!Restored: CALCULATION: What do you want to do, what info you need???

[Laszlo Nagy]

Hi Everyone,

I am currently looking into ways to make some modifications to the Calculation-related portions of the ArchiCAD Documentation so as to improve it. I would like to ask for your help. I'd like to get a firm reality on how ArchiCAD Users relate to this part of the program.
My question to you all is:
- Tell me things you want to do with the Calculate menu
- Tell me what kind of quantity take-offs, schedules, Bills of materials etc. you want to create and what pieces of information you want to appear on these.
- Tell me what kind of Zone Lists do you usually produce. How do you do them currently and what would be needed for you in order to be able to do them automatically using the Calculate menu's features?
- Tell me what difficulties you encountered in trying to accomplish these tasks
- Tell me what parts of the Calculation portion of ArchiCAD seems most mystical and hard-to-understand to you.
- Tell me how much do use utilize AC's built-in graphic templates, do you find them useful or would you need different ones. Can you create your own using data provided in AC Help?

Thanks in advance

[Anonymous]

Link wrote:
Live Update would be my number one wish right now (number one of many!! ). We need to have it placed as it's own 'view' in PlotMaker and be auto updateable, as with any view.

Thanks for asking Laszlo!

Cheers,
Link.

We utilize the calculate menu every day. While at ACUW others mentioned that they have had similar problems with Background ArchiCad and templates that utilize calculate menu lists.

I have had success in saving calculate menu lists in navigator and can get them to update with a little prodding. Lists are active in our templates and are also "update-able" in a plotmaker layout book...again, with a little prodding...

Our templates are heavy with lists, so it is really a big issue with us. The workaround involves anywhere from one to three hours of additional time with each project. In this line of work, 1 hour of unnecessary production time is brutal...

After a great sales pitch, I hate to beginning training sessions with, "oh, by the way...this program that is going to increase your production schedules...well, the main engine has this glitch and its going cost you time and money every day, but, here are two workarounds."

GS, Please....FIX THIS...This should not have to wait for the next major release..

[Anonymous]

Richard wrote:
GS, Please....FIX THIS...This should not have to wait for the next major release..

Wow...GS you rock! 8.1 R2C What service!

[Anonymous]

What I would like to do is create customized graphic templates using my logo and preferred font(s) in the header and then open these templates for further editing. At the moment I can only create such a template and edit it while AC remains open. Once I quite the session and restart it the files are no longer editable. I spent much time configuring one file to look exactly as I liked, and was hoping to use it as the basis for creating different templates with the same appearance.

[Geoff Briggs]

One of my big wishes for the I.S. was for the preview/edit window to become a palette that would reamin accessible along side other windows. After thinking about it and reading back through these posts I think a better appoach would be making the result of the I.S. set-up dialog box open idirectly in it's own drawing window. This would then be the Interactive Schedule, replacing both the current preview and placed graphic. Many advantages flow from this appoach:

WYSIWYG
Saved as view in Navigator, update settings as per S/E
Import into PM like any other view
Place additional graphics and text right into window
View/Edit multiple schedules simultaneously and keep open along side other views/windows

Thus the Interactive Schedule would be truly interactive. Make a change in plan and immediately check the schedule, or visa versa. With normal settings the schedule would always update upon opening or importing to PM or when the user switches to that window, but wouldn’t drain any processor cycles when closed or left alone in the background. Easy to understand and consistent with other views.

[Anonymous]

Geoff wrote:
Saved as view in Navigator, update settings as per S/E
Import into PM like any other view
Place additional graphics and text right into window
View/Edit multiple schedules simultaneously and keep open along side other views/windows

That sounds real good to me. Could I have something like that tomorrow? Working on multiple updating schedules and plans at once could very well top my wish list. Schedules and Reflected clg. plans are bogging me down right now.

[Erika Epstein]

A small thing, but I would like to be able to chose a zone stamp from the info box (& from the zone default settings box)
thanks

[David Shorter]

The calculation function has everything that anyone could ask for except one thing....
A graphincal interface.
It does not take a degree in brain surgery to set up a simple text output from the calculation engine (every one disagree with me???)
Whats missing is very simple .. a drag and drop method of compiling a graphical out put. I can't be beyond the programmers at graphisoft to create a list of fields next to a page, with first page headers, footers and body into which we can drag and drop the fields, both picture and text. Let face it you could do this with hypercard 20 years ago. It should even be possible to stop incorrect fields being dropped into the wrong area of the report. I don't understand what the problem is.....
Is it that the programmers think that they can't produce a perfect solution..... I'm sure that most users would welocome this option... MUCH better than the clunky way it works at the moment

[Anonymous]

David wrote:
The calculation function has everything that anyone could ask for except one thing....

!!
I guess if you see a complete set of tools for calculation you will change your mind.
Let me state some if find at least usefull

At the present state if you want to create calculation for tillings on the floor or wall you have to create a database entry that would say how many tiles per s.m needed and if you want put a price unit to calculate costs in the property script.
If you want to change tilling dimentions you have to create ANOTHER entry. If you want to put tiles from ANOTHER manufacturer ANOTHER one and so on. In the end you will need a vast amount of time to maintain such a database of propery scripts and database of materials.
This is goes for other material too.
IS is good but not Powerfull (it lacks the basic calculation features of any spreadsheet that has database access, because i.s i just that.)

In its current state AC doesnt help a lot in calculation of materials and costs. You can calculate surfaces, volumes, lengths, but thats all. The next step it does is just a ultra simple interpretation of the properties scripts assigned. In the property script you have a material is n-units for each unit surface or volume or length and thena simple multiplication.
This i all AC can do. It will just do the multiplication for you.
I you want extract volume -surface -length info to an excel spreadsheet and to the multiplication on your own and even have your own ready mae cost database.

So you may see that AC calculation tools are not MATERIAL-MODEL based but GEOMETRY based.

At its current state i dont do material caluclation in AC but only use its geometry calculations. Other calculation is done in excel.

Ofcourse the List Schemes Interface is POOR. Very POOR. and the script langruage behing it time consuming to make and MAINTAIN.

[David Shorter]

I didn't say it was easy ... I said you could do it. Using the property object as a base you can get ANY output you want. There is only one proviso and that is a knowledge of GDL. You can of course change the entry in the database, then the the output will change. The real question is this. Should all the non graphical calculations be done in ArchiCAD (prices etc ).

[Anonymous]

David wrote:
Using the property object as a base you can get ANY output you want. .

No you cant. Or better said you can AFTER you have done it by hand for a unit geometry. Say you want to tile a surface with 15cmx35cm or with
20x20. You must first do the calculations your self with paper and pencil for a unitsurface and then the program will just do the multiplication for you.
Thx but i can do the single extra multiplication myself