Assigning elements to be "demolished"

[Anonymous]

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled onto something that allowed me to change a portion of a wall to display as demolished (I think I may have just used the "split" tool). Now that I need to change modeled elements to be demolished on a real project, I can't find anything in tools or Help that explains this.

It just occurs to me that I may have been using AC-8 when I did the "demolish" thing, and now I'm using AC-9.

What does anyone know about this?
Thanks

[David Maudlin]

Jim wrote:
A couple of weeks ago I stumbled onto something that allowed me to change a portion of a wall to display as demolished (I think I may have just used the "split" tool). Now that I need to change modeled elements to be demolished on a real project, I can't find anything in tools or Help that explains this.

It just occurs to me that I may have been using AC-8 when I did the "demolish" thing, and now I'm using AC-9.

What does anyone know about this?
Thanks

Jim:

I don't know of a tool or single function for changing elements to demolished, what you want to accomplish depends to some degree on your office graphic standards. What I do is split the element if necessary (Edit>Split), change the line type from solid to dashed and the layer assignment from its current layer to Demolition (your layer names might be different). Then use your Layer Combinations to control the visibility of the Demolition layer for different view sets.

HTH

David

[gpowless]

What I have had good success at is to split the wall (or element) to be demolished and explode the wall into line elements. Then I select all lines and change them to a special "To Be Removed" line type. Windows, doors and cabinets can be treated in the same way except with windoes and doors you will need to remember to delete the wall opening left over.

[Bruce]

gpowless wrote:
What I have had good success at is to split the wall (or element) to be demolished and explode the wall into line elements. Then I select all lines and change them to a special "To Be Removed" line type.

This helps with wall intersections etc. If you leave the To Be Removed as 3d elements then you have to get your intersection priorities sorted too.

[gpowless]

The problem with leaving the walls as 3d is two fold (no pun intended).

1. The walls show up in 3d interior rendering or you end up having to chase around that "intersection priorty" (trying to sort out layer numbers) if you place the walls on a hidden layer.

2. When the new walls are placed we end up with the "wall on wall" problem that does funky things to doors and windows or when you croos an old wall with a new one you get an unwanted intersection.

If the drawings can be clear enough, I do not often present a separate demolition drawing and prefer to have my demo lines on the CDs. The builders find it helps them better than trying to jump from page to page to figure what goes, what stays and what is rebuilt.

My technique also works well with enlarging windows. The smaller windows show as hidden lines and the new window does not conflict with the old one (since there is no way to put the window on a separate layer from the existing walls. It also works well with any other elements such as roofs and slabs, or cabinets. In the truest sense of the word this is accurate since demolished walls are actually demolished.

[Anonymous]

Thank you to each who responded to this topic, you gave me good ways of handling demo work.

I have to confess my mistake, though. My partner reminded me that I had also been trying out Revit at the time I thought I had found an automatic demolition tool, and it turns out that this tool is in Revit, not ArchiCAD. It is a very cool little thing. Perhaps it will show up on ArchiCAD version 10.

Thanks again.

[TomWaltz]

Jim wrote:
Thank you to each who responded to this topic, you gave me good ways of handling demo work.

I have to confess my mistake, though. My partner reminded me that I had also been trying out Revit at the time I thought I had found an automatic demolition tool, and it turns out that this tool is in Revit, not ArchiCAD. It is a very cool little thing. Perhaps it will show up on ArchiCAD version 10.

Thanks again.

Revit has a demo tool? Tres cool! I'll have to check that out...

[Bruce]

Revit has a lot of cool things that ArchiCAD could benefit from looking at.

One in particular is its stairmaker - so much more intuitive and suitable for an architecture package.

[TomWaltz]

Bruce wrote:
One in particular is its stairmaker - so much more intuitive and suitable for an architecture package.

Every once in a while I have to re-state this: I REALLY hate Archicad's Stairmaker... so much so that I'm starting to tinker around with my own... (I'm not a fan of Archistair or the GS Library stairs either)

[Bruce]

In Revit, you just click whichever level you want the stairs to run to (from a combo box) and voila! Done. If you want to extend the rail along a path - say a balcony - then draw a line and boom - she's there. No trying to match a railing library part to the stairmaker railing (which for some reason don't seem to be the same), or stacking stairs on top of each other - one part does the whole thing.

That being said - stay posted on Cadimage's Stairmaker when AC10 comes out. I just trialled their old one and it seems pretty good, and I have it on good authority that they're making major changes.