Archicad 17 Using building materials with the fill tool

[rjwilden]

There is a new function with the fill tool which allows you to assign a building material to a fill. I cant think of any reason to have this.
When and what would you use this function for.

[Karl Ottenstein]

The dialog itself gives a hint - see attached. I believe that this is in part to grab the thermal properties of the fill as associated with a Building Material for the "Thermal bridge simulation on ArchiCAD [2D] details" of EcoDesigner STAR. See the video with that name at near the bottom of this page:
http://www.graphisoft.com/archicad/archicad_17/energy_evaluation/

It also captures the intent of a 3D element that has been exploded into 2D elements. See:
http://helpcenter.graphisoft.com/guides/archicad-17-int-reference-guide/documentation/fills/fill-cat...

which says in part:

For construction elements (Wall/Slab/Beam/Column/Roof/Shell/Morph/Mesh): Cut fills are assigned via the Building Material attribute. When such an element is exploded (e.g. in a Detail Drawing), the resulting fill will be in the Cut Fill – Building Material category. A detail Fill in this category retains the Physical properties of the original construction element.

and later:

For example, if you draw a fill as a detail patch, to be used as a cut fill, change its category from “Drafting” to “Cut Fill – Building Material”. This way, this fill will behave like the Building Materials of construction elements in the project,

I'm glad you asked, as I hadn't noticed this feature.

[rjwilden]

Thanks Karl,
Does this also mean we can add cut fill materials to an existing thermal simulation. Meaning we can model up a quick simulation of a hypothetical wall assembly to test its performance, without creating an actual wall in the model.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Don't know ... never tried the 2D detail bridge thing. Maybe ask in the Sustainable Architecture forum?