How to Extrude in ArchiCAD ?

[Anonymous]

hi there,

i am new to ArchiCAD and could anyone please tell me how we can use extrude (as in autoCAD) in ArchiCAD.

Regards,

>>>---rd----->

[Petros Ioannou]

David,
usually it is very hard to do that on top of an Acad DWG.
Usually walls are drawn as lines -polylines and so if you try to use the magic wand on such elements you get a wall running across the outline of the original wall. For a single wall (4 lines in AutoCAD you will get 4 walls in Archicad. It works if you wave walls drawn as single lines but it is a rare case. You can magic wand inside these polylines with the polygonal wall but you will end up with more problems on windows - doors etc.

Anyway the Magic Wand tool is a function that every CAD application should have.... it is always fun to see their faces when you present it to autocad users


Petros

[David Maudlin]

Petros wrote:
David,
usually it is very hard to do that on top of an Acad DWG.
Usually walls are drawn as lines -polylines and so if you try to use the magic wand on such elements you get a wall running across the outline of the original wall. For a single wall (4 lines in AutoCAD you will get 4 walls in Archicad. It works if you wave walls drawn as single lines but it is a rare case. You can magic wand inside these polylines with the polygonal wall but you will end up with more problems on windows - doors etc.

Petros:

Point taken, obviously from experience.

Thanks,
David

[TomWaltz]

Petros wrote:
David,
usually it is very hard to do that on top of an Acad DWG.
Usually walls are drawn as lines -polylines and so if you try to use the magic wand on such elements you get a wall running across the outline of the original wall. For a single wall (4 lines in AutoCAD you will get 4 walls in Archicad. It works if you wave walls drawn as single lines but it is a rare case. You can magic wand inside these polylines with the polygonal wall but you will end up with more problems on windows - doors etc.

Anyway the Magic Wand tool is a function that every CAD application should have.... it is always fun to see their faces when you present it to autocad users

I have to agree.

The magic wand is really great for Archicad drawings where walls with doors in them are continuous elements, but a wall from AutoCAD will magic wand like this:

[Haneef Tayob]

rajeshd wrote:

I have got alot of drawings in dwg (AutoCAD) format and i want ro utilize them so that i don't have trace them in archiCAD.

Here's my few cents:

This is really not a problem with ArchiCad. Whenever I need to work on any old project done in AutoCad, I open it in Archicad and make any amendments using ArchiCad techniques.

Most of the times I don't need to convert the entire Autocad drawing elements to ArchiCad 3d elements. i.e old walls remain as lines until I need to amend them. Besides I often don't have the time to redraw them. I've also done sections/elevations where I've overlapped 2d elevations from AutoCad onto Archicad sections (this does get messy at times). My personal view is that even if you don't want convert the original 2-d items to 3-d, Archicad is still a better program for 2-d than Autocad.

If you merge old drawings, make sure AC is set to a matching scale, i.e. don't open what was a 1:50 drawing while AC is set as 1:100

[Aaron Bourgoin]

The magic wand tool will always try and interpret the lines for conversion as Tom's wonderful Arabic gate example shows.

However, If you don't want ArchiCAD to guess, then highlight the lines you want to convert and the Magic Wand tool will filter out the rest.

This is also where the keyboard shortcuts for adjust and intersect come in handy and you can make the conversions pretty quickly. The spacebar is truly your friend.

Tom's graphic also shows how important the reference line is to the process.