Massing In ArchiCad?

[Anonymous]

Hi,
I was wandering what are the TOOLS & PROCESS others use to do the massing of buildings, which in turn would be used as a base for creating walls, slabs and roofs.
This is the process I go through:
1. Creating the rectangular floor slabs at each story.
2. Create a Slab enveloping the floor slabs with thickness of slab as story height at each level.
3. Cutting up the building with the SEO.
4. Tracing the slab in step 2 with the wall, object (for curtain walls) and roof tools.
Any thoughts and feed back?
Thanks,
Joseph Harouni

[Anonymous]

It sounds like you have a pretty good process. What do you mean by "enveloping" slabs. In preliminary (massing) studies I usually just make the slabs the floor to floor height to start and change them to the correct values when I am ready to add walls. I often use the mesh tool to place the surrounding buildings as simple grey forms. The roof faces can be a bit fussy, but the simple clay model look has a nice effect.

[Anonymous]

Matthew wrote:
What do you mean by "enveloping" slabs.

My actual slabs at each floor is the foot print and inside this other enveloping slab, which extends from floor to floor. The outer surfaces of this enveloping slab represents the exterior skin of the building. Which following Carving out these enveloping elements in 3D I can trace them for creating actual walls, Objects and roofs at each floor.
Any other better process?
Joseph

[Anonymous]

I recommend against the overlapping slabs (if I understand you correctly). They won't clean up or section correctly. I suppose this can be managed by layers. I keep the massing models as simple as possible since I typically abandon them once schematic design starts and walls are put in.

[Anonymous]

Matthew wrote:
I recommend against the overlapping slabs.

How about using Mesh tool as the enveloping element for massing purposes?
Thanks,
Joseph

[Anonymous]

The mesh is also a reasonable approach. I generally only use it for the context buildings (simple grey boxes) as I said. I assume that what you want is to continue to maintain the massing model through schematic design (and perhaps beyond?).

Since I have always abandoned the massing study once the design model starts, I don't have any real experience with what works best in this case. You'll just have to see what works best for you.

[Anonymous]

Sketchup? amazing, download the demo

there's a sketchup to AC plugin. haven't used it so can't say how well it works but maybe someone else could chime in here

bill

[Anonymous]

Matthew wrote:
I assume that what you want is to continue to maintain the massing model through schematic design (and perhaps beyond?).

Good catch Matthew, "schematic design (and perhaps beyond". As the next post mentioned SketchUp is a good way; I have it and love it But I was at Eureka seminar presentation. They actually created a massing of building and saved it as a modeling plan then worked on the current file, adding elements and detailing it. When a new design idea came to them, they went back to the massing model make the changes and copy paste the changes to the main plan. As the result the design could change with out going back and forth between different programs (SketchUp) and detailed plans would stay intact and up to date.
Thanks,
Joseph

[Anonymous]

Joseph,

Perhaps you should keep the massing model separate as you describe and hotlink it into the design model. The details will depend on the specifics of your practice and the project. Pretty soon you may be the expert on this subject around here.

[Anonymous]

Hello,
Does anyone know where to get the Sketchup to Archicad plugin?
I did not find it in the Schetchup site.

Thanks,
Peter Devlin