Re-Set Element Parameters

[Anonymous]

Hello,
I spend way too much time re-setting element parameters.

I have used a template but since going from 32bit to 64bit I have started again.

I want the display in AC14 of the object not to be purple and some useless pen size configuration.

Can I globally set pen sizes and colour display for a group of parametric objects like doors and windows?

How do you refined users get around this time waster without having to resort to a new template set up every time we get an upgrade?

[Anonymous]

To start with, your templates should work just fine from one version to the next. They may need or want some minor tweaking but there is no reason I know of to start from scratch. (The one exception to this that I am aware of is the menu and toolbar settings in the Work Environment but this is not germane to the present topic.)

With library parts there are several approaches to setting up your standards. Unfortunately you can't set up detailed default preferences to reside in or be automatically applied to the default or third party libraries. The options are to use favorites, set up templates/modules/legends or customize the library parts in your own office standard library.

1. Favorites: This is pretty straight forward and the easiest way to accomplish what you want. It allows you to set up any element the way you want it and then save those settings to a named list. This list is available as a palette so they are available in all views. For more info look it up in the manual.

2. Templates/Modules/Legends: These are various ways of setting up collections of parts for future reuse. There are too many ways to set these up for me to go into much detail. One example would be an electrical legend which contains all the symbols and such that you need for drawing an electrical plan. This has the advantage of also providing the drawing that you place in the layout set. Another would be a collection of doors and windows set up for a particular project type and saved as a module. This can them be placed and used as the source for the parts and deleted when no longer needed. Most of the commercial template (such as the Master Template by Eric Bobrow) make extensive use of these.

3. Customized Parts: The above methods allow you to keep the default and third party libraries alone which is good for forward compatibilities and upgrades. If you have parts that you want to settle on as company standards you can easily open them in the library part editor, adjust the defaults and then rename and save them to you office standard library. This does not require any scripting/coding. The only difficulty is some parts have rather long parameter lists but they are mostly pretty clearly organized.

[Anonymous]

Matthew, thanks for your time and guidance it was very helpful.

I will try and use my old template in AC14 64bit, with my favorites saved in it and see what I need to do to tweak it up for further use.

Would be good if we could set parameters globally for object types or have an option where a layer controls the pen size not the object or something similar?

Thanks Again.

[David Maudlin]

mthd wrote:
I want the display in AC14 of the object not to be purple and some useless pen size configuration.

Another option is a custom Pen Set. For example, if you want all door swing pens to be a certain color and weight, and one pen number is used as a default for this parameter in the library, and it is the wrong color and weight, use a customized pen set to set that pen number to the desired color and weight.

David

[Anonymous]

Thanks David for that tip.

Sounds like a good template should have its own custom pen sets?

Does anybody know if the ArchiCAD Master template does a good job?