Work Environments in ArchiCAD — part 2B
Here’s Part 2B of my series on Work Environments. Have you read Part 1 and Part 2A yet?
I think this is a pretty cool 2 screen solution. The main screen is almost completely drawing space. Only the toolbox and a few toolbars encroach on the useable space. You’ll notice the toolbox is a little bigger than you’re used to seeing. That’s because this user is also using the MEP modeler add-on for ArchiCAD. The second screen (which has a smaller vertical dimension than the main screen) has a ton of useful palettes visible AND plenty of space to always show the 3D window. Very cool. I love that this user chose to show the grid object as his base image for the screenshots. I need to remember to start using that; I think my current work could take advantage of grids.
Expect more Work Environment Posts soon. Thanks again to everyone who’s sent me their screen shots.
Haven’t shared your Work Environment? It’s not too late, I’ll keep posting as many as I get.
veso
Hello, Jared, how can i customize the work environment so that my palletes,toolbars and viewports are docked on two screens?
Jared Banks
Rearrange your palettes, toolbars, windows, viewports, etc. just the way you want on the two screens. Then go up to the Options menu, down to Work Environments, then to Palette Schemes. On the right hand side select store as (or redefine if you already have a custom one set up). That’ll save your arrangement on however many screens you have. I recommend doing two setups, one for 2 screens and one for 1 screen (if you ever work with only 1 screen, say if your machine is a laptop).
Let me know if you have more questions about that.
veso
Thank you, for your response, Jared :).
The thing is that i can send to my secondary screen only pallettes and toolbars and not windows as floor plans and 3d views. One of my screens is 15′ laptop screen and the other one is 24′- their resolution is different and that makes it very inconvenient to just extend the archicad window to both screens so that i can send one of my view to the secondary. I mean when archicad is maximized on my primer screen when i drag a window out of it and to the other one it just doesnt show on the secondary- the window simply disappears behind the pallettes ot whatever i have put in that direction. Maybe its a Windows’ issue and not archicad’s, i dont know.
Jared Banks
Interesting. Does the window disappear completely (vanish) or just sit behind the palettes. If it’s just behind the palettes that’s a function of the palettes and tool bars sitting in front of non-active windows. If you click on the window does it jump in front of the palettes? If that’s the case, then you’ll need to arrange the second screen so that the palettes and the windows don’t overlap.
Also I don’t use ArchiCAD on windows so there might be something else going on. Are you using ArchiCAD in full screen mode? Does the PC offer that? What version of Windows and ArchiCAD are you using? Maybe that’s an issue. You might also want to ask your question here: http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewforum.php?f=5
veso
Im using Windows 7 and ArchiCad 15 and yesterday i installed version 17 just to try if the problem occurs and it has the same behaviour. PC offers full screen mode and even if there are no palettes the window im dragging just vanishes and the part that vanished on the first screen doesnt appear on the other.
http://i39.tinypic.com/wbvtdk.jpg
Jared Banks
Very interesting. I wonder if that’s a Windows 7 issue. Try not using full screen mode. I’m curious if that’s what is messing things up (that full screen mode is really only seeing one monitor; or only partially seeing the second one).
veso
Full screen or not its the same result. I posted in architalk, ill let you know if i come up with something.
Thank you, for the effort :). ill be around once in a while, uve got some really useful stuff here.
Cheers
Jared Banks
Thanks. Do keep me posted. I’m positive you’re not the first person to come across this!
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