How to define custom preview image for a BIMx Hyper-model

[Csaba_Kezer]

Did you know that you can control the preview image displayed for your BIMx Hyper-model?

• You can either use the image of any 3D view or layout sheet of your project or
• You can set a different image to be displayed as the preview image.

This picture will be visible on the BIMx Model Transfer Site and in the BIMx models list.

For BIMx 3D only models the project preview is always the view from which the BIMx file was exported (File > Save as > Save as .bimx). You can later change this picture if you upload the model to the BIMx Model Transfer Site.

NOTE: from version 20 ARCHICAD exports only hyper-models. Even if the Publisher Set doesn't contain any layouts, the file will be a hyper-model and the preview picture can be defined in the ways described below.

Set up a specific image as the preview

In the Project Preview dialog you can import any image file to set it up as the preview image. Project Preview can be opened from File > Info menu in ARCHICAD:

and load the desired image using the Browse… button.

Up to ARCHICAD 20, for best results, the image should be 320×240 pixels in size, a 4:3 ratio. If the image is another size, it will be cropped so as to achieve a 4:3 ratio and to fit the 320×240 pixel size. From ARCHICAD 21 you can use any size and image resolution.

In ARCHICAD 18 and older versions once the image is loaded into the Project Preview it won’t be possible to delete it. You can only replace it with another image.

If there is no image defined for the Project Preview

In this case ARCHICAD will use the preview image created from the first item on the BIMx Publisher set. You can freely drag & drop layouts and 3D views into this list and reorder them.

You can change this anytime by reordering the views and layouts in the publisher set with the drag & drop method.

Result

As a result the project preview in the BIMx models list is shown as set in ARCHICAD. The upper project has got a preview picture generated from the 3D view, while in the second case a photo was placed into the Project Preview Picture Window.