Complex Profiles : Transfer from one project to another ?

[Anonymous]

I have saved several custom profiles in one project - now busy on another but I can't find how you can retrieve custom profiles you have created in one project and load them into a current project - do you have to draw these again ?

Any help would be useful,
Thanks
Richard Hewitt
AC12 2420 Windows XP2

[Anonymous]

richard wrote:
I have saved several custom profiles in one project - now busy on another but I can't find how you can retrieve custom profiles you have created in one project and load them into a current project - do you have to draw these again ?

Any help would be useful,
Thanks
Richard Hewitt
AC12 2420 Windows XP2

Go to OPTIONS - ELEMENT ATTRIBUTES - ATTRIBUTE MENAGER and import your profiles !
I hope this helps

[Anonymous]

Necko
Much appreciated - I have spent quite a bit of today trying to find how to do this - I could not see any mention of this in the help files under complex profiles etc - so, thanks again

Richard Hewitt

[Dwight]

And when you have several Archicad sessions open at once, there's always copy and paste......

[fuzzytnth3]

Dwight wrote:
And when you have several Archicad sessions open at once, there's always copy and paste......

Unless of course you are trying to update a Complex Profile (CP) that you have already copy n' pasted from another drawing that has it's CP now modified.

Then you have to go the Attribute Manager route otherwise it will stay with the out of date version in the file you are trying to update.

[Erika Epstein]

fuzzytnth3 wrote:
Unless of course you are trying to update a Complex Profile (CP) that you have already copy n' pasted from another drawing that has it's CP now modified.

Then you have to go the Attribute Manager route otherwise it will stay with the out of date version in the file you are trying to update.

I just had this come up. I happened to have the building file and site file into which the building was hot-linked, both open. The edited complex profile from the building file kept showing as the old complex profile in the site file. Updating hotlinks, copy/paste a wall with the complex profile in question, none of these worked.

Attribute manager was the way to go as you must choose between append or overwrite.

I do wonder why copy/paste didn't result in a complex_profile(1) denoting a second instance of a same name item. Anyone know?

[Karl Ottenstein]

This is actually a deeper topic than it might appear on the surface and one of the reasons that firms find that they need to hire a consultant ... days later when they discover they have problems.

Copy/Paste can happen in a couple of ways, but I consider both 'dangerous' unless you are just playing or doing one-offs.

The easiest way is to copy a building element that uses the desired profile - e.g. a wall - and paste it into the other project, and then delete the wall. You'll be left with just the attributes that came with the wall ...which will often be more than just the profile(!).

The other way is to copy the contents of the Profile Editor and paste them into an open Profile Editor in the other ArchiCAD. Note that stretch lines, etc all do come across. Any fills will NOT come across, rather, they will be matched to fills by index number in the file into which you are pasting.

In either Copy/Paste scenario, you have no control over the index number assigned to the profile. You can only see these index numbers in Attribute Manager, which is one of the reasons that it is the only way (IMHO) that you should ever transfer attributes between files for 'real work'.

It is almost assured that when you paste into the new file, that the profile will have a different index number than in the original file - and that some of the fills and materials will also not match. You are then doomed if you hope to hotlink the two files into a master site, for example, because there is no way that the attributes in the master site file can make the elements of each hotlinked file appear the same.

Attribute management requires patience and thoroughness to be able to re-use your work in other projects or to combine files via hotlinking - and also to avoid conflicts with the pre-defined attributes used as defaults by the ArchiCAD libraries.

[Editorial rant / Advertisement]: As I've commented in the past, as has Link who also teaches these concepts thoroughly to his clients, Attribute Management is a bit of the 'dirty underwear' of ArchiCAD. You cannot be an effective ArchiCAD user without really, really understanding attributes, but it is something that is glossed over by too many tutorials and trainers. And, the inconsistency between index numbers being honored before names in most cases, but names before index numbers in others, just makes it all the more difficult.

Cheers,
Karl

[Anonymous]

Hello Karl,
Thank you !!
Some of what you say I knew about but some I only suspected.
Your clear explanations and alerts to issues is very useful.
I am going to copy your entire post into a text document
and put it in my AC Notes folder.
Peter Devlin

[Erika Epstein]

Karl,
Thanks for your quick and excellent post. You should put this in the tips and tricks section here & in the wiki.

I'd already created a text file for it; Peter its nice to hear others do the same. I have enough entries from Karl to publish a book

[Karl Ottenstein]

Thanks, Peter and Erika.

There's something spontaneous about writing a quick post here vs writing a 'real' article with screenshots on the Wiki...or a book chapter. There are so many little details to flesh to explain it all properly...

Thanks,
Karl