Modelling ARCHICAD joinery in 2D and 3D

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Apologies if this topic has been well covered already. My office specialises in high end residential projects. We do a lot of custom joinery but mostly all orthogonal.

I have been experimenting with building joinery with morphs, walls, and slabs. It seems that each tool has its pros and cons.

Morphs
Pros: Relatively easy to manipulate into non-orthogonal shapes. It also has graphic attributes for both horizontal cut and vertical cut.
Cons: In 2D view (e.g. plan), you cannot uniformly stretch the morph. If you try to stretch the edge of the morph in 2D view, it "skewers" the geometry.

Slabs
Pros: Very easy to manipulate in 2D view. Able to stretch in plan view uniformly.
Cons: There is no horizontal cut graphic attribute. Which means if I am building a full height joinery out of a single slab tool, I cannot set line type for horizontal cut.

Walls
Pros: Has graphic attributes for both horizontal and vertical cut.
Cons: Cannot change the thickness graphically - only numerically via the object settings.


I'd be interested in knowing how different people tackle joinery modelling for both 3D presentation and 2D presentation. We have not purchased any of the "add ons" for joinery (e.g. cadimage) in hope that we could tackle joinery design with the native ARCHICAD 20 tools. The modular joinery in ARCHICAD 20 doesn't give me enough flexibility (e.g. I can't even get a joinery kick that offsets from 3 sides).

Thanks,
Ben

[Laura Yanoviak]

I'm not entirely sure what it is you're trying to do, but have you tried a Polygonal Wall?

[MrC]

Van you post a screen shot of the type of custom joinery you wish to create?

[Anonymous]

The polygon wall tool looks very promising - thank you (I never tried it until now).

See attached joinery piece that I made in SketchUp for an old project (before we switched to ARCHICAD). This is the level of detail required in our ARCHICAD residential projects but I'm unsure the best way to go about it.

[Anonymous]

Maybe see if any of the wardrobes in the standard library are any use to you.
Or Cadimage cabinets may do what you need if you have them.

[Anonymous]

When I have to do this type of joinery or any similar, I use modules, which will give me more flexibility in the 2D view because I can draw any fill, lines, etc. and have then in the project as one object.
In the pic, all joinery are made like this build with the different Archicad tools, except for the vanities that are Archicad Library Parts.

Just an Idea... Hope that helps.

[Anonymous]

Thanks arqrivas

What I find difficult about using Modules for smaller items such as joinery (and it may very well be just my lack of expertise) is that there is no feature for editing a Module in place. I.e. you'd have to open the Module in a new instance of ARCHICAD to edit it, then make sure you update in the Hotlink Manager.

Is this your understanding also?

[Anonymous]

benjamin_chan wrote:
Thanks arqrivas

What I find difficult about using Modules for smaller items such as joinery (and it may very well be just my lack of expertise) is that there is no feature for editing a Module in place. I.e. you'd have to open the Module in a new instance of ARCHICAD to edit it, then make sure you update in the Hotlink Manager.

Is this your understanding also?

Yes that is the downside of this method, that is why I made this wish
http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=54896

When working with this project stage I usually have 2 Archicad Instances open, one with the project and one with the module I'm working on.

[Anonymous]

Thanks arqrivas
Voted "Essential" to your wish!

[Steve Jepson]

benjamin_chan wrote:
... (e.g. I can't even get a joinery kick that offsets from 3 sides).

Thanks,
Ben

Turn off the the toe kick. There is very little I can imagine by way of case work in an Architectural set of plans that you can't model very well with ArchiCAD.

Show an example of what frustrates you and perhaps I can show you a modeling solution you will like. ?