Modeling
About Archicad's design tools, element connections, modeling concepts, etc.

Marking a distance to locate a design feature

Anonymous
Not applicable
I'm having trouble, when designing and sketching: How to determine a certain distance from a wall let say a parallel wall 4 meters from the drawn wall (or a border line or another feature of the design for that matter ). Trying to locate a door 10 c"m from a corner, such matters of finding a certain point in the plan: distance known or determined while designing.Is there a tool, help line or such, to enable snapping to such exact point.
11 REPLIES 11
NCornia
Graphisoft
Graphisoft
Activate the tool you are going to draw with. Hover your mouse over the corner you want to reference from making sure the smart cursor tuns into a checkmark, filled pencil, etc.. If you want to place a door 10cm to the right of a corner type the letter x, a coordinate window will appear. Type 100, then +. A temporary guideline will appear at 10cm to the right of the corner. Place the object with accuracy.

If you are working from a corner on the right and want the door 10cm to the left, hover over the corner, type: x -100 +.

Up from a corner type: y 100 +. Down from a corner type: y -100 + .


Some in the forum have also suggested creating a User Origin and then type the coordinates from there but, I find the method i described to be more efficient for me.
Nicholas Cornia
Technical Support Team - GRAPHISOFT North America
ARCHICAD on Twitter
Tutorials
GRAPHISOFT Help Center
andrewzarb
Booster
to supplement NCornia's reply,
If you want to move the item a particular distance at an angle you can also use the r coordinate with the a angle setting.

If it helps, you can also place a user origin to work from.
Anonymous
Not applicable
Thanks . very helpful
Anonymous
Not applicable
NCornia wrote:
If you are working from a corner on the right and want the door 10cm to the left, hover over the corner, type: x -100 +.
Just x 100- [enter]
Barry Kelly
Moderator
s2art wrote:
NCornia wrote:
If you are working from a corner on the right and want the door 10cm to the left, hover over the corner, type: x -100 +.
Just x 100- [enter]
I think that is an imperial units problem that metric users don't have.
For imperial users I don't think the x 100- [enter] will work.
I think they need to do x -100+ [enter] as NCornia suggested or x 100-- [enter].

Barry.
One of the forum moderators.
Versions 6.5 to 27
Dell XPS- i7-6700 @ 3.4Ghz, 16GB ram, GeForce GTX 960 (2GB), Windows 10
Lenovo Thinkpad - i7-1270P 2.20 GHz, 32GB RAM, Nvidia T550, Windows 11
Eduardo Rolon
Moderator
for Imperial units both are correct

x -100+ [enter] as NCornia suggested or x 100-- [enter]
Eduardo Rolón AIA NCARB
AC27 US/INT -> AC08

Macbook Pro M1 Max 64GB ram, OS X 10.XX latest
another Moderator

Anonymous
Not applicable
Barry wrote:
s2art wrote:
NCornia wrote:
If you are working from a corner on the right and want the door 10cm to the left, hover over the corner, type: x -100 +.
Just x 100- [enter]
I think that is an imperial units problem that metric users don't have.
For imperial users I don't think the x 100- [enter] will work.
I think they need to do x -100+ [enter] as NCornia suggested or x 100-- [enter].

Barry.
Thanks for making that distinction. We were talking metric units, but good to let those imperialists know that they're different.
Anonymous
Not applicable
Hi Hagit,
Good to see a fellow AC users in Israel,
I thought I was one out of another five HA HA!
Well, you actually asked two different questions
that I would deal with in a number of really daft simple ways:

1st, make sure you open and dock the COORDINATES & CONTROL BOX
pallets (Window>Palettes>...)

2nd, you can also use the floating TRACKER, if you don't mind that little
blue box floating around...

Make sure your keyboard is set to EN and not HE -
So you can input those X, Y,Z, A & R coordinates rather
than Hebrew text.

Now, actually placing stuff in the right place relative to existing elements:
With walls (parallel), I usually choose the PARALEL (or Offset) drafting
method, select the wall tool, click two points on the reference wall,
pull out a bit in the desired offset direction and then use R (radius)
to define the exact distance.

For doors and windows, I just throw them into the wall, then move them
to a corner or known starting point, and then push them exactly to
the right place (Using X, Y or R).

You can also just draw a couple of manual guidelines and snap to those.
Old trick but still works.
🙂
Gil
Anonymous
Not applicable
Hi Gil,
Thank you so much for your explanations, somehow I missed your generous post. most helpful. I am,for a while, looking for Israeli mate . Would you know where I can find detailed instructions on changing into Hebrew? Somehow my program is not Hebrew programmed although bought here.






Gil wrote:
Hi Hagit,
Good to see a fellow AC users in Israel,
I thought I was one out of another five HA HA!
Well, you actually asked two different questions
that I would deal with in a number of really daft simple ways:

1st, make sure you open and dock the COORDINATES & CONTROL BOX
pallets (Window>Palettes>...)

2nd, you can also use the floating TRACKER, if you don't mind that little
blue box floating around...

Make sure your keyboard is set to EN and not HE -
So you can input those X, Y,Z, A & R coordinates rather
than Hebrew text.

Now, actually placing stuff in the right place relative to existing elements:
With walls (parallel), I usually choose the PARALEL (or Offset) drafting
method, select the wall tool, click two points on the reference wall,
pull out a bit in the desired offset direction and then use R (radius)
to define the exact distance.

For doors and windows, I just throw them into the wall, then move them
to a corner or known starting point, and then push them exactly to
the right place (Using X, Y or R).

You can also just draw a couple of manual guidelines and snap to those.
Old trick but still works.
🙂
Gil