Wall Tool Construction Method Techniques
Making walls in ARCHICAD is one of the most basic functions, and one of the first things we all learn how to do. And yet…there are some hidden techniques that are worth discussion.
Recently a fellow ARCHICAD expert was venting about all the different thickness walls in an old house he was modeling. He was frustrated that he had to create unique composites for each thickness. It’s an experience we’ve all had with measuring existing projects. Most walls are one dimension but others are slightly fatter and for some random reason there’s one or two oddballs that might be super skinny or unreasonably fat. Often these dimensions expose the history of the house: a 2×4’s dimensions have changed over time, so if you know when a house was built you can assume that the studs are 3 1/2″ or 3 7/8″ or even 4″ thick. Likewise, an old enough house might have 5/8″ or 3/4″ of plaster rather than 1/2″ gyp bd on the walls. But of course old houses always defy logic. While we might use those standard material thicknesses to determine the typical construction of a wall, there are always secrets. Maybe a previous owner added drywall on top of old plaster. Or perhaps there’s just wacky framing. Whatever the reasons, after some rationalizing of the dimensions, there are always unique conditions.
And of course this happens on new construction too. We occasionally need a wall that’s 1/2″ or 1″ thicker than the other walls. We sometimes need to furr out or frame around to get the alignments we want. There are always reasons. And solutions. One solution is to create custom Composites for each condition. Another is to create a Complex Profile with vertical and horizontal stretch turned on. Both solutions have their plusses and minuses-which we can maybe discuss in the comments. My favorite solution for these conditions is using the Trapezoid Wall Tool Construction Method. The following video covers the why and how (along with some other Wall Tool Construction Method techniques and caveats). Enjoy:
This was my first video recorded on my new laptop. The sounds quality is SO SO SO much nicer. Follow Shoegnome on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube.
Steve Nickel
Hi Jared…
Thanks for the video! As for us, we have created custom composites for the 8-10 conditions we typically have in our projects, and just migrate them to new projects. Didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, but we will looking forward to other AC users’ opinions and comments on this topic. Steve Nickel
Mohammed
Hi Jared
Thank you very much for sharing this with us.
I wish I had known this technique sooner because I am currently working on a project where there are like 10+ wall thicknesses with different insulation options. Imagine having to create plastered wall composites of different thicknesses with the same material without using this little hack.
Jared Banks
Glad to spread the word about this technique. I honestly thought it was more well known. So I was surprised when my ARCHICAD guru friend who has been using ARCHICAD longer than I have wasn’t aware of it.
José torres
This is great Jared. Im just trying to learn archicad and im doing an old little project to práctice and i have this very situation, this will help a lot!
By the way, and i know this is not the place for this, but Im doing the transition to bim. Even though i consider my self very good in CAD 3d and 3dmax, the process has been painful to say the least.
Some years ago i tried taking some revit courses and absolutely hated It. So i put the bim to rest, but now that i run my own small práctice, i want to jump in again…. I was sold on archicad last year when i saw a demonstration, but after taking the course and getting a rental license, i disvovered some major omissions. Dont get me wrong, im trying my best to love the software, but there are issues that i still cant get my head into:
First, that you cant import a terrain and automatically generate it, like in any other 3d program (Even sketchup handles this quite easily).
Another one is object creation. I would love to learn GDL, but like so many users, i dont think i ever will. (Can i model all my ad hoc objects with just morph??)
Another one is the inability to have múltiple windows with different views where anything you do in one window, say plan view, automatically updates in the other views. While this is something that one may get used to, It makes It very cumbersome. There are more issues, but these ones are the ones i remember now.
I will finish this project and then do It again in revit and then decide in which software i felt more confortable. I will have to be many times more confortable in archicad to implement It since revit is becoming the standard in my country (mexico) rven though only big companies and projects required it for now.
But as an archicad user, and now that archicad 20 is here, i would love to hear your opinion about the state of archicad among the industry. Can we still be competitive if we stick with archicad over revit?
Regards. Jt
Jared Banks
José,
As to your questions, they all have answers. I suggest you ask them on the ARCHICAD talk forum. That is a great place to learn and ask questions. For instance, you can import terrain from Sketchup, Google Earth, survey data, Grasshopper, etc. There are tons of solutions. It just depends on where the original data is from and how it’s structured. Also building Meshes in ARCHICAD can be so easy and fast that it might not be worth spending the time to import and deal with the potential for bad data (when there are problems, it’s not just ARCHICAD’s fault).
As for Object creation, read these posts: Creating 2D Symbols for Objects and Picking a Subtype for Objects. Both videos and posts discuss how to make Objects without GDL. GDL is insanely powerful, but you don’t need to know it to be successful in ARCHICAD. My GDL knowledge is very limited and I haven’t even bothered with what little I can do in almost a decade. Not knowing GDL hasn’t held me back.
As for windows, all views update automatically. It’s true you can only have one active tab, but if you switch from plan to 3d or to an elevation or section, it’s all updated automatically. If that’s not the case for you, check the settings of the elevations and sections. Or perhaps you mean you can’t have multiple windows visible at once like other programs have. I think that’s a non-issue because you can do everything you need in just about any view, so if you’re working in 3D or in a section, you don’t need to jump back to plan to move a wall or edit data.
In general all your concerns sound like part of the learning process. You’re an expert in 3Dmax and CAD, but you’re new to BIM and ARCHICAD. You’re in the painful learning process. Search on my blog for some of my blog posts on the topic of BIM implementation. I can’t stress enough to ask questions on the ARCHICAD-talk forum. That is such a good place to learn. And you shouldn’t assume just because you can’t do something as a new user that it can’t be done with a little experience or help.
Finally, as for competitiveness. You have your own firm. Pick the software that helps you do the best work. Don’t worry about what others are doing. If you are making decisions based on what the crowd is doing, you will always be a follower. If you test Revit and love the workflow. If Revit helps you think and design and produce, go with Revit. If ARCHICAD makes you happy; if it makes beautiful documentation; if it helps you understand your projects, pick ARCHICAD. There are people making tons of money doing beautiful architecture with Revit and with ARCHICAD. Just because one is popular and one has less market share should not affect your decision making process. When you need help, experts will be around for both programs. When you need to hire an employee, a good employee is worth hiring regardless of the software they know. And an employee will want to work for you because of your work and how you run your business, not just because of the programs on your computers.
I am of course biased. I love ARCHICAD. It is a fantastic program that keeps getting better. I can do whatever I need to do with it, and I can make it do whatever I want. I look at Revit and it feels clunky in comparison. Yes it has some features that I wish ARCHICAD had, but the reverse is also true. Revit users see ARCHICAD and crave some of what we have.
The right decision is the program that works for you. Not the one that others tell you to pick or works for them.
José
Wow! thanks Jared… Friday night, 11pm, reading various tutorials and modeling the aforementioned project in Archicad. Now that im learning the complex profiles and composites its getting better actually! still miss the ability to select one thing in one view and have it selected in another, but still, i have a long way to go!
josé
Something strange happenned. I stuck to the self impossed schedule of making one little old and very simple project in Archicad. After I (un)finished it, not very satisfied i must say, i jumped on the Revit ship. I Did almost all of the basic course on a site called Lynda (absolutely amazing site by the way) but kept reading info about archicad. As i proceded with each chapter on how to do things in Revit, each more arcane and obscure than the last one, i suddenly began to be like “man, i already know how to do this in archicad. More easily!”.
I must say the grouping thing in Revit is amazing, i like how the Ribbon always remains the same and have a consistency to it (not you AutoCad ribbon, you suck), the site modeller is great and also how you can link files and the way revit handles coordinates (as in, no coordinates), and love the way you place objects with the temporary dimensions (they worked great in the excercise files, i would hope they work the same in more complex projects), also one always seems to be in control with objects and the way of selecting and working with them (because Archicad´s pet pallet sometimes seem to have a life on its own); the mass modeler seems to have infinite potential specially if paired with Dynamo (Revits equivalent to grass hopper, but i didnt get that far), the undo/redo function works much better that in archicad, and the families are cool although i realized that at least for now i dont really need all my objects to be parametric , nor do i need my objects like beds and faucets modeled exactly as they are, because that´s what specifications are for, and even if i needed them to be real for my renders i wont be doing it neither in revit or archicad.
But you were right about not being able to work in multiple windows in real time in archicad; in Revit you can, but it turns out that you cant do a lot of things in all the views, so other than selecting objects more easily, i didnt find much benefit to it; even the tutorials teacher basically never used it, and the marquee tool trumps it 10x anyway.
And most importantly, the same thing that put me off the first time i used Revit is still there… that weird clunkiness, the feeling that you need to put a lot of time and resources just to get past over the perceived inflexibility, and the ohh so many warnings!! they appear even for some simple walls and it deletes objects automatically if you are not careful! I don´t know about you, but unless i ask, i don´t want any software to tell me if the simple buildings im doing can be built or not, because that´s what architects and engineers are for, right? It surely is a great software, but i cant help but feeling that if you don´t have everything defined in your project by the time you begin modelling it in Revit you will have a hard time. I havent found one single positive comment about having too many constraints and parameters in big projects. Maybe some Revit expert can dispel this for us.
So that´s when Archicad finally made click!, as i studied Revit basic concepts its when Archicad workflow finally made sense to me. I said “lets do it” and began modelling a small real project and in three weeks, just using basic tools, some complex profiles and some boolan operations, i already have more information from the model than the last 2 months. I have enjoyed it a lot to see how all the information begins to add up! I still have to finish to understand those pen sets and layouts, but i guess ill finish modelling and then worry about that. If this video is true, and if at least half of this can actually be achieved, ill be very happy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6V6sZSLU1s
So to finish this rant, my take is that Revit is kind of a construction simulator: there seems to be a tool for everything (which is good) and the process for making some things kind of resemble the way you would do them on site (which is also good to a certaing degree), maybe that is the reason for so many warnings. But also, like working on site, if you make a change you basically have to demolish everything and do it again, and on site you need a working crew, and for what i have seen you would need it working with revit even for a midly sized project (a BIM manager? yeah sure let´s add it to the bill for the client to pay it, they will happily comply).
Archicad on the other hand, seems much more flexible. In capable hands it seems to be able to do wonders, but it would also let you get away with your model even if you really dont know what you are doing constructability wise. In that sense i find it no different from modelling in autocad of sketchup (like, you can even make tables or even walls with the slab tool!). I really dont know if this is TRUE and PURE BIM, or if it even matters, but also, because of that flexibility it seems very possible that you can be much faster than in revit, specially if you are a small office or working solo.
So, if i had the resources to hire revit modellers and i didnt have to model anything myself, then, why not, i would be using Revit for sure. If im the one that is going to be doing the modelling, which happens to be the case, then i will stick with Archicad… There, i finally said it! and the 21 version is looking good so far
Jared Banks
José, Thank you for sharing your adventures in discovering BIM. It’s really interesting to read that trying ARCHICAD first, then Revit helped you understand the logic behind why ARCHICAD is designed the way that it is. I think you’ll be very happy and successful using ARCHICAD. And I agree that ARCHICAD 21 is a great looking version-and my favorite parts are the less promoted, less flashy updates. But more on that another day.
As to TRUE and PURE BIM, disregard those concepts. There’s no such thing. All goals are project, team, and firm specific. And the flexibility of ARCHICAD allows you increase the data/BIMness of anything you model. So if you model a table out of slabs you can easily save those slabs as an Object, then classify that Object as a piece of furniture and attach all the data you need to it. And while it is true that you don’t need to know how to put a building together to use ARCHICAD, it’s a much easier program to use if you do. In fact using ARCHICAD is a good way to understand how buildings do go together. I would argue that a large part of why I know how buildings go together is because of what I learned trying to model projects properly digitally.
josé
On the contrary Jared, thanks for you encouraging words. Someone told me the other day that i was kinda lucky that i started this late in the BIM game (relative to others), in the sense that both Revit and Archicad have made huge improvements in the last four years or so in terms of modelling, usability and interconnectivity (and the fact that i didnt have to wait forever for a certain tool. I wont mention it by name, but it makes stairs). But what im really exited about in archicad 21 is the ability to edit curtain walls in all views, not just 3d. Lets see what else they have in store.
i complained about the lack of something similar to autocad blocks, but then i found your article about saving morphs and other stuff as objects. If you overwrite the objetcs it all updates like a block! so i can live with it… for now.
josé
After some changes i finally issued some construction documents… im quite organized with Autocad layers, so archicad layers came naturally to me… my original idea as was to model in archicad and export some views to Autocad to make the curtain walls plans and steel work plans and also the site work plans…. and then BAM! so this is what layer combinations are for! i could get all the above mentioned plans just with some layer combinations and some layout work… BAM! View Maps, Layouts, publishing sets, it all numbers automatically, and if i move stuff around it organizes itself…. i finally got the graphic overrides! you can make a plan where all the steel beams appear in red while everything else appears in gray. I was able to get some pretty isometrics with 3d views, sections, 3d views… the door drawings were already done and i didnt even realize it until i checked the schedule… i didnt have one single crash in all this time! I used your trapezoid wall tip a LOT.
Man, It truly is an absolutely spectacular piece of software…
Jared Banks
José, thanks for returning to this post and giving me an update. It’s been a joy to watch your progression via your comments. So glad it all came together and you were able to work some ARCHICAD magic.
Jose
Hi Jared, just passing by to say hi. Its been more than 4 years since i was up at night learning Archicad, and im still learning, but so far ive had a blast with it. A complete life changer. I want to thank you again for your encouraging words back then.
Jared Banks
That’s great to hear! I’m glad to have been a part of the journey.