Best way to show flooring in the model?

[Anonymous]

What is the best way to show flooring in the "model"?

I tried the zones but, this tool is another disappointment.

Making thin slabs does the trick, however, it is so unproductive and horrible because if you make changes, now you have to "manually" change the slabs, feels like I am back in autoCAD making changes everywhere. ugh.

The zones may have a potential to do the trick, however they are meant to calculate areas, for some reason, like if we need to know the size of a cube.

If you make the zone thin, then, the height shown is useless to the room. like the ceiling heights.

If you leave the zone the proper height, then, when you want to show the room in 3D you see the zone as a big morph object covering the entire space.

By the way, zones also creep up into doorways, openings with no doors, yes, they crawl up to the top of the opening!! no way to stop them!

I hope you people are not just conforming, happy with the way this thing works.

Does anyone use this tool (ArchiCAD for 3D presentations?) Not user friendly at all. They pitch it well, however, it lacks so much

By the way, I have been using ArchiCAD for quite sometime and have managed to get around spitting working drawings that did not need much modeling.

I am now trying to use it to model homes in 3D just to find it at the bottom of the pit for usability. Simple things that are common to most construction practices are so difficult or impossible in ArchiCAD. Yes, some of you are happy working triple creating pieces, who knows, but, I am not.

This BIM tool is broken, it is not intelligent, it does not know we have so many pieces in a home, it can not create them or read them or calculate them.

[Laszlo Nagy]

You didn't really state what you are trying to do.
What do you mean by flooring? A 2D pattern? A 3D model of the actual floor tiles?

I suppose you are aware of Options\Project Preferences\Zones Dialog. There you can specify how and whether Zones should extend into Wall recesses.

[Anonymous]

Yes, I did

"What is the best way to show flooring in the "model?"

[Karl Ottenstein]

xacto,

Your frustration seems like a lack of hands-on training / knowledge. ArchiCAD is an extremely complex piece of software and requires an investment in training/learning to go beyond the basics and become proficient and fast.

Zones can be made to adapt to spaces in a variety of ways. No, they do not have to be visible in 3D - it is actually uncommon to view them in 3D. Zones are not just areas. 3D zones are room volumes (e.g., conditioned air volume) and more. But, they are primarily used to schedule data about spaces. (They may be used visually to do preliminary space programming/massing.)

Composite slabs can have a top veneer building material that is your floor finish for drawings and presentation, but if you need a schedule of finishes-by-room, that data is typically entered into zone field.

[Anonymous]

I was afraid to read that slabs are the best choice.

Zones creeping into openings should not be some setting I need to go and adjust, zones should be able to read, oh, wait, this is an opening, I typically don't creep up on doorways. Simple. If the zone can not do that, then, is not doing what is meant to.

Air volume? Energy values are typically taken from an "envelope" not rooms being conditioned. Anyway that is another topic.

Thanks for the input. I will keep fighting this project and moving on to new pastures.

[Laszlo Nagy]

Be aware that you are not the only one using this software. There is another 200 000 other people out there. So what may be typical or usual for one might not be that way for others.
I think one of the reasons ARCHICAD is great is because it provides one with a lot of options, in this case to define how Zones should flow into those Wall recesses, and if it should be applied to Door AND/OR Window recesses.

[Richard Morrison]

xacto wrote:
What is the best way to show flooring in the "model"?
Making thin slabs does the trick, however, it is so unproductive and horrible because if you make changes, now you have to "manually" change the slabs, feels like I am back in autoCAD making changes everywhere. ugh.

There are shortcuts like eyedropping the slab, deleting it, and then magic-wanding a new slab in the room. Maybe 3 seconds worth of work. Might be nice if it adjusted automatically, but it's far from "horrible."

[Anonymous]

Thanks!

Yes, I've been "wanding" away for a while, however, it is not what we need.
I may sound out of whack in my posts, but, no, I use ArchiCAD on a daily basis, I need to send these messages out there to get some attention and perhaps, hopefully other people can join in and be heard.

It is the same in all tools, there are a lot of "fans" people that defend with cape and spade, even though they know we need changes.

Get this, If I already have built the "Foundation" floor using a slab, now, I have to layer this thing away and wand new "slabs" fix its thickness, elevation, add the proper flooring, then, pick up the parameters, so the next wanders that get built at least have some of the settings in them, then, go back to them and change the flooring, because the settings picked up got to all of them.

Now I have One main slab, and a heck of a lot of little slabs sitting on top acting as "overlaid flooring"... Just typing all that makes me sweat, lol.

Now, here's my client making changes again, "nothing new" right? Fun stuff this ArchiCAD is, I tell you.

Thanks.
Jorge Araya.
GJ Gardner Homes.

[Richard Morrison]

Why don't you just add the predominate flooring (e.g. hardwood) to the main composite slab, and add the slab floors only where it is different (e.g. tile)? That way, you'll only have a few rooms per floor with the slabs. How do you want AC to behave?

[Barry Kelly]

xacto wrote:
Now I have One main slab, and a heck of a lot of little slabs sitting on top acting as "overlaid flooring

My motto (and I am sure I am not the first to say it) is to 'model it like it is built'.
If it is built as one main slab and lots of little finish slabs (timber, carpet, vinyl, etc.) for each room then that is how I would model it.
Yes you could model as one large slab and label the floors as a different finish or add the finishes to a zone stamp but you can not see the finish.
If you model it and can see it then you can list it, quantify it, show it in renders and know that it is accurate.

Barry.