Newbie questions

[Tom Krowka]

I am a new user, (migrated from Architectural Desktop) and have a few questions. Any help would be appreciated.

1. How do I make the same set of stairs appear both on the upper and lower floor, but look different. (arrow down on second floor, arrow up on first floor, with different stairs with dashed lines)

2. Will the zones color print? I'd like to keep the text (area and room name) but turn off the fill.

3. Every time I open the 3D window, I get an error message "errors occured during last operation", but it opens anyway. Any way to find out what the error is and fix it?

4. Modules.....I'd like to show the first floor and the roof plan on the site plan. Is there a separate module for the first floor and the floor plan which would be stacked on each other, or would the module be a complete model with the appropriate layers turned on or off in the site plan view?

Thanks for the help in advance.

Tom

[Anonymous]

wkarch wrote:
1. How do I make the same set of stairs appear both on the upper and lower floor, but look different. (arrow down on second floor, arrow up on first floor, with different stairs with dashed lines)

It's only possible to show the dash part on the base level, the entire stair on the upper level. For this, you have to set that the stair is displayed or its own level + level above (at least). The stair must be set up to be storey dependent (in the stair properties window, not in Stairmaker (I'm assuming you're talking about stairs created with stairmaker).

wkarch wrote:
2. Will the zones color print? I'd like to keep the text (area and room name) but turn off the fill.

You have to switch the zone color of in the display option. This dialog is divided in 2 part : the first part affects what's displayed on screen, the second affects what's displayed on screen and what will be printed/plotted

wkarch wrote:
3. Every time I open the 3D window, I get an error message "errors occured during last operation", but it opens anyway. Any way to find out what the error is and fix it?

This must certainly be a problem in a loaded library part (error occuring during the creation of the 3D model)...

wkarch wrote:
4. Modules.....I'd like to show the first floor and the roof plan on the site plan. Is there a separate module for the first floor and the floor plan which would be stacked on each other, or would the module be a complete model with the appropriate layers turned on or off in the site plan view?

You will have to make this kind of presentation with Plotmaker : import your 3 plans and place them on the same layout within Plotmaker

[fuzzytnth3]

wkarch wrote:
1. How do I make the same set of stairs appear both on the upper and lower floor, but look different. (arrow down on second floor, arrow up on first floor, with different stairs with dashed lines)
Tom

For me normal drawing convention is that all arrows point UP so the way Stairmaker behaves is the way to go

wkarch wrote:
2. Will the zones color print? I'd like to keep the text (area and room name) but turn off the fill.
Tom

You can control this via the Display Options and setting up a QuickView to remember the setting

wkarch wrote:
3. Every time I open the 3D window, I get an error message "errors occured during last operation", but it opens anyway. Any way to find out what the error is and fix it?
Tom

Another approach would be to switch off half of the active layers, regen the 3d window if there is no error message then you know the problem is with an element on one of those layers that have been switched off (or vice versa) to narrow it down repeat the process until you have found the layer with the element that is causing the problem.

Once you have that layer select half of the objects on that layer, regen the 3d as before and repeat until you have narrowed it down to a specific element.

Having said all that the most common error messages are generated by slabs with invalid holes or curved edges that taper down to a very fine point.

If it's a problem with a library object then the Report Window will tell you which object is causing the problem. Adjust your preferences (Imaging & Calculation) for more detailed Reports to show specific information about what is causing the error.

wkarch wrote:
4. Modules.....I'd like to show the first floor and the roof plan on the site plan. Is there a separate module for the first floor and the floor plan which would be stacked on each other, or would the module be a complete model with the appropriate layers turned on or off in the site plan view?
Tom

While I have used the PlotMaker route I prefer to do this in ArchiCAD. Main reason is that you just need to set up one Layer Set rather than having to faff with the layer settings of three different plot files.

I'm not quite sure why you want both an upper floor plan and the roof plan to show at the same time but this is what I would do...

Set up a separate Site Plan pln file and a Building pln file. In your Site plan set up a two Hotlinked Module,Place Module(ie xref a module) change the Hotlink from "module" to "solo project" (see image attached below) and link directly to the Building pln file of the first floor the other of the Roof Plan. You can then use a layer set to display what you want of the site, first floor and roof plans.