dcerezo wrote:
To do the same thing in ArchiCAD, we could do 2 things (however, I think there's a 3rd we just discovered)
1. Detail view. The problem here is that these are all 2D elements. I can't tag the windows. I can't tag the doors. I can't tag zones, etc. Rebuilding is a pain and what if we forget. Plus lots of stuff re-sets when you Rebuild.
2. So we went with the Live View route that Barry showed. But we had to create sooooo many layers. Such a pain in the a**. We had to create Dimension layers for each unit, wall type tags for each unit, etc. AGAIN, the reason is because I just create one dimension layer, the dimensions from Unit B show on Unit A's enlarged plan....because they're only 12" apart.
We may have a 3rd way...what do you guys think....and why has no one mentioned this before? We are using the marquee tool to create a 3D Document floor plan.
[As a general principle: whenever something is requiring too much labor, it means you are not using the program right. Lots of people have been using the program for decades for much larger projects.]
You don't need to create layers for each unit. You need 'enlarged' layers for dimensions, annotations, perhaps 2D work if you have any, etc. So that you have say A-FLOR-DIMS for 1/8" dimensions, and A-FLOR-ENLG-DIMS for those that need to show at 1/4". (Normally, they are two independent sets, and you don't want 1/8" dims showing at all in 1/4" drawings. But that goes according to your preference.) You need a single wall tags layer, if you want a specific layer for wall tags instead of including them in say A-FLOR-ENLG-ANNO.
And you need a say 'Enlarged Plans' or '1/4" Plans" view, showing the layers you want to show, with Model View Options and Graphic Override Combinations finetuned for that view. Doors, wall layers, their 'hatches', etc., will show the way you want them to show on your 1/4" plan.
I understand that you have your four homes in a single file. So you just click on that Enlarged Plan view and do your 1/4" scale stuff, so that you are seeing what you are getting (or you could have say a 'drafting' view, with everything transparent so that overlap drafting mistakes become obvious, etc.). You move along the whole plan, copy-paste notes or extract-inject across the whole plan.
Now you want to create four 'enlarged plan' drawings out of that, one for each house. Drawings are just a cropped area of that overall view, in which you can change Pen Set and other options. For each drawing, you drag your view to a Layout, and drag the drawing edges to wherever you want in order to 'crop' it. Those are live drawings, unless you set them to update manually (which is my preference in larger projects). If you have some office-standard drawing title, etc., and for some reason your new drawing is showing some Archicad standard look or whatever, you option click on your good-looking drawing and inject on the new one you just created. That's it. All information is in 'modelspace', views are specific definitions of how that information need to look, and drawings are cropped areas of those views with some additional graphic control and title-etc. elements.
This is really basic stuff. You would save a lot of time and money and headaches by having some hours a week of someone experienced looking over your shoulder, or over Skype screen share, if you don't want to go through the manuals. Also purchasing one of the templates available out there helps a lot, as a starting point and as a sort of demonstration of how everything comes together, if the out-of-the-box Archicad setup is not clear or elaborate enough for that.
