Everyday Problems and Struggles

[Anonymous]

Hey Guys,
I was wondering what types of problems everyone encounters with their users everyday? Or at least most days? What kinds of things do you find difficult to do in Archicad if you don't know it well? How do you help your users overcome these struggles.? Like Stairs and Curtainwall. Now I am not looking for solutions I was just thinking we could all start making a list and perhaps it would make it easier on all of use if we new what the common problems were. Then we can start talking about users. I'll Start with my list:

1. Stairs
2. Curtainwall
3. Creating Sections and Elevations
4. Detailing
5. Sloped Roofs
6. Dimensioning
7. Mesh Tool and Sitework
8. Elevators
9. Curving a Wall that Would be a Custom Profile
10. Columns, Beams, and Cross-Bracing
11. Cutting a Hole in a Slab
12. Linking one Detail to Multiple Tags
13. Custom Object Creationa nd Modification
14. Sun Screens
15. Curved Roofs
16. Flat Roofs with Tapered Insulation
17. Modifing Doors
18. Retaining Walls
19. Multiple Floor Heights on One floor Level (Multiple Stories or Single Story)
20. Coil Doors
21. Creating a Wall with Multiple Wall Segmetns and Removing the Extra Linework
22. Creating a Stair from Slabs witha Custom Railing
23. Stair Sections
24. Railings on a Balcony or Loft
25. Column Enclosures
26. Bemolition and Existing Building Work (Grayscale and Dashed)
27. Fire Rated Partitions (Priorites through Layer Control)
28. Screenwalls

That is my list so far. Anyone else have anything that they get asked about frequently be new or exisitng users that we think it might be good to document a best practice? Hopefully we can gather alot of information on this post then start answering.

[TomWaltz]

PivoArch wrote:
We could get started here I guess. I would say Object Creation, Fire Ratings, and Demo with Existing are gonna the major ones.

OK... what are the problems you are having with them?

Of the 3, let's start off with Objects & Fire ratings, since they are probably the simplest. We'll get them out of the way first..... (demo could go on for a while!)

[Anonymous]

I wouldn't say we are having problems as much as I am looking for a best practice. What would be the best way to should users how to create and manipulate a custom object. What level of GDl should we get into if any and and what point should you use an object versus a module.
As for fire ratings that is probably gonna be the more complicated than you think due mostly to the complexity of the buildings we design and the codes that go along with them. So let me take a moment to explain how we would like to document a firewall and my theory on how to do that.
When we create what we call a code sheet we typically show a line of varying dashes that match the thickness of the wall on the play in a grey. Sort of like a poche with dashes. The different dashes would indicate a 1 hour wall or 2 hour and so on. These ratings sometime show on only the code sheets and sometimes on all disciplines sheets depending on the area of the world the building is being built in.
At the moment my theory on this is to build a composite with the dash in it, now the problem with this is that we do not want to show the rest of the composite on the code sheets (i.e. drywall or cmu). It would be greate if I could customize the model view options to make this work but I can't so....What I am thinking is to create a layer for fire rated partitions that would have walls on it with no height that would use a composite that would be only the dashed lines. Set said layer to a different priority than the regular walls so as not to effect clean ups. Then you layer sets to control the viewing of the walls on the varying sheets. The downside to this is that you must make sure to update the fire rated walls when you update the regular walls. This is not so different from our old way in autocad so it's not the end of the world.

Any thoughts?

[Laura Yanoviak]

TomWaltz wrote:
What Detailer Tutorials are you using?

The "ArchiCAD 10 Detailer Users Guide" published by Graphisoft and the accompanying tutorials.

PivoArch -- Another one for your list: SEOs

[Andy Thomson]

PivoArch,

I am intimitely familiar with your fireplan workflow crisis. We require to do exactly the drawings you mention as part of our permit submissions, plans and sections, showing the rated assemblies with 1, 1.5, 2, 3hr dashed lines with ghosted backgrounds.

ArchiCad used to have a model-view option (formerly known as Display Options) that allowed the walls to be seen as their reference lines only, presumably for siteplans only. I had hoped that in future, these reference lines could also be shown with the respective DASHED lines we need for the given, fire-rated composites we specify for each job.

However, we no longer even have the show reference line only option anymore - BUT! Composites allow us to used dashed lines (why only 15?? Why aren't all linetypes available as skin lines?).

Given the ideas gleaned from the pen-table thread, I am going to make a new fireplan pen table, that will ghost everything but the centreline of the composite structures - I will be splitting the core into two halves, divided by the fire separation line (see screenshot) - just starting to work on this now...

[Andy Thomson]

It worked! So I use the Ghost penset (everything ghosted except this fat FIRE pen, and change the model view options as shown, no need for duplicate walls or linework. Of course the red will print black when the sheets plot.

The question is how to make this line disappear in normal construction prints. Making it grey will still kinda show, unless the particular composite in question has an empty core fill, where the FIRE pen turns white. - Aha. Skin 'Hide' in the composite settings!!!, and then just make sure your placed fireplans drawings do not update automatically.

A

[TomWaltz]

PivoArch wrote:
At the moment my theory on this is to build a composite with the dash in it, now the problem with this is that we do not want to show the rest of the composite on the code sheets (i.e. drywall or cmu). It would be greate if I could customize the model view options to make this work but I can't so....What I am thinking is to create a layer for fire rated partitions that would have walls on it with no height that would use a composite that would be only the dashed lines. Set said layer to a different priority than the regular walls so as not to effect clean ups. Then you layer sets to control the viewing of the walls on the varying sheets. The downside to this is that you must make sure to update the fire rated walls when you update the regular walls. .

I think the easiest way would be to embed the dashed lines in the composite like you were thinking, then have a different pen set for the Code Sheets than the others. Use a specific pen for the dashed lines.

Then, on the code sheets you could make that big fat weight and a 0 weight on every other sheet.

.... though I just noticed Andy said about the same thing

[Link]

andyro wrote:
It worked! So I use the Ghost penset (everything ghosted except this fat FIRE pen, and change the model view options as shown, no need for duplicate walls or linework. Of course the red will print black when the sheets plot.

The question is how to make this line disappear in normal construction prints. Making it grey will still kinda show, unless the particular composite in question has an empty core fill, where the FIRE pen turns white. - Aha. Skin 'Hide' in the composite, and then just make sure your placed fireplans drawings do not update automatically.

A

It would be easier if you could do without the dashed line and just use color. It's more common to just assign specific pens for fire codes, that in the fire code plans show as color for the entire wall, and in other plans are just mapped to regular cut fill colors. See the attached image that shows an example of specific firecode pens in a template.

If you still wanted dashed lines, you could use this same technique to hide your dashed lines in regular plans. As you said map it to white, along with the composite's cut fill pen. Automatic update is fine - and recommended of course.

Cheers,
Link.

[Andy Thomson]

Link, fair enough (use colour, simple, easy), but that document set I referred to just cost the builder $14k (USD) to print - every set included the fire plans (I am always shocked and amazed at these printing costs). Colour was not an option. We have 4 linetypes for different ratings, and they print black - aka. inexpensively!). I would love to find a way to do this while preserving auto-updating.

[LiHigh]

Wall accessories would be a good solution but NO curve wall.

I've an object(Wall accessories) which allow user to assign any line type drawn along the core axis and it's associated to wall. I don't have the object with me now; But if anyone is interested, I'll post it here later.

[Andy Thomson]

That sounds ideal. Please do post it.