Detailed sections

[Anonymous]

I am using AC12 to teach architectural drafting to high school students, and we are having problems getting any kind of detail in our sections. I expected a BIM program to generate sections with plates, studs, joists, etc., but they are all missing in our sections. How can we generate sections with the detail expected for production drawings? Do we have to manually draw them in?

[Anonymous]

I think your expectations are more advanced than the software
but
If you model framing (or whatever) then it is "automatic" in each section that you create. As for wall framing there are some cool add-ons that can do it for you but they take some work to understand how they work. Free from Cadimage for educational users.

Years ago we were 'promised' automatic detailing - but it has not eventuated......partly I guess because there are so many variables....
so the user always has to judge what to model and what to draw in 2d over the section of the model. This actually can be more involved than you think and is a source of debate in many companies....

good luck!

[Richard Morrison]

This may be not what you want to hear at this point, but I think your high school students will be better off with a program like Chief Architect, that does automatic framing and will be capable of generating sections that are far more realistic for residential construction than ArchiCAD is capable of. Also, the learning curve is less steep. There are, of course, advantages to ArchiCAD for professional work, but in high school, I'm not sure it's the most appropriate. What you want to do is possible with ArchiCAD, but is more work to get there.

Further, I suspect that Chief Architect has a pretty well developed high school program with a number of other teachers in your situation, and an educational online forum section. I think it also has a program of low-cost or free academic licenses. ArchiCAD will make more sense, I think, for architectural students at the college level, who are doing more conceptual type of work.

[Anonymous]

Hi Dave,

I presume when you say 'architectural drafting' you don't mean just drawing things with the 2d tools? ArchiCAD (as I'm sure you know) is a three dimension modeller, which can use intelligent components to construct a virtual building. If something isn't modelled, it wont appear automatically in the sections and will have to be added in 2d. Addons, as rwallis mentions, can help you to add complicated 3d objects to the model 'automatically'.

To get decent accurate & consistent construction drawings, the building needs to be modelled to a certain level of detail which tends to depend on how the drawings are to be used.

Generally you would only model the parts of the building you would typically see on a 1:50 section. Any more than this and these drawings get cluttered and more difficult to read. Extra detail would generally be added only in the larger scale details that are extracted from these main sections. You can use any of the 2d tools and library parts to do this.

To create items such as plates capture the profile of the wall to use as a custom complex profile and add the plates manually to the top and bottom using different fills. See this thread for the best way to construct this - http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=123919.

This thread maybe useful also http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=26058

For items such as joists look at the library parts as there is probably a joist object somewhere. Place these on plan and stretch to size, and these will appear correctly on any sections that cut through them.

Hope that gives you some ideas. Good luck!

[Erika Epstein]

-In imperial we model to 1/4" scale (1:50 metric):wink:

In contrast to Richard (aren't forums great ?) I would like to see you and your students stay with archicad. It's not meant to be a 2D drafting program although its 2D tools are quite good. The built-in framing add-ons should be very helpful as you can see the result in 3D, not separate drawings. It should be very helpful teaching how buildings go together.

There are a series of how to use archicad articles by a several different people in AESbytes tips and tricks section. Check through the archives. You can save pdfs of each one for easy distribution.

http://www.aecbytes.com/tipsandtricks.html

Also, check out the online tutorials on graphisofts' website.

HTH

[Anonymous]

Thanks, everyone. I was afraid that I was expecting more of the software than it could deliver. I just assumed that for the money we spent on this product that it would out-perform Chief Architect. It's a shame that my students will actually have to step backwards to get the quality expected in detailed sections.

[Erika Epstein]

Dave,
Shame on you!
How are your students to learn how buildings are constructed if someone/thing else does their work for them?

[Karl Ottenstein]

Dave wrote:
Thanks, everyone. I was afraid that I was expecting more of the software than it could deliver. I just assumed that for the money we spent on this product that it would out-perform Chief Architect. It's a shame that my students will actually have to step backwards to get the quality expected in detailed sections.

I'm confused on a couple of things. First, that you paid something. The EDU version is free. What is it that you paid for?

Second, that you expect any software to provide automatic details without some up-front design thought. Sure, something might do automatic framing - but it may have nothing to do with how the systems SHOULD be framed based on the aesthetic, loading, seismic, wind and other factors.

ArchiCAD makes it pretty easy to provide a high level of detail in your sections through complex profiles and modeling. Creating the complex profile is simple drafting. Using it is quick modeling, with detail appearing in every section cut.

Cheers,
Karl

[Arcadia]

The Cadimage rapid detailer available from www.cadimagetools.com has all the 2D stuff you need to just add on to the 3D section to get that detailed look you are after. I use it for all my sections and quickly end up with a section that looks like it was drafted compeltely in 2D with all the plates, noggins, reo mesh etc that you would expect. There is a demo on youtube. It simply is not worth the time modelling fine detail like this when it only appears on a section and can be quickly and easily be overlayed in 2D.