Question for Chief Architect users re annotations in Archicad

[Anonymous]

Hello there,

(For CA users I’m looking to find an answer to Chief’s annotation set functionality in Archicad)

I didn’t think anyone except someone with experience with Chief Architect would understand hence the title.

The question is in regards to annotating a saved view.
Suppose I’m in my electrical plan saved view and I want to place text or a cad line or a dimension, it seems that the only procedure in Archicad is to select the tool you want, open its settings, choose the appropriate layer and other characteristics, close the settings dialogue box and proceed to annotate.
Or maybe choose a tool and select a favorite which would be appropriate and start annotating.
Is there no way to link those parameters to the saved view so that when you switch to a particular view which has a particular layer set then regardless of what tool you select for annotation it will have the same layer set as the saved view? ...at least?

Anyone understand what I’m talking about?

[poco2013]

Not sure I am one who does understand, BUT it sounds like your are talking about layer sets in Chief not necessarily annotations sets. And yes, in Chief you can pre-select a layer set via a annotation set selection and assign that to a view.

AFAIK - Arch has nothing like that - they only have the layer combinations which only controls the view ability, not pre- assignment of layers to objects based on a view or layer combination. You have to use favorites to achieve that which is a extra step as are most things in Arch. However, even in Chief, they will not re-assign layers to existing objects. That is a manual process. So the only convenience in Chief is in the initial placement or use multi-select. In Arch you can pre-asign layers to the default but you can not assign defaults to a combination layer set. i believe that could be easily done through the API, but I doubt if you want to go there?

Unless, of course, I missed something?

[Anonymous]

You answered my question (which was badly worded)
Thank you!

And yes, I was looking for some automated way to pre-assign layers to objects such as dimensions and cad items.
Not a big deal, just wanted to make sure that there wasn’t some magical way to do this in Archicad.

My workflow is also to use favorites.
I also have items drawn on worksheets that I syringe to pick up the parameters a la Eric Bobrow.

Thanks for taking the time fellow Chiefer!

[Richard Morrison]

Although the question has been mostly answered (favorites and eyedropping are your go-to choices), I can suggest that it will be fastest to have your pre-drawn worksheet as a trace reference in your current view for "eyedroppering", rather than as a separate tab, just in case that wasn't on your radar. Of course, once you've got a matching entity type, such as a label or dimension already placed, then the trace reference isn't necessary. But if you have multiple pre-drawn electrical symbols, say, in your trace reference, it will be much faster than finding and selecting library items from your Chief library.

[Anonymous]

Ah, the worksheet as a trace reference then should be the go to method.
I’ll get used to it and I’m sure it will indeed be much faster and better organized than what I’m used to in Chief.

Thanks again Richard!