Reset Tool To Default

[kittonian]

Been searching all over for this and haven't found an answer. How do you reset a specific tool (i.e. the railing tool or the stair tool) to its default settings. When I say default, I mean if you have never used that tool before, the settings ArchiCAD starts with. I love that the tools remember their previous configuration from the time you used it previously, but when things get out of hand (i.e. you've been trying a number of different things) and you just want to start over instead of remembering everything little option you modified, how do you do this?

Creating a brand new project is not an option, nor is deleting pref files. There really should be a button to click or something to reset the tool to Graphisoft's default, but since there doesn't seem to be, I would love to know if there's a way to make this happen.

[Barry Kelly · Accepted solution]

I think the closest you will get back to a default is to use a favourite to reset the tool.

I guess if you really wanted to you could open the default GS template (or your own template) and create a favourite for each tool - they may even already be there (I know the AUS template has default favourites set up).
Then 'Import' them into your job (so long as your job is based on the same template otherwise you should not get attribute contamination).

Barry.

[kittonian]

That's what I thought. Seems that this might be a pretty nice option as some tools have so many parameters, things can get out of hand. Thanks!

[Karl Ottenstein]

kittonian wrote:
That's what I thought. Seems that this might be a pretty nice option as some tools have so many parameters, things can get out of hand. Thanks!

When you think about it / understand what a "default" is ... Barry's answer is as close as you can get. That's because there is no real "default" in the sense of "neutral"/whatever. Every tool's apparent "out of box" setting is in fact the totality of the settings made for that tool in the template opened for a fresh project - whether the one delivered from Graphisoft or your own. For example, what would the default Layer be? Well, it depends on what layers are available ... and that is all part of the attributes of the template / last opened project / etc.

This is both very powerful and can be a bit frustrating, as you've discovered. Powerful, because you can set up your own defaults via your own custom template. Frustrating, because once you've modified a tool, there is no way to return to your own default... unless you've created a Favorite for each tool with its initial settings. 😉

[Aaron Bourgoin]

Karl, I take your point, but Curtain Wall, Stair and Railing are the next generation tools in the AC Suite. These are the ones that cry out for a button that says, take me back to nothing but remember the components I made from the sub-objects.

It's frustrating in the extreme given the pages and pages of parameters for each sub-object. It calls for more discipline and rigour than I can sometime manage in a day.