Bespoke Furniture workflow

[Sculptdesign]

Hi all,

I frequently design bespoke furniture elements and have started to model these in ArchiCAD rather than only 2D.

I'm interested to hear how people do this in their work. I currently model it off to one side so I can create views / 3D documents without the rest of the project being part of it.

Is there a way to isolate the specific item for documentation? Is there a better way?

Thanks.

[Podolsky]

ArchiCAD of course is not originally the program for furniture design, but since there appeared morph - you can model more-less everything.
There is no specific recommendations about bespoke furniture if your project - is furniture itself and not part of architectural or interior design project.
You can model everything from morph, annotate it, place dimensions, produce nice looking 3D documents and renders. Software does not have limitations to do all that.

The only my recommendation would be - if your furniture part of quite large architectural project - you can save your bespoke furniture into Library part format when you finish your design - just for easier use in the project.

[Sculptdesign]

Thanks for the response, morph is definitely very useful in these situations!

It's not really the modelling that I'm unsure about, more the documentation. As a furniture piece may need plans, sections, elevations of its own, I wanted to see how other people would deal with this.

Let's say we're doing a library, there may be joinery details for bookcases. Should this be a separate model (possibly library part) off to the side where section and elevation markers would be added. This could potentially confuse any scheduling though as you'd have extra units off to the side of the model - they'd also potentially show up in building sections and elevations unexpectedly.

Or perhaps you use them in place but use separate layers to hide the markers - which could cause some confusion in the project map with many sections and elevations etc.

Or do you just revert to drawing them in 2D, which defeats the point of using powerful BIM software.

We do a lot of bespoke detailing in our work, usually around fitted furniture, but we haven't found a suitable workflow for this yet.

Thanks again.
Ash.

[Podolsky]

To create furniture views independent from surrounding - i.e. section, elevation, plan - you can just select your furniture piece, view it in 3D window with needed angle (top view, side view, front view, also using cut planes make section in 3D) and save it as 3D document.

It's up to you - to keep morph (you can merge many different morphs into one using command Union) or save everything as library part. I would recommend to keep editable elements (not necessary morph - you can model furniture from slabs and walls) while you're designing a piece. When it's done - save it as a library part.

Library part can give you different floor representation - if it's needed. Maybe more simplified / schematic top view. To do so you need to open library part, delete everything from 2D script and draw your symbol using lines and fills in 2D symbol. In that case no GDL programming needed. You also can do this technique - open 3D view of library part, select top view with internal engine (not OpenGL) and press button "fit to 2D symbol". ArchiCAD will transfer the top view drawing into symbol that you can after clean up. Adding additional hotspots in the symbol you will get more black dots when you select your part in floor plan.

See attached examples of furniture drawings I did in 3D documents. The model was still in place of interior - so no additional markers were required.

[Sculptdesign]

Podolsky - thank you ever so much for this detailed response, this looks like a really good solution and your example is exactly what I'm looking to achieve.

Are the elevation drawings also 3D documents in your example?

I assume if the model is updated (and the bespoke joinery piece is relocated in plan) then that would need the 3D documents to be updated to suit?

I'm looking into using hotlink modules as well, the theory being that the pieces can be in a separate file along with the detail sheets, then they can be placed wherever in the master file and scheduled correctly.

[Erwin Edel]

For furniture with shelves we have a separate PLN and do as Podolsky suggests: save a library part to use in the actual project.

The perks of having it as a standalone PLN is that we can make stories for each shelf and just use slabs and walls etc to model the more basic parts.

[Sculptdesign]

Thanks Erwin, good to hear it works.
So if the furniture is revised in the separate PLN do you just re-save the library part and update in the main model? Sounds like that could be a really nice way of doing it.
How do you document the furniture pieces, are the layouts also in the separate PLN?
Thanks!

[jakubc7]

I would strongly recommend you look at using the Library Part Maker. It makes the process much easier and neater.

https://graphisoft.com/downloads/addons/lpm/int

[Erwin Edel · Accepted solution]

I thought I wrote a further reply, guess I left it half finished and forgot to post.

Yes, we resave the library part and since furniture is typically built by a separate contractor from the one building the architectural design, there is little issue with having the layouts in a seperate file.

[Sculptdesign]

Great stuff, sounds like a good plan to me.

Thanks all!