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

Renovation tool and composit elements

Anonymous
Not applicable
I like the idea of this new renovation tool very much, could be very useful.

Im trying to implement it in a project Ive brought over from 14
Th eproject is the renovation of an existing building which will include the eventual addition of exterior insulation on the exterior walls.

So far Ive modeled the walls as a composite to include the layer of isolation, what Im trying to work out is how to correctly setup the existing state in the renovation filter workflow.

I am using one wall type without insulation tagged as "existing" and then a composite wall with the exterior insulation and tagged this wall as "new". The two walls share the same model space with the idea that using the filter will substitute one for the other depending on the renovation filter selected. The problem I have is that the "existing" and "new" both show up when I select the Planned Status renovation filter. Obviously Im going about the wrong way, so my question is...

Does anyone have any ideas how they would go about implementing a change in wall composition (like the addition of external insulation) using the renovation filters??

thanks
7 REPLIES 7
Anonymous
Not applicable
Try changing the existing wall to the Demo category. While both wall will still show up in the New Construction filter, only the new wall will show in the planned status filter.
Anonymous
Not applicable
Thank you Dom, I thought about that but then the walls will show up as elements to be demolished on the demo plans, and I would like to use these too so they need to be coherent.

Im thinking I might need to SOE the existing walls with the proposed.

Seems a shame that that would be the only solution. It would be very useful if the renovation tool could have a "state change" tag, meaning that such a tagged element is not destined to be demolished but just changed and therefore wont show up in any filters following the demo filter.
Anonymous
Not applicable
After playing around with the renovation tool and looking in the help files I see that GS suggestion for external insulation situations is to abandon composites and use a new wall for the insulation layer.

This seems to be a very poor work around and could have been very easily avoided with the simple addition of a "modified" field in the renovation filters for elements that are existing and to be kept but will be changed, not demolished.

Elements tagged "modified" could then be filtered out later on in the renovation workflow and replaced with the modified building element tagged "new". Effectively circumventing the need to use demolition and more importantly enabling the continued use of composite elements.

Renovation filter is a great tool, hopefully an update can be released that will add this simple functionality.
Laszlo Nagy
Community Admin
Community Admin
strawbale23 wrote:
I like the idea of this new renovation tool very much, could be very useful.

Im trying to implement it in a project Ive brought over from 14
Th eproject is the renovation of an existing building which will include the eventual addition of exterior insulation on the exterior walls.

So far Ive modeled the walls as a composite to include the layer of isolation, what Im trying to work out is how to correctly setup the existing state in the renovation filter workflow.

I am using one wall type without insulation tagged as "existing" and then a composite wall with the exterior insulation and tagged this wall as "new". The two walls share the same model space with the idea that using the filter will substitute one for the other depending on the renovation filter selected. The problem I have is that the "existing" and "new" both show up when I select the Planned Status renovation filter. Obviously Im going about the wrong way, so my question is...

Does anyone have any ideas how they would go about implementing a change in wall composition (like the addition of external insulation) using the renovation filters??

thanks
Can you play maybe with the Partial Structure Display options to achieve the results you are after? That new insulation skin would be set to "Finish" type skin in the Composites Dialog.
The existing state would be achieved with the "Without Finishes" Partial Structure Display option, the New state with the "Entire Model" option.
Loving Archicad since 1995 - Find Archicad Tips at x.com/laszlonagy
AMD Ryzen9 5900X CPU, 64 GB RAM 3600 MHz, Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB, 500 GB NVMe SSD
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Laszlo Nagy
Community Admin
Community Admin
Thinking about this a little bit more:
Maybe the longer term solution would be that Composite and Complex structures have a skin-level Renovation-Filter parameter.
I mean, you define a Composite, all its skins are Existing, while the Insulation skin is New. Same thing for fills defined for a Complex Profile in the Profile Manager Dialog.
For a Wall there would a checkbox in its settings Dialog: use Renovation Filter of Wall or user Renovation Filters of skins, just like with Wall Priority numbers.
Of course this would work for all element types that can use Composite/Complex structures.
Loving Archicad since 1995 - Find Archicad Tips at x.com/laszlonagy
AMD Ryzen9 5900X CPU, 64 GB RAM 3600 MHz, Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB, 500 GB NVMe SSD
2x28" (2560x1440), Windows 10 PRO ENG, Ac20-Ac27
Anonymous
Not applicable
Lazlo, your suggestion for a filter for composites is very interesting and the sophisticated long term solution that will hopefully be incorporated at some stage.

I dont think using the Partial Structure Display can work as it will effect all the other building elements.
Anonymous
Not applicable
Laszlo's suggestion re: composites and yours re: additional renovation statuses (it would be nice to be able to set custom statuses) are the the long term solutions, and would be very useful developments. However, here is a workaround in the meantime:

Highlight your existing wall in the existing filter view and press the toggle button to the right of the "new status" button. (This toggle button is called "show on current renovation filter only/show on all renovation filters"). This will stop the wall showing up in the proposed (or any other) filter views.

Now copy the existing wall to the clipboard, switch to the demolition plan filter and paste the wall in from the clipboard, and repeat this process for each filter you wish the wall to appear on as existing.

This toggle button is quite useful - it is possible to present several different proposal options or show all the different phases of a project in the one model file using this in conjunction with the custom filter views.