Over on BIM Engine, I wrote about why the 2015 GRAPHISOFT North America BIM Conference was amazing. Here’s the post. I more recently wrote about my favorite ARCHICAD blogs run for the benefit of individual companies. Here’s that post, too. There’s a lot of commonalities between those two posts, including plenty of name dropping. The connection I want to talk about today though is what happens when passionate users start talking about challenges in ARCHICAD. During the BIM Conference a number of people mentioned in those two posts were standing around in a vast Las Vegas hallway, waiting for another lecture to start. I can’t remember exactly who was there, but let’s say it was Patrick May, Nathan Hildebrandt, Brian Spears, Link Ellis, Eduardo Rolón, and myself. Plus I’m sure we were collectively channeling Rob Jackson, who was probably asleep in his bed in Sheffield dreaming about IFC. Maybe it wasn’t a discussion between all of us at once, but instead a conversation that spanned a few days, starting and stopping in various swanky Las Vegas venues. Within this conversation were countless topics. But one that came up was how to save DWGs from ARCHICAD-specifically how to do it in the best manner. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I know. DWG is so archaic and backwards. We should be talking about the best way to exchange IFC. And believe me. We did that too. And then we did that again with a slightly different circle a few months later in Brisbane, Australia.

What follows is Patrick May’s revelations from all those conversations about DWGs. He remembers the exact conversation a bit differently than I do. That might be because I joined late, or during the second iteration of the discussion. It doesn’t matter.

SAVING DWGs VIA WORKSHEETS

While at the 2015 GRAPHISOFT North America BIM Conference in Las Vegas a small group of users where standing around after a session entitled “Working With Autodesk Firms”. The discussion quickly turn to solutions for DWG output. It has been my experience that sending IFC generally yields quick, easy coordination with little content or format complaints. Sending DWG’s however usually results in a lot of back and forth, adjusting Model View Options, Layers, DWG translator settings, etc. In fact, I have been developing a DWG output folder for each consultant with MVO settings, a DWG translator and a Readme document so that all my coworkers can replicate the settings which any given consultant has been happy with in the past.

There were many suggestions in this post-session conversation. The one that struck me as both creative and crazy was a comment on exploding the view to clean up Layers, Fills, consolidate linework, etc. At this suggestion I had a thought for what I believe is the perfect solution for DWG output and controlling content: why not use a Worksheet for creating a DWG? We use independent Worksheets for importing DWG’s as a figure or x-ref, so why not for saving them out?

The Worksheet is essentially a duplicate of the Detail Marker. This means that a source marker will take all the content of a 3D based view (plan, section, elevation, etc) and turn it into Lines and Fills. One of the biggest complaints/comments from consultants receiving an ARCHICAD produced DWG is that “there are too many lines and fills”. This is because of the vectors needed to define a 3d element such as a wall are often duplicated in plan view. When we create a worksheet of that plan view, it becomes incredibly simple to select all lines, and consolidate. If you create a series of Find & Select settings it also becomes quick to select all lines on the wall Layers and turn them to polylines with the unify command. In addition, doing a Find and Select will allow you to select certain Fills (cover fills, cut fills or drafting fills) and delete or change them as needed.

The result is essentially a preview of what the DWG content will be, before exporting and sending. In addition, this worksheet can be saved to the View Map for repeated and consistent output via the Publisher. This guarantees that the best MVO settings and DWG translator are automatically applied to that consultants drawings every time. If the source view changes-a wall moves for example-simply rebuild the worksheet from its source and follow the pre-defined Find & Select functions to re-consolidate and edit the Worksheet again.

Linework Before Consolidation (28 lines for a simple corner)

Linework Consolidation Wizard (delete and explode)

Linework After Consolidation & Cleanup (13 lines for the same corner)

Okay, Jared again. I think this process is incredible. Patrick can’t humbly say this idea is genius, but I can. ARCHICAD already has the tools we need to turn our views into dumb 2D. Of course we never want to do this, right? Except all those annoying times when we have to send out DWGs. What a wonderful way to control content and visuals. As far as I can tell (I spent some time researching) no one else has documented this process anywhere on the web. Why not? Are we missing something? Or did it take the collective inspiration of decades and decades of ARCHICAD experience talking over free coffee and pastries to figure this out? I have a hunch it’s the latter. What do you think? Are you going to test this solution out when you are forced to create DWGs for a consultant? I sure am.

BONUS VIDEO!

To make sure everyone understands the first steps of this process (making the Worksheet and beginning to clean up the view), I made a short video. Check it out:

If you aren’t familiar with the blog Patrick runs, do yourself a favor and head there now. My feelings won’t be hurt too much if that becomes your favorite ARCHICAD blog. I’ll be happy to be in your top three.

Subscribe to my blog to read more about the tricky world of being an Architect in the 21st century: Shoegnome on Facebook, Twitter, and the RSS feed. Maybe after a few more ARCHICAD events, someone will come up with a similarly amazing and simple process for validating other kinds of exports with surprisingly useful ARCHICAD tools that aren’t explicitly designed for that purpose.