topic Re: Assigning elements to be "demolished" in Modeling

Assigning elements to be "demolished"

Anonymous — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 18:46:36 GMT

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled onto something that allowed me to change a portion of a wall to display as demolished (I think I may have just used the "split" tool). Now that I need to change modeled elements to be demolished on a real project, I can't find anything in tools or Help that explains this.

It just occurs to me that I may have been using AC-8 when I did the "demolish" thing, and now I'm using AC-9.

What does anyone know about this?
Thanks

Re: Assigning elements to be "demolished"

David Maudlin — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 14:55:44 GMT

Jim wrote:
A couple of weeks ago I stumbled onto something that allowed me to change a portion of a wall to display as demolished (I think I may have just used the "split" tool). Now that I need to change modeled elements to be demolished on a real project, I can't find anything in tools or Help that explains this.

It just occurs to me that I may have been using AC-8 when I did the "demolish" thing, and now I'm using AC-9.

What does anyone know about this?
Thanks

Jim:

I don't know of a tool or single function for changing elements to demolished, what you want to accomplish depends to some degree on your office graphic standards. What I do is split the element if necessary (Edit>Split), change the line type from solid to dashed and the layer assignment from its current layer to Demolition (your layer names might be different). Then use your Layer Combinations to control the visibility of the Demolition layer for different view sets.

HTH

David

Re: Assigning elements to be "demolished"

gpowless — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 15:26:18 GMT

What I have had good success at is to split the wall (or element) to be demolished and explode the wall into line elements. Then I select all lines and change them to a special "To Be Removed" line type. Windows, doors and cabinets can be treated in the same way except with windoes and doors you will need to remember to delete the wall opening left over.

Re: Assigning elements to be "demolished"

Bruce — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 01:14:22 GMT

gpowless wrote:
What I have had good success at is to split the wall (or element) to be demolished and explode the wall into line elements. Then I select all lines and change them to a special "To Be Removed" line type.

This helps with wall intersections etc. If you leave the To Be Removed as 3d elements then you have to get your intersection priorities sorted too.

Re: Assigning elements to be "demolished"

gpowless — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 03:41:55 GMT

The problem with leaving the walls as 3d is two fold (no pun intended).

1. The walls show up in 3d interior rendering or you end up having to chase around that "intersection priorty" (trying to sort out layer numbers) if you place the walls on a hidden layer.

2. When the new walls are placed we end up with the "wall on wall" problem that does funky things to doors and windows or when you croos an old wall with a new one you get an unwanted intersection.

If the drawings can be clear enough, I do not often present a separate demolition drawing and prefer to have my demo lines on the CDs. The builders find it helps them better than trying to jump from page to page to figure what goes, what stays and what is rebuilt.

My technique also works well with enlarging windows. The smaller windows show as hidden lines and the new window does not conflict with the old one (since there is no way to put the window on a separate layer from the existing walls. It also works well with any other elements such as roofs and slabs, or cabinets. In the truest sense of the word this is accurate since demolished walls are actually demolished.

Re: Assigning elements to be "demolished"

Anonymous — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 17:52:48 GMT

Thank you to each who responded to this topic, you gave me good ways of handling demo work.

I have to confess my mistake, though. My partner reminded me that I had also been trying out Revit at the time I thought I had found an automatic demolition tool, and it turns out that this tool is in Revit, not ArchiCAD. It is a very cool little thing. Perhaps it will show up on ArchiCAD version 10.

Thanks again.

Re: Assigning elements to be "demolished"

TomWaltz — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 18:26:16 GMT

Jim wrote:
Thank you to each who responded to this topic, you gave me good ways of handling demo work.

I have to confess my mistake, though. My partner reminded me that I had also been trying out Revit at the time I thought I had found an automatic demolition tool, and it turns out that this tool is in Revit, not ArchiCAD. It is a very cool little thing. Perhaps it will show up on ArchiCAD version 10.

Thanks again.

Revit has a demo tool? Tres cool! I'll have to check that out...

Re: Assigning elements to be "demolished"

Bruce — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 18:51:05 GMT

Revit has a lot of cool things that ArchiCAD could benefit from looking at.

One in particular is its stairmaker - so much more intuitive and suitable for an architecture package.

Re: Assigning elements to be "demolished"

TomWaltz — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 14:00:06 GMT

Bruce wrote:
One in particular is its stairmaker - so much more intuitive and suitable for an architecture package.

Every once in a while I have to re-state this: I REALLY hate Archicad's Stairmaker... so much so that I'm starting to tinker around with my own... (I'm not a fan of Archistair or the GS Library stairs either)

Re: Assigning elements to be "demolished"

Bruce — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 18:55:53 GMT

In Revit, you just click whichever level you want the stairs to run to (from a combo box) and voila! Done. If you want to extend the rail along a path - say a balcony - then draw a line and boom - she's there. No trying to match a railing library part to the stairmaker railing (which for some reason don't seem to be the same), or stacking stairs on top of each other - one part does the whole thing.

That being said - stay posted on Cadimage's Stairmaker when AC10 comes out. I just trialled their old one and it seems pretty good, and I have it on good authority that they're making major changes.

Re: Assigning elements to be "demolished"

Anonymous — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 21:44:11 GMT

gpowless wrote:
The problem with leaving the walls as 3d is two fold (no pun intended).

Just wondering, if you explode the demo walls & windows, what do you do if you find out that the owner doesn't want to demo that much and actually wants to keep some of the walls WITH windows and doors. Do you just go back and re-insert them?

We've always left them in 3d with different intersection priorities, but this exploding sounds great, if it really is feasible in case of demo extent changes (though we haven't really had that many cases such as the one above).

Re: Assigning elements to be "demolished"

gpowless — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 01:04:59 GMT

If the owner wants to revert some of the wall, it isn't too difficult to redraw, stretch or extend the wall back. Of course there are always some things to change but in my view, this is the path of least resistance.

Re: Assigning elements to be "demolished"

David Maudlin — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 13:52:51 GMT

Sergio wrote:
Just wondering, if you explode the demo walls & windows, what do you do if you find out that the owner doesn't want to demo that much and actually wants to keep some of the walls WITH windows and doors. Do you just go back and re-insert them?

We've always left them in 3d with different intersection priorities, but this exploding sounds great, if it really is feasible in case of demo extent changes (though we haven't really had that many cases such as the one above).

Sergio:

I work as you do, and generally leave the elements as 3D (no exploding), and the intersection priorities are part of my template. There are some exceptions: to remove an existing window from an existing wall I will:
1. Set the window symbol line type to dashed
2. Explode the window
3. Delete the remaining 3D wallhole
4. In plan, cover the opening with a fill that represents new construction and bring to front
5. Select the lines of the exploded window (they are already grouped) and change them to my "Demolition" layer.

One advantage of not exploding walls is they will continue to cleanup (either as existing to remain or demo) as more walls are changed from one to the other as the project progresses. Once exploded, the automatic clean up is lost.

In any case, I always keep a pln file of the existing building so I can copy & paste between two running ArchiCADs if any elements need to be restored.

HTH

David