Modeling
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Tip: Fill timber sections with an 'x'

jamespage11
Participant
Hi.

Has anyone else worked out a quick and easy way to do this?

(see picture)

The convention, in South Africa at least (not too sure about the rest of the world), for showing new timber in section is with a cross from corner to corner, but I have to touch up "by hand" all my purlins, rafters, wall plates, etc, etc, etc in section and it can be a bit tedious. I thought I might be able to create a new fill that could stretch to fill the cut surface rather than tile, but that doesn't seem to be possible.

Any suggestions?
Cape Town, South Africa

AC 24
Windows 10
Intel Core i3-4160 3.6GHz
NVidia GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER
12 REPLIES 12
Ralph Wessel
Mentor
jamespage11 wrote:
The convention, in South Africa at least (not too sure about the rest of the world), for showing new timber in section is with a cross from corner to corner[]. Any suggestions?
Try modelling the framing with OBJECTiVE. Many of the timber objects bundled with the software provide an option to show a single or double line in section (see image).
TimberSection.jpg
Ralph Wessel BArch
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
Link wrote:
It can be done with complex profiles. And I know it has been discussed here before as I was part of one of the conversations. Try a search with complex profiles and top plates and/or studs.

Cheers,
Link.
As Link said, this has been discussed countless times with profiles given for beams, plates within walls, etc.

The attached image summarizes what you need to do for a beam...

1. Make a square the size of the SMALLEST timber/beam you will ever have. (Profiles can be stretched bigger, but never smaller.)

2. Use the Split command or shortcut to cut this square into four triangles. (Select square, split once from corner to corner. Now select the two resulting triangles and split from the opposite corners - you now have 4 triangles.)

3. Assign DIFFERENT fills to adjacent triangles: ArchiCAD will only show a line between fills if they are different in name/index number (appearance is irrelevant). In this case, you need two fills, indicated as "A" and "B" in the screenshot. If you need a particular fill and do not have another that looks like it, just duplicate the original and use the duplicate for 'B'.

4. Make sure that you have the Horizontal and Vertical stretch enabled and the stretch lines on the outside faces of your square as shown (default).

5. Save the profile.

When you use this profile with the beam or wall tool, the cross will show up in section. Since you have made it a stretchy profile, you can specify whatever dimensions are required for your beam and the "x" will show up properly.

Cheers,
Karl

PS I don't believe the (limited) START edition of ArchiCAD has this feature.
Timber-showing-x-in-section.png
One of the forum moderators
AC 27 USA and earlier   •   macOS Ventura 13.6.6, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
Apologies to everyone who posted in this thread! A bug in the forum moderator code deleted the original thread while I was editing a copy of it in the Tips forum. I've copied what was left back here.

(Missing now are some discussion of the cost-effectiveness of Objective, Link's original message and some thank you comments.)
One of the forum moderators
AC 27 USA and earlier   •   macOS Ventura 13.6.6, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
Anonymous
Not applicable
Karl wrote:

The attached image summarizes what you need to do for a beam...


And my comment saying that this forum desperately need a like button. Honestly.

ArchiCAD 25 7000 USA - Windows 10 Pro 64x - Dell 7720 64 GB 2400MHz ECC - Xeon E3 1535M v6 4.20GHz - (2) 1TB M.2 PCIe Class 50 SSD's - 17.3" UHD IPS (3840x2160) - Nvidia Quadro P5000 16GB GDDR5 - Maxwell Studio/Render 5.2.1.49- Multilight 2 - Adobe Acrobat Pro - ArchiCAD 6 -25

Anonymous
Not applicable
don't forget this Joist object from the object depository

NCornia
Graphisoft
Graphisoft
I was reverse engineering the out of the box (US version) complex profile entitled : "FNDN Conc. 10" w/ Brick Ledge" and noticed that the mud sill is created with a single fill, but has the "X" in the timber. It took me a second to figure it out but after zooming in as far as ArchiCAD would let me I found that the "X" was actually a hole in the single fill. It will show in section.
timber_x.jpg
Nicholas Cornia
Technical Support Team - GRAPHISOFT North America
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Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
NCornia wrote:
I was reverse engineering the out of the box (US version) complex profile entitled : "FNDN Conc. 10" w/ Brick Ledge" and noticed that the mud sill is created with a single fill, but has the "X" in the timber. It took me a second to figure it out but after zooming in as far as ArchiCAD would let me I found that the "X" was actually a hole in the single fill. It will show in section.
Right. I posted about that issue in the past: this hole also needlessly increases the polygon count burden for ArchiCAD. While the default template delivered with AC (at least the US version) is not really designed for real work, it should at least illustrate some best practices with the out-of-box experience. Sadly, it doesn't, and so new users struggle, have to find tips and downloads here, have a supportive reseller who gives them a decent template, and/or get customized training.

Cheers,
Karl
One of the forum moderators
AC 27 USA and earlier   •   macOS Ventura 13.6.6, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
NCornia
Graphisoft
Graphisoft
Shoot! It is too bad that a seemingly elegant method is actually more of a hinderance. Oh well, thank you for pointing that out. You have prevented me from developing a bad habit.
Nicholas Cornia
Technical Support Team - GRAPHISOFT North America
ARCHICAD on Twitter
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GRAPHISOFT Help Center