topic Re: ArchiCAD - Plotmaker tip ? in Modeling

ArchiCAD - Plotmaker tip ?

Anonymous — Fri, 16 Apr 2004 07:22:16 GMT

To avoid having to close a project in ArchiCAD while I verify that Plotmaker is functioning properly and picking up changes ...

With both ArchiCAD and Plotmaker running. I've found that if I do a forced SAVE while still in ArchiCAD, and do an update in Plotmaker, it picks up the changes, and it's back to work in AC.

Now if only Graphisoft would just combine the two programs into one to avoid the merry-go-round entirely .....

Happy summer

Naftali

Re: ArchiCAD - Plotmaker tip ?

Link — Fri, 16 Apr 2004 14:46:35 GMT

Something tells me you're not kidding! 😉

This is how the two programs are designed to function together. In fact if you have the ArchiCAD project open while trying to update the linked PlotMaker layout book, PM will present you with a warning and a last chance to do a hard save so that it picks up the very latest changes. As soon as you do this hard save, the hotlinks in PM's Drawing usage will instantly change from 'OK' to 'modified'. (And with build 2256 you aren't able to update just one view, without the rest updating )

The combining/keeping them separate debate has been discussed time and again! I still like having them separate myself - especially given the size of the new layout books!

Cheers,
Link.

Re: ArchiCAD - Plotmaker tip ?

Anonymous — Fri, 16 Apr 2004 20:09:27 GMT

Link wrote:
The combining/keeping them separate debate has been discussed time and again! I still like having them separate myself - especially given the size of the new layout books!

Cheers,
Link.

I agree. I don't want to be burdened with having to open a huge layout book when I'm only working on the model. And then there are the projects with multiple interrelated ArchiCAD project files and PlotMaker layout books. The more I think of it, the more the idea of combining them seems a nightmare.

Re: ArchiCAD - Plotmaker tip ?

Anonymous — Sat, 17 Apr 2004 01:26:33 GMT

I'm going to weigh in on this one. I agree on keeping plotmaker and archicad separate if for no other reason than plotmaker doesn't require a key to open and work on a file. There are several times that drawings need to be updated or just printed and these can be done from any station in the office.

Re: ArchiCAD - Plotmaker tip ?

Anonymous — Sat, 17 Apr 2004 11:56:35 GMT

Millard wrote:
I'm going to weigh in on this one. I agree on keeping plotmaker and archicad separate if for no other reason than plotmaker doesn't require a key to open and work on a file. There are several times that drawings need to be updated or just printed and these can be done from any station in the office.

Unless you need to update direct linked drawings. BGArchiCAD requires the key.

Re: ArchiCAD - Plotmaker tip ?

SeaGeoff — Sat, 17 Apr 2004 15:12:56 GMT

Matthew wrote:
Unless you need to update direct linked drawings. BGArchiCAD requires the key.

It would be quite the gift for GS to make BGAC free from the key. Even for solo users it would allow a retired workstation to serve as a print center.

This brings up something I had been thinking about. If PlotMaker tools and object technologies, specifically those relating to annotation, were improved as we all want them to be. Would it be reasonable in a team setting to do all the annotation in PM? I know it goes against the current grain of doing just about everything in AC, but it does provide some of the freedom that Matthew envisioned in his Multiple Plan Views concept. And it enables the fairly typical task of annotating many sheets consecutively without disturbing work on the model or interfering with an established Teamwork set up. Just a thought.

Re: ArchiCAD - Plotmaker tip ?

Anonymous — Sat, 17 Apr 2004 18:52:08 GMT

Link wrote:
Something tells me you're not kidding! 😉

This is how the two programs are designed to function together. In fact if you have the ArchiCAD project open while trying to update the linked PlotMaker layout book, PM will present you with a warning and a last chance to do a hard save so that it picks up the very latest changes. As soon as you do this hard save, the hotlinks in PM's Drawing usage will instantly change from 'OK' to 'modified'. (And with build 2256 you aren't able to update just one view, without the rest updating )

Cheers,
Link.

Far be it from me to argue with an AC guru, but if this is the way the two programs are designed to work together, shouldn't the WARNING be changed into a REMINDER to do a forced save ???

As it now stands, it sounded to me like this is the last thing Graphisoft wants you to do !!

Regards,

Naftali

Re: ArchiCAD - Plotmaker tip ?

Link — Sat, 17 Apr 2004 20:25:32 GMT

Far be it from me to argue with an AC guru, but if this is the way the two programs are designed to work together, shouldn't the WARNING be changed into a REMINDER to do a forced save ???

As it now stands, it sounded to me like this is the last thing Graphisoft wants you to do !!

Maybe a 'WARNING!' is Hungarian for a 'friendly reminder'?

This brings up something I had been thinking about. If PlotMaker tools and object technologies, specifically those relating to annotation, were improved as we all want them to be. Would it be reasonable in a team setting to do all the annotation in PM? I know it goes against the current grain of doing just about everything in AC, but it does provide some of the freedom that Matthew envisioned in his Multiple Plan Views concept. And it enables the fairly typical task of annotating many sheets consecutively without disturbing work on the model or interfering with an established Teamwork set up. Just a thought.

Hey Geoff - sorry I missed you at the Seattle user group meeting last week. I agree that PM's fuctionality needs to be updated to meet ArchiCAD's (and then some), but I prefer to keep all my master sheet layouts linked from ArchiCAD too, so I have the updateability across many layout books at once. With a sheet on each story it is great to make changes to them all in one project and have them update in all layout books. Having said that I think PM needs better layer management, so that we can switch between different layer combinations in drawings placed on our *master sheets*. That'd help solve a lot of the current limitations with PM IMHO.

Cheers,
Link.

Re: ArchiCAD - Plotmaker tip ?

SeaGeoff — Sun, 18 Apr 2004 16:07:58 GMT

Link wrote:
Hey Geoff - sorry I missed you at the Seattle user group meeting last week.

My apologies as well. I replaced my water main the previous weekend. Any daylight remaining after work that week was spent filling holes and repairing the yard. Next time for sure.

Re: ArchiCAD - Plotmaker tip ?

Karl Ottenstein — Sun, 18 Apr 2004 20:20:51 GMT

Geoff wrote:
It would be quite the gift for GS to make BGAC free from the key. Even for solo users it would allow a retired workstation to serve as a print center.

Hi Geoff,

PM doesn't require a key ... and so if the drawings have been updated in the LBK by someone with a key, then any workstation can be used to open that LBK in PM and print/publish/etc. Update on yours/save...then open/adjust positioning/etc and print on the retired machine.

Currently BGAC is basically the real AC, so making it keyless invites hackers to easily create free licenses ... but I can certainly see your wish for a "new" form of BGAC (basically it would be the guts of AC but with all user interface removed ... so that all it could do is update drawings). Would be handy.

Karl

Re: ArchiCAD - Plotmaker tip ?

SeaGeoff — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 02:03:56 GMT

Karl wrote:
I can certainly see your wish for a "new" form of BGAC (basically it would be the guts of AC but with all user interface removed ... so that all it could do is update drawings)

If GS were to go to the trouble they might as well just strip the ability to create or modify elements and quickviews, leaving the ability to navigate the model, take measurements, perform mark-ups, sign in to a Teamwork file, update PM. This would leave a view and mark-up app that would have no commercial value of it's own but would add significant value to AC itself. Throw in a few Teamwork improvements and just imagine the collaborative possibilities.

Re: ArchiCAD - Plotmaker tip ?

Djordje — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 17:34:06 GMT

Geoff wrote:
Karl wrote:
I can certainly see your wish for a "new" form of BGAC (basically it would be the guts of AC but with all user interface removed ... so that all it could do is update drawings)
If GS were to go to the trouble they might as well just strip the ability to create or modify elements and quickviews, leaving the ability to navigate the model, take measurements, perform mark-ups, sign in to a Teamwork file, update PM. This would leave a view and mark-up app that would have no commercial value of it's own but would add significant value to AC itself. Throw in a few Teamwork improvements and just imagine the collaborative possibilities.

Practically a viewer? Don't see what the PM link would do, because the point there is to change something, and update?

Long week already ...

Re: ArchiCAD - Plotmaker tip ?

tsturm — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 19:34:12 GMT

It took me four monthes of using AC 8.x to realize that BGAC was a second copy of AC.

While I had been using AC 6.5 on Mac in OS9, I had adjusted the version number of AC to get a second copy open on the same machine. I found this to be the only way to work on section elevations and detailling while not getting into the whole process of opening and closing of AC files just to do a copy and paste between two files. I realize this was not what GS would have liked, but I was still using the same license on the same machine.

When I found I could do the same with BGAC on Mac in OSX 10.3 I was really happy. .

I have often in the past used PM to layout work from other applications and so would not like to see it as part of AC and require the key to work.

I would really like the engineers to make the key commands be the same between AC and PM for a change. I cannot understand how dam hard this would be to orchastrate.

Re: ArchiCAD - Plotmaker tip ?

SeaGeoff — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 20:45:58 GMT

Djordje wrote:
Practically a viewer? Don't see what the PM link would do, because the point there is to change something, and update?

My thinking here is that if some effort is needed to create a key-free version of BGAC that it could be combined with another big wish of mine, a free AC viewer. They serve different purposes but perhaps the development resources could be shared.

Re: ArchiCAD - Plotmaker tip ?

Link — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 21:05:24 GMT

While I had been using AC 6.5 on Mac in OS9, I had adjusted the version number of AC to get a second copy open on the same machine. I found this to be the only way to work on section elevations and detailling while not getting into the whole process of opening and closing of AC files just to do a copy and paste between two files. I realize this was not what GS would have liked, but I was still using the same license on the same machine.

When I found I could do the same with BGAC on Mac in OSX 10.3 I was really happy. .

Of course they do! You do know that you can (and always have been able to) duplicate the ArchiCAD folder to run simultaneous copies of ArchiCAD? You don't strictly need to copy the *whole* folder, but it is often easier to. Heck you can make multiple copies if you really want to live life on the edge.

You're not the only one who wishes they would align PM & AC functionality either! How hard can it be? Can't they just copy and paste some of the code?

Cheers,
Link.

Re: ArchiCAD - Plotmaker tip ?

__archiben — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 21:41:19 GMT

Naftali wrote:
Now if only Graphisoft would just combine the two programs into one to avoid the merry-go-round entirely .....

Millard wrote:
I'm going to weigh in on this one. I agree on keeping plotmaker and archicad separate if for no other reason than plotmaker doesn't require a key to open and work on a file. There are several times that drawings need to be updated or just printed and these can be done from any station in the office.

ah. the great plotmaker/archiCAD shall they/shan't they debate!

i've been swinging backwards and forwards on this one for some time, however a discussion at the winter school back in january got me to thinking. as with most of my ideas(?), it's kinda half baked and not quite as well thought out as mr lohden et al. just never seem to have the time . . .

. . . but anyways:

i am in agreement with the worth of plotmaker as a standalone page layout programme, albeit with a lot of work still to be done on the usage and archiCAD consistency front. it would also be great, as geoff suggests, to be able to extend its capabilities to a viewer.

what i imagine is extended functionality of the navigator/viewset/publisher in archiCAD: it would become a document management facility saved as a module in the archiCAD file but shared by both archiCAD and plotmaker for the use of producing and tracking the documentation. the plotmaker book(s) would cache this data along with the drawing information, but write any changes back to the original module in the archiCAD file.

it would enable a rough outline of the document structure to be produced before even opening plotmaker.
plotmaker would use this information to construct the document and only be used itself for page layouting. it's own functions would extend to something akin to DTP combined with the information extraction of BGarchiCAD - geoff's viewer . . . ?
any changes then made to the management of the documents in plotmaker get saved back into the module and therefore updated for information in archiCAD.
it would keep track of versioning. how? don't know yet, but this versioning would be available to the person(s) working on the project in archiCAD.
it would solve the issue of whether individual views have been updated/are OK/are not yet read as opposed to the current all or nothing situation.
plotmaker could then be used on its own as a simple(?) DTP package, requiring the archiCAD file and relevant document management module to be present in order to gain it's full functionality.
more?

i don't know. as i said, i never have time to formulate these ideas into something as refined as matthew's grand plans, but it's there for you all to pull apart, discuss and put back together (should you wish) into something acceptable . . .

~/archiben

Re: ArchiCAD - Plotmaker tip ?

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 00:19:19 GMT

Ben,

My ears are burning. Thank you for the compliments, but remember that I have had many years to think about these things. Some of my ideas just require dusting off some old grey cells.

Your suggestions bring up one of those old ideas.

If you're curious, see my new wish at:
http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=12554#12554

Re: ArchiCAD - Plotmaker tip ?

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 15:01:40 GMT

Karl wrote:
Currently BGAC is basically the real AC, so making it keyless invites hackers to easily create free licenses ... but I can certainly see your wish for a "new" form of BGAC (basically it would be the guts of AC but with all user interface removed ... so that all it could do is update drawings). Would be handy.

Hardware locks are hardly the way to keep hackers from hacking software. From what I've seen they've had 7.0 and 8.0 hacked for some time, and they both of those versions had the hardware lock. I even used the hacked 7.0 version for evaluation purposes But I HAVE since purchased a fully licensed version so I'm all legal now (it WAS all it was cracked up to be - the full version).

But the keyless viewer, now that would be nice for the same reasons as already stated. Especially if you don't have a network key and you need to work temporarily on a computer which does not have the key (as happened to me not too long ago due to some other software acting up). Switching constantly becomes a... "slight" inconvenience.