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Renovation and Phases

Anonymous
Not applicable
My entire career involves renovation. So I am very pleased with this new tool in A15. Two comments:

1. I wish it went one step farther and dealt with Phases. Very often several construction phases are required. Previous New construction them becomes existing, etc. There would need to be a Existing, Demo & New & Planned Status for each phase. To handle this requires a huge increase in layers, layer combinations etc.

1.1 On a related note, I wish there were more ways to organized the Layer System. When selecting a layer for an item, there is no choice but to view all the layers, instead of the layers appropriate for the item or current view. And they can only be viewed in alphabetical order.

2. I wish the default status was "new", note "existing". It is hard enough to have to select the default for every single item you draw. I am sure most items we all draw are new. Am I missing something?
19 REPLIES 19
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
Kevan wrote:
2. I wish the default status was "new", note "existing". It is hard enough to have to select the default for every single item you draw. I am sure most items we all draw are new. Am I missing something?
Help PDF page 1383:
To set a default Renovation Status for all subsequently placed elements, use the Renovation
Palette.
This lets you change to 'new' mode while modeling the new elements, with no extra clicking.

If you mean that a file opens with all elements flagged as "existing", just open 3D, select all, and change the status in one step.

I would disagree that most things drawn are new: the first step in a renovation is modeling the as-built / existing conditions, right?

Since all of your work has been renovation, your comments on the usefulness of the new renovation feature, including visual display and over-rides, will be really useful in the 'Working in ArchiCAD' forum. Look forward to seeing your posts.

Cheers,
Karl
One of the forum moderators
AC 27 USA and earlier   •   macOS Ventura 13.6.6, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
Kevan wrote:
1.1 On a related note, I wish there were more ways to organized the Layer System. When selecting a layer for an item, there is no choice but to view all the layers, instead of the layers appropriate for the item or current view. And they can only be viewed in alphabetical order.
True about alphabetical order, but you have a WE setting that lets you hide 'locked' layers from the layer lists shown by tools. Thus, if in your Layer Settings you create Layer Combos for each view that have all irrelevant layers locked, you won't see the clutter from those layers.

This still doesn't give what I think you want - only layers that you designate as "wall" layers showing up for the wall tool, etc.

When I first starting using AC in 2000, I thought the hiding-locked-layers things was pretty cool, but over the years, it has been more hassle than it was worth, as exceptions always seem to happen. Plus, my layer list is quite short - and now, even shorter with the Renovation feature which has shrunk the layers by a third.

Cheers,
Karl
Hide Locked Layers.gif
One of the forum moderators
AC 27 USA and earlier   •   macOS Ventura 13.6.6, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
Laura Yanoviak
Advocate
Kevan wrote:
2. I wish the default status was "new", note "existing". It is hard enough to have to select the default for every single item you draw. I am sure most items we all draw are new. Am I missing something?
I totally agree with you. Unless the scope of work is exclusive to documenting existing conditions, the majority of work is new. Although you can set the Renovation Status via the Renovation Palette, it still defaults to "Existing" the next time you open the file. If it needs to default to anything, it should be "New."
MacBook Pro Apple M2 Max, 96 GB of RAM
AC26 US (5002) on Mac OS Ventura 13.5
Anonymous
Not applicable
I´m not using 15 at the office as it is yet to be localized but this is what I noticed while doing some test and preparing templates in 15 INT.

It seams like the .tpl file I created for our office launches with default status "New" (as I saved it) and after making some changes, saving-closing and reopen, the default status stays on "New".

This is good right? But I agree that the "True" default status should be "New".

At first I was happy about this new feature but now I realize this will add some thinking while making "foolproof" templates

As for layers we are using a system with different layers for different renovation status where Layer-Extensions are used to distinguish status.
E.g there are three different layers for a wall, Existing, New and Remove.
This system is standard in Swe and unfortunately produces long layer lists.
But by sorting them by extension, and using Karl´s suggested method, it´s less difficult.
Anonymous
Not applicable
This might seem a silly question, but where are the Palettes for Structure and Position?

The renovation palette makes sense, and makes it easy to parse the demolition work, but what about the other current and future categories?
David Maudlin
Virtuoso
Nathan wrote:
This might seem a silly question, but where are the Palettes for Structure and Position?
There is no palette, these are parameters under the Tags and Categories panel. The Tags and Categories... panel can be shown in the Info Box so these can be set without opening the element's dialog box.

David
David Maudlin / Architect
www.davidmaudlin.com
Digital Architecture
AC27 USA • iMac 27" 4.0GHz Quad-core i7 OSX11 | 24 gb ram • MacBook Pro M3 Pro | 36 gb ram OSX14
Aladar Kish
Contributor
Yes, I think it's essential to further develop the renovation / phase aspect of ArchiCAD...
but what an improvement over the "old" way to deal with Existing, Demolition and New.

Not having had the opportunity to really explore 15 (only installed it about 2 weeks ago) I saw a presentation by Til Breton at the ArchiCAD Summer School in Liverpool last week where he demonstrated a very nice way to use the Renovation Filter to define alternative design variations.

(if Til sees this, maybe he will post his trick;.)
Basically, it entails renaming filters and using the override function of the Renovation Palette
AC 4.2 - AC 24 7006 FRA
mac OS 11.6.7
Anonymous
Not applicable
Phasing filters would be a fantastic addition! Please please please! We have to produce phasing drawings using layers and it can be a real struggle to keep track of things even on small projects! Huge thumbs up for this idea.
Anonymous
Not applicable
Another vote in favor of expanding the very nice, but less-than-optimal Status Tools. As soon as I saw the three statuses, I thought about the 'Relocated' status, then I thought of 'Remove', Overhaul, and Reinstall in same Location', etc. (the permutations go on).

Although of a different stripe than renovation status, I also thought of the 'Not in Contract' triumvirate: 'Furnished By X', 'Installed by X', and 'Furn. and Installed by X' (when X≠the GC). Then, moving on to temporal status, a 'Future' status came to mind, along with support for phasing. I guess I do recall considering using 'Status' to document design options, but I suspect that gets about as tangled as it does using layers unless element can be assigned to more than one alternative status, so that something could be in option A and B, but not in option C.

Clearly, there is room for more than 3 statuses; maybe even more than three kinds of status. Actually, I would like to see it open-ended, and assignable by instance (Oh, Noooo ... not another parameter (or four) in the dialog boxes!) Oh well. Shoot for the moon, eh?