Component Level Design Workflows - Conversation & feedback

[James B]

Hi All,

Now in Archicad, most design and data are handled at the element level - assigning properties, using Graphic Overrides or setting renovation status are a few examples.

To express design intent and extract data at a more detailed level, the component or skin level requires further data and flexibility. We already visualise these skins, have Offset Modifiers for Profiles to create smart parametric extrusions, and Component/Surface Schedules to extract data.

We plan to further develop the component/skin level of elements and expand existing functionality in that area, so we are exploring more about what you need. Some questions:

• What type of data do you need to store in components/skins that may be separate or different to existing Building Material properties?
• How is this data used and presented in documentation and schedules?
• Renovation of components, are similar for the same composite/profile? Or mostly unique for all placed elements separately?
• Modelling flexibility of components, in which common situations are you resorting to workarounds, like stacking elements, that existing composites/profiles with modifiers can't achieve?
• Visualisation of components, in which situations do components need be visualised differently compared to the whole element? Such as requirement for submission to highlight structural skins.

As we progress in this area, your input will be invaluable to understand priorities and our direction moving forward. Thanks in advance.

[Harald Dogge]

Hi James,

I think a lot of good suggestions are already mentioned here about Renovation Status and Graphic Override usage on a component level. And sorry if mine are already in the comments, but what would be very helpful in an IFC workflow is the option to classify on a component level is:
- ID
- Structural function
- Interior/ Exterior

Best Regards

Harald Dogge
KUBUS

[James B]

Hi Herald. Please let us know anything in this topic area that's important to the workflow, even if it repeats what others say.

Can you provide some workflow examples here of what you need to do with this information? And what current workarounds are you using to get around this?

Thanks.

[abdelaziz]

Hi James

I don't know if the subject concerns sub-objects, we need the graphic replacement to modify the sub-objects

according to their length, area, volume, and the degree of inclination of the polygons in percentage and in degree for the mesh and for the morph tools 🙄

and finally the composites for the mesh 😔

[James B]

Hi Aziz, can you clarify what you define as "sub-objects"? Do you mean treads/risers in Stairs, and frames/panels in Curtain Walls? Or taps/handles/doors in objects? Can you give me a few examples of what you are wanting to achieve? Thanks

[abdelaziz]

Hi James

when I speak of "sub-object" I speak of the sub-elements of the curtain wall and possibly for the staircase and the railing, often one is called upon to optimize the curtain walls or the staircase to have a maximum of identical elements, having a visual feedback that helps to visualize the identical elements would be of great help for the production of collaborative document

[abdelaziz]

Hi James 

don't forget that sometimes there are renovation missions that deal with the subject of curtain wall renovation, for example a change of curtain wall panel following a drop in thermal performance, or for example following an earthquake of earth sometimes it is necessary to make a study on the extent of the damage at the level of the stairs, the finishes must be changed and steps must be demolished and reconstituted, in summarizing the notion of renovation must be considered in the "sub-object"

[ArchiMind]

Hello James,

I like the idea and topic since this is the direction in which AC needs to upgrade.

The current concept of building materials is for me perfectly logical, and the ability to add properties is superb.

But the current rigidity of composites lies in that there isn't the possibility to subedit components/skins of the composite. Almost 90% of junctions with the composite walls have to be edited with some kind of workaround (usually with complex columns).

Which is quite frustrating, time-consuming, and database-wise pretty inefficient.

If it's possible to implement a complex profile system in composites with the ability to add skin modifiers, we as users could have more control over how the junctions are achieved.

Also, the ability to control walls in the Z axis on subelements editing would be tremendously helpful. Creating natively sloped walls without SEO operations, creating different finishes and thicknesses (similar to the complex profile ability).

This could be also implemented in the roof/slab tools. For example, when working on balconies, roofs, etc. you would need to use mesh, or other workarounds to create a sloping layer with finishes.

The ability for subelement editing components would also be very beneficial in the visualization of the information with Graphic Overrides.

As for the question that you posted here are my answers,

• What type of data do you need to store in components/skins that may be separate or different to existing Building Material properties?
• As mentioned Building Materials has an excellent foundation in the sense that it has the ability to add properties that can be defined by Country standards, or project needs. As for skins I would like to be able to identify with the label tool each individual skin. That would be very helpful, especially when doing wall and slab scheduling and detailing. Also, the ability to add skins that don't have drawing thicknesses but exist on the component level (colour, vapor membranes, polyethylene foil..), without fear of how it would behave when exporting into dwg or IFC formats.
• How is this data used and presented in documentation and schedules?

In our regulation, we need to present textual data of all composites that are being used in floor plans and sections as a textual legend, and in later stages as detailed drawings with labels similar to what @Nathan Hildebrandt posted. I will tomorrow add a picture to explain it better

• Renovation of components, are similar for the same composite/profile? Or mostly unique for all placed elements separately?

Renovation of components should also be able to sub-element edit it. For example, having a core of the house, but only the insulation and finish is changed. Instead of working with individual elements, it would be helpful to be able to create a composite/complex profile in which we could partially decide what is demolished, and what is new, maybe also propose a couple of design variants of the same composite/complex profile.

Modeling flexibility of components, in which common situations are you resorting to workarounds, like stacking elements, that existing composites/profiles with modifiers can't achieve?

This often becomes a problem when working on ramps or stairs. When structural engineers give us the detail of stair or ramp connections, we result in creating additional components like morphs, beams etc some are used for SEO then we hide it, and some become part of the whole component, etc. Also, this can be also applied when creating balcony doors, where we stack walls on the wall in order to create a different detail connection between wall and door/window. One more example is when having horizontal beams that need to be cut off at some angle, we are resorting to creating SEO elements that we hide. 

• Visualization of components, in which situations do components need to be visualized differently compared to the whole element? Such as required for submission to highlight structural skins

The answer lies in the question. Graphical override of the subelement of the component is much appreciated when communicating with other disciplines, structural engineers, MEP filed... So it would be very good to have the option to isolate the specific element of the component to communicate on it.

I am sorry for this little essay, but with this, you hit the jackpot. Sub-element editing is the basic need in today's workflow. Hope you will follow up on this for the next realize.

Cheers

[James B]

Thanks for your detailed answer, much appreciated. But apologies for the long delay in responding.

For the visualisation of skins, you mentioned structural and MEP, can you elaborate on this further? What specifically needs to be shown and in what way? More likely Plans? Sections? 3D views? We want to make sure specific use cases are covered. If you have any examples as you mentioned, please post or send me a DM.

[kmitotk]

Hi James,

While it is quite important to have component level access and control for the composite elements, I think there will still be situations where we're just better off stacking elements instead of trying to include all skins in one element, i.e. we usually model interior part of the exterior wall as a separate wall as the interior side changes by rooms while the exterior side stays the same throughout the building and we don't want to chop the exterior wall into pieces.  So I think it is equally important to improve the stacking element method as well.

For the improvement of modeling with stacked elements, especially stacked walls, it'd be great to have the following capabilities.

• Capability to place a stacked set of walls at once: This would be a huge time saver. With auto-grouping on, you could grab the placed stacked walls and move around for room layout editing. 
• Capability to convert one wall into a set of stacked walls: The design phase transition would improve a lot by this.
• Windows and doors to penetrate stacked walls: Revit has this feature for a long time. In fact, Graphisoft Japan offers this capability already and it works great🙂, the problem is that it only works for the localized set of windows/doors GS JPN offers☹️. The common workaround is to place an opening that matches the placed window/door size but it involves too many steps and it comes a little short; you have to manually extend the frame size to match the overall wall thickness, and even worse the casing cannot be relocated to the finish wall face☹️.
• Energy evaluation tool to work with stacked walls.

[Miha_M]

Interesting, I didn't know GS Japan has such different developments ready. But I fully agree with the stacked set placement ability. I would rather have the composites reengineered into stacked sets, where one could sub-select and edit each skin (with it's ID and properties) independently; just like the ability to edit different morph components (faces, edges) with a ctrl+shift+click. 

[kmitotk]

Hi Miha_M,

I'd like to see the development of both approaches going so we'll always have options to go either way or mix them together for the best.

Another reason why we often choose the stacked-wall workflow is that it enables us to schedule the furring on structural wall as an independent wall type with its own ID, properties and 2D preview, and it also allows us to assign classification to the furring wall system in addition to the classification of each skin material. If you don't stack and the composite element has to contain multiple construction systems then we'd need additional component level in between skins and element, which would be grouped skins, to which we can assign ID, properties and classification. It would be great if something like that becomes available.

[Strawbale23]

What is ment by the term Stacked Walls please? 

[Barry Kelly]

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@Strawbale23 wrote:

What is ment by the term Stacked Walls please? 

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To me, a stacked wall is one on top of another.

In this case though, they are referring to walls next to each other to form extras skins on a wall.

The skins can be different heights, but of course with 2 or more walls, there are problems with openings.

Complex profiles can solve the problem of skins ant different heights and adding modifiers to this skins will make the skin heights adjustable for each wall you place.

No problem with openings now as you only have one wall.

But I have not personally tried to get quantities for each skin in a complex profile wall, so I am not exactly sure of the limitations there.

Barry.

[Nathan Hildebrandt]

The challenge I find with complex profiles is the inability to label the exposed skin like I can with composites. If they made it possible to label the different parts of a complex profile then we would be in a way better position.

[DGSketcher]

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@kmitotk wrote:

• Windows and doors to penetrate stacked walls: Revit has this feature for a long time. In fact, Graphisoft Japan offers this capability already and it works great🙂, the problem is that it only works for the localized set of windows/doors GS JPN offers☹️.

 @James B GS really need to start pooling their international resources & innovation! This problem has been talked about for years, it appears there is a working solution, but it is localised rather than benefitting the global community!

[Strawbale23]

Hi, great to see that GS is asking users for their opinions!

Im not sure I can answer your questions specifically, but I wated to say that GS really needs to make renovation projects work with composites, for example adding internal or external insulation to an exisitng wall. Currently we are required to create 2 walls to acheive 1 wall being modified. Demolish the first one and place a new one to replace it that appears in the "New Construction" renovation filter.

I feel that this is clumbsy and could be implemented in a much better way. A single building element should be able to have a state "A" and a state "B" with modifications.

[James B]

Thanks for the feedback, if you have additional feedback and more details please add to this discussion.

[neilmcallister]

I'm not quite sure if it fits in this subject, but there seems to be some information about composites that is not available for scheduling.  In particular, a skin list label can generate a list of the skins.  I would love to have this in a schedule of wall types but it currently seems to be impossible.  I can have an drawing of the wall build up but have to type in a description of the build-up manually.

Slightly related, I would like to be able to have a plan/3d views of any element in a schedule - for instance I'd like to create a schedule of morphs used for bespoke stone elements with a drawing of each but this doesn't seem to be possible - despite being able to do this for other types of object such as doors and windows.

[James B]

To have a list of skins from a composite you can do a component schedule (instead of element) - this can help: https://help.graphisoft.com/AC/26/INT/index.htm?rhcsh=1&rhnewwnd=0&rhmapid=#t=_AC26_Help%2F060_Eleme...

As for previews, you can add a 2D and 3D preview (these are fixed sizes but correctly show the assigned composite/building material/surface colour. In a Surface schedule, you can list other Surface details including a swatch of the colour. Hope that helps.

[thesleepofreason]

Interesting topic and discussion but the catch up reading is quite agonising endeavour - we need a new format for this kind of interaction.

I do understand that this is more of a data gathering activity but will still interject with a concern regarding the focus on the component level as it seem to presuppose the current element concept. Yes, better functionality for current composite skins and profile components is needed. But the real development potential is at the element level which currently rests on a limiting concept with metods of defining geometries tied to specific element types. This has lead to a situation where although most relevant geometries can be intuitively and efficiently modelled they can't be used as geometric representations of relevant elements. What is needed is a more general element concept which can utilise the full potential of Archicad's modelling capabilities. The concern is that this is missed, and the situation made even worse, by focusing on the component level in general and composites/complex profiles in particular.

What type of data do you need to store in components/skins that may be separate or different to existing Building Material properties? How is this data used and presented in documentation and schedules?

Classification and performance/design requirements for a component are different from that of the material used and if components are modelled we naturally need to be able to have these separately handled.

Renovation of components, are similar for the same composite/profile? Or mostly unique for all placed elements separately?

It is limiting to talk about renovation - we need the ability to make changes to elements without creating new elements regardless of it is for representing change of existing physical construction, project phasing or evaluating alternative designs - what is needed is a new approach for handling change and alternative designs. 

Modelling flexibility of components, in which common situations are you resorting to workarounds, like stacking elements, that existing composites/profiles with modifiers can't achieve?

The functionality for modifiers and references could be improved for profiles but focus should really be put on the modelling inflexibility at the element level.

Visualisation of components, in which situations do components need be visualised differently compared to the whole element? Such as requirement for submission to highlight structural skins.

In situations where they have properties or functions that are significant and different from the element. The challenge here is rather how to allow for different representations at the element level in terms of components. Different scale/lod and different levels of determination of technical solutions. As I see it structure type (basic, composite, complex profile) should be about that.  How do we get a basic representation of a complex element?