How do you organize your project map?

[Anonymous]

Anyone else really annoyed by the project map in ArchiCAD? How do you guys keep your extremely long list of details and section/elevations organized? How do you find things in your extremely long list of details and seciton/elevations if it's not organized? And with the new auto-referencing feature in markers, you no longer have the reference number in the marker in ArchiCAD. How do you pick the right section/elevation marker right away? Memory? Fah! Forget that!

Just a suggestion but I type the reference number in the ID field! I reverse the reference though. I put the sheet number first then the drawing number. That way the list is organized by sheet. It really makes finding things in the project map a cinch. Plus I can have the markers display the ID in ArchiCAD! Of course you have to use a marker with this capability. The autotext capability in Plotmaker turns off this ID in the marker and replaces it with the correct reference number (very useful in case the ID is wrong in ArchiCAD). If I don't know where to put the detail yet, I leave the field blank if it's an elevation marker, or I put in a generic whole number if it's a detail marker. That way the questionable drawings are always at the top of the list and their presence annoys the poo-poo out of me, because they move the organized views down the list and I always have to scroll to find the details I know about. The fact that I get annoyed will likely make me go to plotmaker and find out where the heck to put the blasted unorganized drawings. Annoyances can be useful sometimes, if you use them correctly. If it didn't annoy me, then I'd just ignore it and my project map would never have the right numbers in it.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Alex wrote:
How do you guys keep your extremely long list of details and section/elevations organized? How do you pick the right section/elevation marker right away?

Hi Alex,

Food for thought as always ... and a beautiful screenshot. 😉

I almost never use Navigator other than to drag a view into a View Set. As soon as I create a detail/section/whatever, I create the view...and only use the view sets from then on. Create as many folders as you want in the view set ... not just one generic "Details" folder.

To pick the right marker, I again use the View Sets (although Navigator works just as well)...because the "Name" is visible (and we all assign meaningful names, as you do in your screenshot, of course!) Right-mouse the section or detail view and pick "Select Section Marker on the Home Story and Zoom to it". Bang, you're there. But, maybe that's not what you meant?

Karl

[Anonymous]

Thank you It is excellent I will adopt it.
This solves one of my issues. The main one for me is how to move pats from one project to another. I miss managing the parts project in the finder, it was extremely easy creating new ones. Of course if one does the same program over and over again the manager is good Unfortunately, I do not repeat to much but tend to reuse details from older jobs. To access and look up these details is ridiculously difficult with the manager.

[Anonymous]

Karl wrote:
To pick the right marker, I again use the View Sets (although Navigator works just as well)...because the "Name" is visible (and we all assign meaningful names, as you do in your screenshot, of course!) Right-mouse the section or detail view and pick "Select Section Marker on the Home Story and Zoom to it". Bang, you're there. But, maybe that's not what you meant?

Okay, yes you are right. This is pretty much the fastest way to do it. But you have to go to the navigator, which is just too much work. I know, not a lot but every bit counts. I hate shifting gears. I love the ability for the marker to display both the elevation/detail reference number and the name of the view. I love it. If Eric doesn't object, I'll be doing it from now on.

[Anonymous]

Adalbert wrote:
Thank you It is excellent I will adopt it.

I'm glad you find it useful. I hope that you are linking your layout books directly to the PLN/PLP now. I can't remember for sure but I seem to remember that you were hesitant to do this for one reason or another. My tip won't work unless you link to the PLN. Well, I suppose you can still use the ID field to organize the project map. But the ID and name in the marker won't convert to drawing reference in Plotmaker unless the views are linked to a PLN.

About your other problem. Sorry, aside from opening the project I know of no way. We do have "project libraries" along with a global library. I'm not quite sure exactly what you are trying to do but maybe that is something to consider. If you want to discuss this further let's do so in the topic you already started.

[Anonymous]

About the above tip, you might think, "so what? I never go to the project map. That's what quickviews are for." Indeed that's mostly true for working in ArchiCAD. Even when you need to go to the project map for one reason or another, all you have to do is open the quickview first and the topmost window will get highlighted in the Project Map.* But here is a real-world reason to keep your Project Map organized. When you sign into a teamwork file, the Project Map is the list displayed, not the quickviews. How aggravating is it to get started signing into teamwork? Does it seem to take way too long to grab the details/elevations that you need? It did for me, until I started organizing the Project Map.

In the pic you can see how keeping the windows organized in the Project Map makes it sooooo much easier to pick your details/elevations. I am team leader and my co-worker is about to start working on the millwork elevations/details. He'll be working on sheet A530. Since I organized the list by sheet, it's a cinch to pick all the windows except the A530 ones. Later I realize that I should have also let him have the A532 windows too. But look at the pic and tell me it's going to take me longer than 60 seconds to change my workspace and unselect those windows. Actually, try more like 20 seconds.

*Personally, I would really like it if GS did this a different way. It's very frustrating to close a window and have the Project Map just jump to an apparantly random (on the list) window. Maybe they can just put some funky icon next to the active window's name, and not change what item is actually selected/highlighted.