Opening Tool as Standard Wall Penetration Tool

[Lingwisyer]

Hi all,

Wouldn't it be nice if doors, windows and curtain walls all lived within the Opening Tool?


If you want to use the Curtain Wall Tool to create a custom window, it will automatically cut the bounding wall by the defined boundary.

If you want to demolish a window while retaining the penetration, the opening would be retained as existing.

If you want to change your floor to ceiling window into a sliding door, there's no need to delete and change tool.

If you want to put a window at your stair landing between stories cutting multiple walls, there is no need for additional faux openings.



Ling.

[Erwin Edel]

Currently we notice there are a lot of problems with quality of life features from ArchiCAD which are considered 'bad' BIM by contractors.

For example windowsills, lintels etc are very easily added as option from windows/doors, but are required to be specified as a different entity in our IFC exports, so we've resorted to drawings these seperately for projects that require this. We feel like we are dumbing down the model.

Anything that would allow us to specify more parts individually as with curtain wall, stair and railings would help. Just keep the ease of drafting there. No placing of opening and then populating the opening in a 2nd action please!

[runxel]

Erwin wrote:
Currently we notice there are a lot of problems with quality of life features from ArchiCAD which are considered 'bad' BIM by contractors.

For example windowsills, lintels etc are very easily added as option from windows/doors, but are required to be specified as a different entity in our IFC exports, so we've resorted to drawings these seperately for projects that require this. We feel like we are dumbing down the model.

Anything that would allow us to specify more parts individually as with curtain wall, stair and railings would help. Just keep the ease of drafting there. No placing of opening and then populating the opening in a 2nd action please!

I can understand the resentment against 2-action workflows. I, actually, have them, too!
I'd say if you place a window/door, that the opening has to be placed in the same moment. So just like before.

But again: The opening itself is something totally different to the thing that piggybacks the opening.
See, I do a lot of reno and it will only get more, since building totally new houses will be a thing of the past soon (in cities at least). So often enough I will only swap the door itself.... but Reno doesn't know what that means, thus resulting in having a false model (when displaying what to demolish).

To be honest I was expecting the system you described to happen in version 24 already. The path is quite clear: The CW, the railings, the beams and columns, etc. made it obvious that parent-child systems are the way forward in Archicad. And it works astonishingly good.

Details of implementation aside: The current way of dealing with doors/windows is heavily outdated and something need to be done about this. Rather sooner than later.

[Tinou]

It could work like railings and stairs. Window or door could be the child element of a wall opening. It could be an option in the "wall opening" tool that creates window or door at the same time. It could also exist a specific workflow for populating all the selected openings at one time with the same sttings, and then the ability of editing them separately.

We can invert this idea and have an option in the "door-window" tool that creates wall opening at the same time. But then, it become editable separately.

Most important is having at the end of the 2 (or more) different elements that combine and can be edited diferently, with different reno status, difernet layers, ID, etc. It could exist many different ways in the workflow to get to this point easily, depending on user's habits or preference.

[Tinou]

Even some of the options could be part of the wall settings. How the wall is structuraly made around openings is may be more depending to wall typology that to opening typology. (The same for wall end, top and bottom)

[Lingwisyer]

Someones post just reminded me, this would also free up the placement of doors and windows that sit between multiple walls, such between new and existing parts of a wall, or mid storey and offset wall situations. At the moment, you put the door / window in one wall, and cut a faux opening in the other.

[4hotshoes]

I like the idea behind this wish and also wish it will be considered in some form. I wish I could like it many times over.