Developing a Firms Image

[Anonymous]

I have been assigned the task of developing/strengthing our firms image through the use of our C.D.'s. Being quite new to ArchiCAD I am feeling overwhelmed with all the possibilities!! Applying sun shadows is the extent of my knowledge on this topic yet I know that ARchiCAD is capable of great graphic presentation for CD's. Is anyone willing to send/post some examples of sections, details, or elevations that go beyond just typical line work so I can get an idea of what ArchiCAD can do in this area.

[Andy Thomson]

First off, I understand what you are after. I have worked for companies that strove to produce document sets that looked as good as the architecture that they represented, extremely tight and very aesthetically spare. In the UK, there is a trend among the larger firms to have very clean, simple TB's, and very well produced document sets, really beautiful to look at as well as easy to navigate, and gave of course all the relevant detail and nothing extraneous.

There are some aspects of using archicad that make elevated representation of glass difficult, such as glass guards and/or railings with stuff behind that you want to show, and stuff further behind that you do not want to show. Revit does this very easily by fading elements 'behind' other stuff, you have to 'fake it' with ArchiCad. Currently, we use two 'clones' of the elevation views, one for presentation (shading and/or shadows) and one for CD's (none of that stuff). We have also done presentation drawings where we composite two views (presentation AND construction) and crop one or the other, to see exactly the LOD (level of detail) we want where we wanted to.

IMO, AC9 was better in some respects than 11 is now, even now, we still do not have true dither patterns (partial transparency) in elevations - as we do in plans.

I mention all of this because you mention 'a lot of steel and glass' so there are a bunch of tricks here for strong representation and clear definition of complex assemblies involving transparency.

I may test some elevated multilayer glass assemblies to see how this can be done in 11, I haven't needed to do this lately...