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AC Training Series Vol 2 PDF
AC Training Series Vol 2 PDF
ArchiCAD Training
Series Vol. 2
Series
Vol. 2
Basic ArchiCAD
2-days Basic ArchiCAD 16 Training
GRAPHISOFT®
Visit the GRAPHISOFT website at http://www.graphisoft.com for local
distributor and product availability information.
ArchiCAD Training Series Vol. 2
(ArchiCAD 16 International English Metric Version)
Copyright © 2013 by GRAPHISOFT, all rights reserved. Reproduction,
paraphrasing or translation without express prior written permission is
strictly prohibited.
Trademarks
ArchiCAD® is a registered trademark of GRAPHISOFT.
All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.
Credits
Courtesy of GRAPHISOFT
Contents
Introduction ______________________________________________ 5
Opening the project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Navigation in ArchiCAD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Multiplying Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Creating Curtain Wall System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Modifying Curtain Walls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Creating Interior Walls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Placing Doors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Mirroring Doors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Creating Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Creating Flat Roofs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Creating Parapet Walls. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Placing Stairs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Dimensioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Automatic Dimensioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Creating Section Viewpoints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Elevation Dimensioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Elevation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Inserting Background Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Placing Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Merging Plans. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Rendering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Creating 3D Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Layouting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Defining Project Info . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Exporting to PDF. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Introduction
Welcome to the ArchiCAD Training Series!
This Guide is part of the ArchiCAD Training Series, which currently
includes the following materials:
• Vol. 1, The ArchiCAD BIM Concept
• Vol. 2, Basic ArchiCAD
• Vol. 3, Intermediate ArchiCAD
• Vol. 4, Advanced ArchiCAD
• Vol. 5, Using Teamwork
You are now reading Vol. 2, “Basic ArchiCAD” a comprehensive hands-
on training to familiarize you with the basic modeling and
documentation tools of ArchiCAD. This guide is meant for new ArchiCAD
users. We strongly recommend that you complete Training Series Vol. 1
before starting this one.
This guide is also suitable for using as BIM Curriculum "Exercises" - for
Hands-on Practice in universities where ArchiCAD is taught to students.
Lecturers who would like to use this guide as a BIM Curriculum should
visit the educational sites of the GRAPHISOFT website
(http://www.graphisoft.com/education/curriculum/) where, after
registration, they will be entitled to obtain a full set of training materials
suitable for seminar lectures.
ArchiCAD. Enter the name of this Training Guide in the search field to
locate the related videos.
You must have ArchiCAD 16 or later version installed on your computer
to use this guide. This e-book and the movie clips were made with the
English language version of ArchiCAD. For your conveniance we
recommend you to download and use the same version for practicing.
If you do not have ArchiCAD yet, please visit https://myarchicad.com/ to
obtain a free ArchiCAD installer:
• If you are a student, a teacher or a representative of a school,
register and download a fully functional Education Version of
ArchiCAD for Students and Teachers.
• If you are a professional architect, register and download a fully
functional 30-day trial version of ArchiCAD. Projects saved with this
TRIAL version can be automatically upgraded to FULL versions upon
purchase of a commercial license.
Please contact your local distributor for purchasing commercial
ArchiCAD licenses. http://www.graphisoft.com/purchase/
How to use this training material?
• Install the required ArchiCAD version
• Open the PDF Guide
• Open the related movie clips from the GRAPHISOFT ArchiCAD
Youtube Channel
• Follow the instructions given in the PDF guide and the videos.
We hope you will find this training useful and wish you success with your
future ArchiCAD projects!
Good Luck!
The GRAPHISOFT Team
5) Select the 01 Pavilion.pln file in the training project folder and click
on the Open button to open the file.
Navigation in ArchiCAD
At first glance you can see a Slab, a Steel Column, a Section Marker and
four Elevation Views in Floor Plan. On the right side of the ArchiCAD
interface is the Navigator Palette (Navigator), a tree structure view that
lets you build up the entire logical structure of your project and navigate
in it. Here you can create folders, then copy, drag and drop views and
other project items depending on their particular purpose.
Multiplying Elements
Let’s see how we can create multiple copies of an element to speed up
the modeling workflow.
1) Select the existing Steel Column in the Floor Plan with the Arrow
Tool.
2) Select Edit/Move/Mirror a Copy menu command.
3) Define the mirroring axis with two clicks, as if you were drawing a
Line.
4) Move the cursor near the middle of the Slab’s upper edge, and click
when the cursor takes on the following shape:
5) Draw the mirroring axis, while holding down the Shift key.
9) To ensure the columns are all distributed evenly, select all columns
and use Edit/Distribute/Along X command.
12) The first axis point is the middle of the Slab. Draw the mirroring
axis, while holding down the Shift key.
13) Open the 3D Window. Press either F3 key or select the Window/3D
Window command.
3) Choose the Polyline - Single Geometry Method from the Info Box.
4) You have to place the Curtain Wall 6000mm from the left side of the
Slab.
c) Press Enter, move the cursor down, and click when the cursor
takes on the following shape: Pencil point with perpendicular sign.
d) Click with the Sun cursor to define the “outside” direction of the
Curtain Wall. Here, move the cursor to the left side of the Curtain
Wall and click.
e) In the appearing Place Curtain Wall dialog box, modify the height
of the Curtain Wall to 3000mm and click Place.
f)Create the other three Curtain Walls with the same method.
3) When the Curtain Wall is in editing mode, the model is shown in the
3D window.
10) Delete the unnecessary Mullion frames of the other three sides, as
shown in the pictures.
4) The corner of the new Wall will be 10.500 mm from the left edge of
the Slab and 3.400 mm from the bottom of the Slab.
5) Move the cursor to the bottom-left corner of the Slab.
8) Press Enter and move the cursor toward the upper right.
12) Activate the Arrow tool and select the upper horizontal Wall. Click
on the upper side of the Wall and drag it downwards. Hold down
the Shift key to constrain mouse movement vertically.
13) Define the distance of offset: r800, then press Enter.
17) Create the new walls so that they divide the existing horizontal wall
into three equal segments. Let’s set the Special Snap Points to
display divisions along elements. Select View/Special Snap
Options/Division(3) from Menubar.
18) Draw two walls; the cursor will show you the trisecting points.
19) As a final step, we need to erase the middle part of the bottom
horizontal wall.
a) Hold down the Ctrl/Cmd key and the cursor changes to Scissors.
Placing Doors
Now we’ll create doors in the partition walls.
1) Activate the Door tool and select Internal Door from the Favorites
palette.
2) Set the Anchor Point to Side. The Anchor Point setting defines
whether you place the Door by its center point or its side.
3) You have to place the Door 100mm from the bottom-left corner of
the wall. Move the cursor to the bottom-left corner and type x100+.
4) Press Enter.
5) To place the Door, click at the desired wall edge.
6) Then click a second time to define the swing direction of the Door.
Mirroring Doors
Let’s create mirrored copies of the door.
1) To be able to mirror the Door, first you have to set View/Special
Snap Options back to Half.
4) Move the cursor near the middle of the upper Wall, and click
when the cursor takes on the following shape:
Creating Stories
Continue working on the current project or open 03 Pavilion.pln
ArchiCAD file from the training project folder.
Stories are fundamental parts of all ArchiCAD projects. Let’s see how to
create them.
1) Go to Design/Story Settings.
2) Select Ground Floor and click on the Insert above command.
3) Modify the Story Name to Roof.
4) Click OK.
5) Select the Ground Floor from the Navigator and right-click to bring
up its context menu.
7) You can see the Elements of the Ground Floor in the Roof story.
Placing Stairs
Let’s create a simple straight-run stair with StairMaker, the built-in stair-
modeling tool of ArchiCAD.
1) Double-click on the Ground Floor in the Navigator palette.
2) Open the Stair dialog box from the Toolbox.
3) Select the Create Stair command.
4) In the appearing dialog box set the type of the Stair to Straight Run
and click on the OK button.
10) The Anchor point of the Stair is 2000 mm from the bottom-left
corner of the Slab. Move the cursor to the corner and type x2000+.
The cursor jumps to the appropriate position.
11) Press the Enter key.
Dimensioning
Continue working on the current project or open 04 Pavilion.pln
ArchiCAD file from the training project folder.
We’ll add basic wall dimensions to the project on the floor plan.
1) Choose the Dimension Tool from the Toolbar.
2) Select Dim (2.5) from the Favorites palette.
4) Click on the upper-left corner of the vertical wall, then the bottom-
right corner of the other vertical wall. You can see two reference
points.
7) Click on the side of the vertical walls. Two reference points will
appear on each wall.
Automatic Dimensioning
Automatic dimensioning is a very powerful tool that allows you to apply
the most typical dimensions on the floor plan views with only a few
clicks.
1) Select all Walls:
a) Activate the Wall tool.
b) Choose Edit/Select All Walls command.
4) Click OK.
5) Define the direction of the dimension lines. You can do this in one
two ways:
a) Click the side edge of an existing Wall (the dimension direction
will follow the Wall direction);
b) Click in an empty area, and then click a second time to define the
dimension direction.
10) The final result should be similar to the one in this picture.
5) Open the New Section from the Navigator palette. The new Section
viewpoint is created and listed automatically in the Navigator
Project Map.
Elevation Dimensioning
Elevation Dimensions allow you to place height markers in Section/
Elevation/IE and 3D Document windows.
1) Define the necessary preferences for the dimensioning in the Info
Box.
Elevation
Working with Elevations is very similar to Sections. The process is
explained in the previous chapter.
1) Open the South Elevation View from the Navigator palette.
Placing Objects
ArchiCAD is shipped with an extensive parametric object library, which
helps you to quickly improve your model and documentation. Let’s place
a few tree objects on the elevations.
1) Open the Object Default Settings by double-clicking on the Object
tool.
2) Browse for a Tree object from the linked library. There are two ways
to do it:
a) Select the tree object from the ArchiCAD Library /Basic Library /
1.7 2D Elements / Plant Symbols folder.
b) Choose the Find Library Parts option to locate library parts by
name using keywords in a search engine. Type the “tree” keyword
and press the Find button.
3) Click on the left-bottom Anchor point of the Object, then click OK.
4) Place the tree object in the Elevation View.
5) You have to position the tree object behind the building. To do this,
you must change the display order of the object.
6) Select the object.
a) Option 1: Choose the Edit/Display Order/Send Backward
command. You may have to run this command twice to achieve the
appropriate result.
8) Replace the type of the tree: double-click on the Object tool and
select another tree object from the folder.
Merging Plans
The furniture layout is already available in an external ArchiCAD module
file. We’ll merge it into our project to shorten the documentation and
modeling time.
Note: You can learn more about ArchiCAD modules in other
volumes of this training guide series.
10) Activate the Ground Floor view from the Navigator palette.
11) Select File/File Special/Merge command.
13) Until the file is placed, its elements will be surrounded by a dashed
rectangle. Click within the rectangle to move the elements to the
desired position. Click outside or click OK from the context menu (or
the Control Box) to place the elements.
Rendering
ArchiCAD offers you various visualization modes to present your design
to your customers. You can select from two predefined Rendering
Settings from the Navigator palette: the first uses the LightWorks
Rendering Engine, while the second works with the Sketch Engine.
Creating 3D Documents
The 3D document is a unique ArchiCAD feature that presents your
models with annotations in a 3D perspective or axonometric view. The
3D Document allows you to use the 3D view of the model as the basis
for creating a document, to which you can add dimensions, labels and
additional 2D drawing elements.
1) Open the 3D-01 Document from the Navigator palette.
Layouting
Continue working on the current project or open 05 Pavilion.pln
ArchiCAD file from the training project folder.
The final documentation layouts are available in the Layout Book. Let’s
see how to complete your documentation in ArchiCAD.
1) Activate the Navigator’s Layout Book.
2) Double-click on the A.01 Pavilion Layout.
4) Drag the 0. Ground Floor from the Floor Plans folder and drop it
onto the Layout.
5) Modify the placed layout by using the Pet palette. Move the layout
to the upper-right corner.
6) If you do not want to place the drawings one by one, select the
Show Organizer command from the Project Chooser at the top left
of the Navigator.
7) Choose the View Map in the left side of the Navigator and the
Layout Book in the right side.
8) Select each Elevation in the View Map and drag them into the A.01
Pavilion Layout.
2) If you fill in these fields with the necessary data, the text on the
layouts will change automatically.
Exporting to PDF
The project documentation can be published in many file formats with
just one click of the mouse. PDF is the most widely use document
archiving format in the construction industry, so let’s see how to export
to this format.
1) Open the Organizer dialog box from the Project Chooser at the top
left of the Navigator.
2) Click on Publisher Sets to the right side of the Navigator.
4) Select the A.01 Pavilion Layout from the Layout Book and click Add
Shortcut.
5) Define the output format. Files can be saved in a large variety of
formats, including all standard image formats and CAD exchange
formats. Select PDF file format.
Congratulations!
You have succesfully completed this Training Guide! We hope that you
have learnt many new and exciting things about the possibilities of BIM
and understood how ArchiCAD supports the architectural design
workflow. Please check the other volumes of this training series for
more details about ArchiCAD.
Should you have any questions regarding ArchiCAD or other
GRAPHISOFT products, please visit ArchiCADwiki, our online knowledge
base: http://archicadwiki.com
Please feel free to contact GRAPHISOFT and its worldwide partners with
further questions at www.graphisoft.com.
We look forward to seeing you in the ArchiCAD user community.
The GRAPHISOFT Team
ArchiCAD Training Series Vol. 2 84
Exporting to PDF