Keynotes

[James B]

Hi All,

We have introduced a new documentation focused workflow for Keynotes in Archicad 28, to help simplify and consolidate tags and descriptions into one database and palette.

• Organise Keynotes into an hierarchical folder structure, with drag/drop.
• Import/Export Keynotes via XML or Excel format > we are currently investigating updating this Excel format.
• Each Keynote stores a unique Key, multi-line Description, Title and Reference.
• All Keynote fields are available as autotexts from Labels and Texts, in any viewpoint Labels and Texts are available. Mix and match these autotexts with any existing autotexts or manual text as necessary.
• Keynote Legend objects placed on Layouts, gathers all visible (or any from a selected folder) Keynotes from internal, external and PMK based drawings, and lists these in a customisable table.
• New Label frame shapes have also been introduced.

For more information:

https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Graphisoft-Technology-Preview/Keynotes/ta-p/606482

[James B]

Hi @nathanburkholder  

We haven’t come across this issue, of keynotes going missing on reopening a file. Was this a teamwork file? Did someone else in the project have the permissions to delete and maybe accidentally deleted? If you’re able to reproduce the problem, please let us know.

Thanks.

[zoli79]

Today I finally had some time to test this tool. First of all, I am very happy for this! I don't mind the "step backwards", "before BIM" etc. approach, because not all keynotes can be drawn from the model, sometimes (IMO most often) with keynotes we want to tell something special about a location, situation that requires extra attention. I don't wish to argue with anyone on this, because my first thought was the same: it would be cool to have the option to pull keynote codes from the model, place associative labels. As an option, because I believe there will always be a need for non-BIM keynotes as well. Not every nuance can be derived from the model, but  whole lot can be. All I wish to say is that this is a huge improvement in our documentations, I was wishing for this for years. For those who don't mind this approach this tool saves some money on subscription based 3rd party tools and/or manually checking keynote legends for things to or not to include on a sheet.

One thing I haven't seen to be requested: references linking to the view map, layout book, the same way a linked detail marker does. For us this (keynote reference ↔︎ view/drawing link) is more important than element ↔︎ keynote linkage, because when we move details around on layouts these references change and there is a great chance of error if the ref. is not linked. Probably by "reference" the developers were thinking code references, but a "see dtl. xx/xx" or "see sheet xx" type of reference would be veeeeeeery useful.

[THarris]

It would be nice to add autotext into the titles or description of a Keynote.  For example the reference to a drawing ID and layout ID for a detail being refered to in the keynote description.

[hampden]

That's funny - I also was thinking about the auto text and was planning on asking about it! You beat me to the punch - you can add auto references into the note it's self (as you have been able to for a long time), however for the keynotes to really shine with this you should be able to insert auto text in the keynotes description field at a minimum, and ideally any of the fields!

[Lee Hankins]

I ma not sure if this has already been mentioned, I couldn't see anything but I think the Keynotes tool and entire pallet should have to be reserved when working in Teamwork to be able to add Keynotes and prevent any duplication or conflict when more than one person is working in the file. This has been an ongoing issue with Layers for years and Changes so if this could be addressed within a new tool that would be great. It may not affect BIMcloud SAAS so much but we don't use that.

[zoli79]

Yes, an autotext in description field would be great, although a separate reference field with browse function (similar to detail markers) has a better workflow, than the autotext function. Plus autotexts aren't traceable by the "Find linked markers" function. But on the other hand autexts provide flexible text composition.

[hampden]

BTW we had exactly that type of teamwork issue with CADimage's keynotes implementation a while back - they did finally fix it to work with teamwork, but not before we had some pretty confusing / time intensive issues with the keynotes database going sideways with multiple people editing it at once. I hope graphisoft has tested this with teamwork since this is a first party product, but it would be great to get some confirmation on that from GS that this feature has been tested against BOTH BIMcloud basic and BIM could SAS (we use basic hosted locally).   I can say first hand it's really bad to have a production set of drawings go sideways when the keys and notes stop lining up. Doing quality check of a big set of drawings with hundreds of keynotes and thousands of references is a serious time suck / pain and I hope to never have to experience that again 😉

[David Shorter]

@James B 

There is one issue which I dont think has been raised and that is....

There doesn't seem to be a connection between the keynote database and the content of the keynote legend. This is pretty critical in an office with a number of different types of projects of different sizes.

Currently there does not seem to be any way to link the source keynote database to a specific project in such a way it can be found by the user.

I think this is fundamental.

[Davor P]

Actually, Archicad is proving pretty bad at large scale - can't handle it particularly well - unless your buildings are simple squares and blocks. My impression was always that it was aimed at smaller studios. Maybe it is just aimless all together.
I feel like GS should stop trying to invent features and spend one or two release cycles fixing issues and finishing off half baked tools.
Just recently there was a post on LinkedIn about hiring in AI roles. I sure hope they have a very good product in mind for those devs to work on and not just hiring for the sake of hype and then figure out what those people will work on. The AI visualiser is a gimmick at the moment. There are numerous websites that do the same.

[James B]

Hi @David Shorter 

I'm not sure I follow. The Keynote legend displays keynotes via information stored in drawings - for internal drawings this data comes from the Keynote database of the host file. For external and pmk drawings then this information comes from those files (and stored in their drawings).

Is your suggestion to have this Keynote database stored externally outside of AC? It is something we've discussed, and we would like to have a more unified solution - for any data like favourites etc.

We could alternatively allow any Keynote stored in a module, to be accessible in the host, currently we only bring in used/visible keynotes (to keep the module as light as possible).