDL?

By the sounds of it you have things pretty well organised, so why not just create a template with text on separate worksheets for each block you might want to drop on a layout?

Another option which may not be relevant, but you could create layout templates for the different types of content if you have a limited number of consistent layout arrangements.

The challenge is always to find the most efficient compromise between what we hope is a constant and what needs to become bespoke...

Re: Best way to create resuable note blocks

Anonymous — Sun, 24 Dec 2017 00:03:20 GMT

The reason for going to a library part type arrangement is because not all note block will be used on all jobs. There are notes specific to materials used or construction types so we would end up with a pile of unnecessary blocks floating around on the sheets which people will forget to remove (rather than just adding the ones they want)

And then on some occasions there may be the need to explode the item out and remove certain parts of the note as they are not applicable to the current job.

Unfortunately both AutoCAD and Vectorworks seems to deal with this a little better and as mentioned if Archicad didn't create single lines of text when the GDL items are exploded then there wouldn't really be an issue

Re: Best way to create resuable note blocks

Richard Morrison — Sun, 24 Dec 2017 07:00:53 GMT

I find that PDF's work pretty well, and are easily updated in Word. After the PDF is placed, open the note in Word, edit, save again as PDF to same file name, and it's done.