ArchiCAD 13 Schedules

[Steve Jepson]

I haven't heard anything about improvements in creating schedules, bill of material, etc... Has there been any progress in this area?

[Aaron Bourgoin]

These are main areas of three improvement.

Annotated Schedules:

• In the Interactive Schedule window, annotations (e.g. associative or static dimensions, text, fills, lines) may be added to any object/door/window preview.

• For doors/windows, dimensions can be placed automatically.

More Flexible Setup/Display of Interactive Schedules

• In Scheme Settings, nested parentheticals and user-defined and/or conditions enable any combination of logical relationships among criteria

• Previews can be aligned along their top or bottom; or can be positioned in the cell to reflect the element’s elevation from the story/project zero level or any reference level

• Manually adjust the height or width of any row or column individually, using rulers at top and side of the window

Expanded Listing Options Using Calculation Rules

• Interactive Schedule criteria now include “Conditional” criteria for certain listing parameters involving the calculation of walls, slabs, roofs, and beams.

• Define these criteria using the new “Calculation Rules” options: for example, specify which fill types used in your project should be calculated as insulation and air space.

• This way, these quantities will be calculated in the Interactive Schedule and other list outputs.

[Steve Jepson]

Have they addressed any of the very simple things like a better choice in units of measure?

Can we define any of the calculation units like Squares, Bundles, Units, Packs, etc...?

Can we define any of our own calculaition formulas?

Can we do something as simple as generate a lumber list that rounds up each lenght to the nearest common stud length, or to the next 2' multiple if it is longer than 104 5/8", and tells you how many of each size and lenght there is, and is priced?

[Aaron Bourgoin]

ask your ArchiCAD rep for more specifics.

I guess I diidn't manage to answer your question. sorry.

[Steve Jepson]

I am asking anyone who knows.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Aaron listed the new features, Steve. I'm not aware of any changes in the areas about which you asked. Most of those can be handled by property scripts, etc., but require programming capabilities beyond those of the typical user.

Cheers,
Karl

[Steve Jepson]

That what I suspected.

[Karl Ottenstein]

I got permission to post screenshots/etc... so here's the first, something that I was very happy to see:

Criteria in AC 13 can now have fully parenthesized logical expressions and include OR operations, not just AND.

Attached is an example of how this is useful.

Suppose you have used some window objects as doors (I've done it), and some non-cutting ordinary objects as doors also. Prior to AC 13, it was not possible to get all of these objects to appear in a single schedule, for auditing if not for actual scheduling.

In the screenshot, you can see that we're filtering based on the Element Type being either Door, Window, OR Object - and further that whatever it is, that the Element ID starts with the letter "D".

Any number of groups of logical expressions can be included, allowing filtering of elements to be very precise to pick out just the ones you're interested in.

Karl

[Karl Ottenstein]

You do need to be careful and think of what 'and' and 'or' mean in a logical expression.

For example, if you want to list all doors on the 1st story, be sure to use AND to join the two criteria. (Prior to 13, AND was the only option, and so was not shown.)

If you accidentally used OR in the screenshot attached, you would get all doors, regardless of the story, as well as all other elements that are on the first story.

You know what they say about "with power comes responsibility". 🙂

Karl

[Karl Ottenstein]

OK, a last example before I take my congested head to bed:

The attached silly example filters all doors that are on floors 1, 3 or 5 and are within walls that are between 7 and 12 feet high (but not including exactly 7').

Trying hard to come up with a back-story for why this might be a useful query...(not likely)... suppose you have a split level structure, so that stories 2 and 4 are offset from 1/3/5 and will be built and scheduled separately. And then imagine further that you have used some doors in walls shorter than 7' as cupboard doors and don't want them in your schedule. No idea why we don't want walls taller than 12'.

But you get the idea ... huge flexibility now.

As I have often written since interactive schedules were first introduced in 8: they do not have to be schedules!

Think of them as editing and auditing aids as well. Within the schedule window, you have a button that lets you select the elements in the model, and of course you can alter parameters in a schedule window. So, these can be convenient ways to navigate certain data groups in your model, as well as to edit them. The actual schedules that appear on CD's can be something else again.

Cheers,
Karl