Plotmaker-to-Archicad copying...

[owen]

Hi all,

Can someone from Graphisoft (well anyone really) please explain WHY i cannot copy text between ArchiCad and Plotmaker?

It copies it as a picture! uh what!?

I know it has been this way since the dawn of time but i just have never asked why .... but now as i stare hours of work that should not need to be done i will. And it is not limited to just text as everyone knows.

The reason is i want to copy our standard titleblocks, which were drawn directly in Plotmaker (using 2 very complicated tools called 'Lines' and 'Text', common to both Archicad and Plotmaker) and paste them into one ArchiCad file where they can be centrally managed and safe from little 'improvements' people make from Layout Book to Layout Book.

This job would be really quick if i could just copy from Plotmaker 9 and paste into ArchiCad 9. I mean they ARE part of an integrated package right?

Well i can't and as a result will be wasting hours upon hours redoing work that has already been done (it just happens to be in the wrong place now).

Explanation please?

Sorry for the tone but i am really getting sick of completely illogical problems/working methods in Archicad/Plotmaker

[owen]

... wrong forum

[Anonymous]

Try to do it on archicad 7.

[TomWaltz]

The reason is i want to copy our standard titleblocks, which were drawn directly in Plotmaker (using 2 very complicated tools called 'Lines' and 'Text', common to both Archicad and Plotmaker) and paste them into one ArchiCad file where they can be centrally managed and safe from little 'improvements' people make from Layout Book to Layout Book.

We've done this numerous times on multiple projects.

What OS are you on? I'm assuming this is the release version of Archicad 9?

Can you tell us anything more about your system that might help?

[Aussie John]

From memory dont you get an option to select "as drawing" or "as separate elements"
From my experience going from Plotmaker to Archicad is never satafactory. Circles for instance come in as segemented lines (GS what is with this!!)

I remember working on a job where someone earlier had stuffed up and had copied the potmaker (pmk) elevations and pasted into Archicad and because had used a different scale in archicad they were resized. Took me a while to work out what was going on.

[Anonymous]

owen wrote:
The reason is i want to copy our standard titleblocks, which were drawn directly in Plotmaker (using 2 very complicated tools called 'Lines' and 'Text', common to both Archicad and Plotmaker) and paste them into one ArchiCad file where they can be centrally managed and safe from little 'improvements' people make from Layout Book to Layout Book.

I too find it annoying that simple drawings cannot easily be copied to ArchiCAD from PlotMaker. You can do what you want with DWG though.

On the other hand, I don't see why having your title blocks in ArchiCAD is useful. If it is just to preserve their original, unmodified state, you can simply save them as PlotMaker drawings and open or import them as needed. Another option is to create a layout book to use as a template that contains all the various standard master sheets you need. These can then be imported as needed into any project layout book.

[Djordje]

For your purpose, pasting to ArchiCAD is counterproductive.

Titleblocks are preserved in the Master sheets in the Template layout book.

The person responsible maintains them. It is a matter of file and access management who can open this LBK and edit it.

Create a master that is as it should be. All other projects use that master. End of story.

Creativity should be expressed in the design, not fiddling with the templates or general workspace settings.

Just IMHO, of course!

PS Oh yes, copying from PlotMaker and pasting to ArchiCAD is a complete mess! But I feel that it is not really the point here