ACA 2011 - Opening Location Changes - Part 2

First Post in Series: ACA 2011 - Opening Location Changes - Part 1

The first post covered the splitting of the Offset/Center option into separate Offset and Center options when placing a opening (Door, Window, Door/Window Assembly or Opening) object in a Wall, and showed how that worked for a Door, using Wall ends or intersecting Walls to define the Wall segments to which the Offset or Center applies. In this post, we will look at the newly added "Relative to grid" property, which only applies to Doors and Windows.

When set to "No", Walls are used to define the segments, as in previous releases. When set to "Yes",AutoCAD^® Architecture will use grid lines that intersect the Wall to determine the Wall Segment over which the Center or Offset will be applied. In the image below, the Center option has been selected, and, as you can see, the Window is centered between the two grid lines crossing the Wall, ignoring the intersecting Wall.*
The Offset option works in a similar fashion, using intersecting Grid lines to define the offset points.
As mentioned in the first post, any type of Grid can be used - Ceiling Grids, Column Grids or Layout Grids - provided that the Grid is visible in the currently active Display Representation Set. Ceiling Grids are less likely candidates, given their usually small cell dimensions.

The next post will examine the new multiple option when placing openings.

Next Post in Series: ACA 2011 - Opening Location Changes - Part 3

* - For the purposes of this article, I extended the Column Grid by one additional bay, so that the Column Grid lines perpendicular to the exterior Wall would actually cross the Wall. If I had not done so, ACA would have found no grid lines and would have acted on the entire length of the Wall instead. Adding Grid Labels does not change anything, as what appear to be Grid Line extensions are actually the Anchor objects that attach the grid bubble Multi-View Blocks to the Grid, masquerading as Grid Lines. This is a major drawback for this feature in my opinion, as I can see wanting to have multiple, evenly spaced openings in a structural bay on an exterior Wall to be relatively common, but do not expect to be using this on interior Walls very often, if ever.

ACA 2011 - Opening Location Changes - Part 1

One item that has changed in the 2011 release* of AutoCAD^® Architecture is the way that openings (Doors, Windows, Door/Window Assemblies and Openings) are placed in Walls. Instead of a choice between Unconstrained and Offset/Center, you now have three choices: Unconstrained, Offset and Center. While you may initially miss having Offset and Center available at the same time, I am told that these needed to be split into separate options, in order to enable the new "Space Evenly" options that allow you to place multiple, evenly spaced, Doors or Windows in one operation. Also new is the choice to have the offset or centering boundaries be Walls (as before) or Grid Lines. Any type of grid (Layout, Column, Ceiling) will work, although Column and Layout will most likely be the ones most often used. I will take a look at these new options in the next few posts.

You will want to have your Properties palette open when placing openings in order to have control over the placement. (You can also make use of Command-line prompts or Dynamic Input, although the latter is failing to display a list of Position options for me.) Look on the Design tab, under the Location category, which is at the bottom of the tab. Notice that the first three properties have an eight-pointed asterisk icon at the left side. That indicates that these properties are only available at the time of object creation.Note that until you select a Wall (the first prompt of the DoorAdd command), the Multiple insert property will be grayed out and inactive. This post will focus on placing a single opening relative to Walls. With Relative to grid set to no, the Position setting will be relative to Walls. As in previous versions, setting Postion to unconstrained allows you to move your cursor to the place where you want the Door and click to place it - or, for more precision, you can type a value into the Dynamic Dimension Input, if enabled. You may also want to turn off any running Object Snaps when placing openings.
Changing the Position property to Offset in the Properties palettewill add a new property, Automatic offset,in which you specify the distance from which the Door is to be offset from the Wall end or intersecting Wall. This should be be familiar, as it worked the same way before, only now you can only place an offset Door, rather than being able to offset or center the Door, depending upon your cursor position. With the Position property set to Offset, the Door can only be placed offset from the Wall End or from an intersecting Wall.

Setting the Position property to Center will remove the Automatic offset property, if it was previously present.With this Postion setting, the Door will be constrained to the middle of the Wall or Wall segment.
So far, the only new thing has been the splitting of Offset and Center into separate options. The next post will look at the new Relative to grid option.

Next Post in Series: ACA 2011 - Opening Location Changes - Part 2

* - Subscribers who installed the 2010 Subscription Advantage Pack have already seen these changes. The ribbon tools associated with them have been integrated into the ACA 2011 ribbon, rather than being on a separate ribbon tab, as was the case with the Subscription Advantage Pack.

The Aubin Academy Series Books

Those of you who have enjoyed Paul Aubin's books may be glad to know that the first of his books for the 2011 releases, The Aubin Academy Master Series: Revit^® Architecture 2011, is now out. The AutoCAD^® Architecture 2011 book, with which I assisted, is due out October 27, as is the AutoCAD^® MEP book. The Revit^® MEP 2011 book is expected in December. You can read more about this year's books and the rebranding in Paul's blog.

ACA 2011 Update 1

Update 1 for AutoCAD^® Architecture 2011 is now available, here.

The Readme (be sure to read it, especially the parts on installation and backing up of your custom files) indicates that the following ACA issues have been resolved:

3D Modeling

• Components whose display has been turned off are shown on converting an AEC object to a 3D Solid.

Curtain Walls

• Custom model components in a curtain wall may display incorrect material assignments in different display configurations in 3D views.

Dimensions

• Associative dimensions may not update when walls are moved.

Drawing Management

• Redefining an existing model space view causes AutoCAD Architecture to crash.

General UI

• AutoCAD Architecture may crash on launching the Style Manager.

Help

• Third-party applications based on AutoCAD Architecture cannot access their Help files through the application.

IFC

• Some roofs may change position after executing the IFCEXPORT command.

Materials

• The MATERIALLIST command reports the volume of only the first object in a multiple selection.

Modify

• AutoCAD Architecture may crash while trimming entities.

Performance

• Sometimes memory usage increases when switching back and forth between the tabs of the Properties Palette.

Renovation

• A wall with display overrides displays incorrectly when modified in the renovation mode.

Sections

• Creating a horizontal section may cause AutoCAD Architecture to crash.

Slabs

• No style information is available in the Properties Palette for a slab created by applying the properties of the Slab tool to linework and walls.

Walls

• Trimming a wall may cause doors and windows in the wall to move or disappear.


• Walls that clean up correctly in a previous version may not clean up correctly in AutoCAD Architecture 2011.


• Wall cleanup EIP functions such as Merge, Subtract, Fillet, and Chamfer do not work in a custom UCS.

A number of AutoCAD fixes are also listed in the Readme.

Revit® Architecture Dependent Views and Revision Clouds

Another interesting Revit^® Architecture discovery I made the other day while scrambling to get some revised drawings plotted in time to reissue them yesterday. The floor plans and reflected ceiling plans of this project are shown at 1/4" = 1'-0", and three separate drawing sheets are required to do so. (See this article for the key plan from that project.)

One of the long sides of the building has an array of typical patient rooms, and there was a change to the location of the light fixtures at the patient room entrance alcoves along that entire side, due to a conflict with ductwork. We have a ceiling plan view of the entire floor, and that view has three dependent views, each cropped to one of the three sectors. Annotation placed in the dependent view shows in the parent view, and vice versa, so I often work in the parent view, since that gives access to the entire floor.

I thought I would be "efficient" to put all of the revision clouds for the revised entrance alcove lighting in one revision cloud object. You can draw multiple, separate revision clouds in sketch mode in a single revision cloud object. So I drew them all in one object on one floor, added revision tags to each sub-cloud (you have to reclick the tag tool in the ribbon for each additional tag to be added to the same object) and then clipboard copied the object and tags and pasted it aligned to the other floor. I was so proud of how efficient I had been, until I checked one of the sheets and found that the revision clouds did not show up! Then I opened each of the dependent views and saw that the revision clouds were not visible there, either.

I double-checked to see that other revision clouds I had done as individual clouds did in fact show in both the parent and dependent views (they did) and was on the verge of getting disfunctionally frustrated when it occurred to me that perhaps the reason why the clouds were not showing in the dependent views was because one cloud object had graphics that were beyond the clip boundary of each dependent view. I made two additional copies of the cloud object on one of the floors - so that I would have one for each depenent view. Then I edited each of the copies, deleting all of the clouds that were not in the dependent view to be served by that copy. Once that was done, the clouds showed up in the dependent views and I was back in business, after adding tags to the two copies and then deleting the mega-cloud on the other floor and copying the three new clouds and tags to the other floor.

In hindsight, it makes sense that an annotation object that falls outside of the annotation crop boundary would not show up in a particular dependent view, but that did not occur to me when I started the clouding task. I will have to keep that in mind in the future.

Hatch Editing With Grips - 2010 & Later

Here is an AutoCAD^® feature that has been around since the 2010 release, and now that I am using that in the office, I thought it worth a mention, given how easy it makes updating non-associative hatches - even those created in previous releases. Given the problems associative hatches can have when an external reference or an AEC object is part of the boundary (when opening the file, the hatch often tries to resolve itself before all of the bounding objects have been loaded and resolved), I had taken to drawing polyline boundaries on a non-plotting layer and making hatches associative to that, so that I could edit the boundary easily should the area of hatch need to be changed in the future. Having been on the 2004 release for quite some time for production work, I was not able to take advantage of the ability to generate a boundary of an existing, non-associative hatch and make the hatch associative to it. The new grip editing feature makes this additional step unecessary.

To demonstrate the grip editing feature, I have created a square, non-associative hatch (and deleted the original bounding polyline), and drawn another polyline, to which I will extend the hatch, using grip edits.
Selecting the hatch reveals a number of grips. The center grip allows you to move the entire hatch, and was present in releases previous to 2010. The Vertex and Edge grips are new in 2010 (and are also present in 2011). ACA users should be familiar with hovering the cursor over a grip to get a tooltip, possibly listing options, and that technique works here as well.Hovering over a square grip at the perimeter of the hatch (Vertex) reveals that selecting that grip will allow you to initially move the Vertex to a new location, and pressing the CTRL key will cycle to the Remove option, allowing you to delete the Vertex.Hovering over a rectangular Edge grip on a straight segment at the hatch perimeter shows that the intial action on selecting the grip will be to add a new Vertex, and that pressing the CTRL key will cycle to converting that Edge to an arc.Hovering over the rectangular grip of an arc Edge of a hatch indicates that the initial action is to stretch the arc and that you can use the CTRL key to cycle to add a new Vertex and then to convert the arc to a line.

ACA users that have used grip edits on AEC objects will have to remind themselves that the Edge grips can NOT be used to stretch a straight segement, as they can for AEC Polygons.

To make the square hatch fill the drawn polyline with grip editing, use the Move option to relocate the four existing Vertices to Vertices on the polyline.To fill in the remainder, select the Edge grip that is not on a segment of the polyline and use the Add Vertex mode to add a fifth......and sixth Vertex......filling the polyline.
You can, of course, accomplish this simple edit in one step, by selecting the original square hatch, right clicking, choosing Set Boundary from the context menu and then picking the polyline.But in a typical drawing, where you have a lot more linework and, perhaps, several adjoining hatches, and where the linework defining the hatch edges is not a single polyline, I have found grip editing of hatches to be a very useful feature, and one that has virtually eliminated the need to delete an existing hatch and then rehatch the area.

Revit - Wall Openings and Room Separation Lines

Interesting Observations to Keep in Mind in the Future [based on the Wall having a Base Offset of 0 (zero)]:

1. A Wall Opening with a Base Offset of 0 or less (extends to the Wall's bottom or below) renders that Wall incapable of acting as a Room separator. In other words, the Room will extend through the Opening in search of bounding elements beyond (left opening in the images below).


2. A Wall Opening with a non-zero, positive Base Offset will act a Room separator, even if the top of the Wall Opening is at or above the top of the Wall or if the Room's Base Offset puts the bottom of the Room above the bottom of the Wall Opening (right opening in the images below).
   
   So, it would appear that the condition at the associated Level is what determines whether or not a Wall Opening will allow a Room to pass through or not.


3. Adding a Room Separation Line to close the breach and having the endpoints of the Room Separation line at an edge of the Wall Opening disables the stretch grip at that edge and also prevents that edge from working with the Align tool. (If both ends of the Room Separation Line are at the edge of the Wall Opening, then neither stretch grip is available and neither edge can be Aligned.



4. Stretching the Room Separation Line beyond the extents of the Wall Opening allows the Wall Opening end to be grip edited or Aligned, but will result in warnings about the overlapping Wall and Room Separation Line. If those warnings do not bother you, you can leave the Wall Separation Line beyond the Wall Opening until you are satisfied with the location of the Wall Opening.


5. Selecting the Wall will display a "Disallow Join" grip at each edge of the Wall Opening. Clicking on one of those grips will reactivate the stretch grip and the ability to Align that edge. Doing so, and enlarging the Wall Opening will allow Rooms to flow through, so you will also need to extend the Room Separation Line if you want to prevent the Room(s) from passing through.

So, in order to edit the width of a Wall Opening that has a Room Separation Line with an endpoint on the Wall Opening edge you wish to move, you either need to stretch the Room Separation Line to get the endpoint off of the Wall Opening Edge -OR- you need to select the Wall, "disallow join" at that edge using the "Disallow Join" grip. If you can easily stretch the Wall Separation Line to get its endpoint at the desired new location of the Wall Opening edge, then doing that and then editing the Wall Opening would be the least tedious way to proceed. If not, either method should work; use the one you prefer.

Hatching in 2011

Thanks to a heads up in this post on Steve Bennett's blog, I am now aware that the default setting for island detection has been changed from Normal to Outer, as can be seen on the Hatch Creation contextual ribbon tab, on the flyout of the Options panel, on the Island Detection drop down list.

Outer will only hatch the outermost area, ignoring any "island" areas.

The former default value, Normal, will hatch the outer area, skip the "first" island but then hatch a "second," nested island, and alternate the hatching of additional nested islands, if any.

The default value for island detection is stored in each drawing, and can be changed in several different ways. While in the HATCH or BHATCH command, on the Hatch Creation tab, or on the Hatch Editor contextual ribbon tab when selecting a Hatch object, you can expand the Options panel and use the Island Detection drop down list to choose your preferred value.You can also use the Hatch and Gradient dialog, accessed while in the HATCH or BHATCH command by using the seTtings option or by clicking on the Hatch Settings tool on the Options panel.On first use, the Hatch and Gradient dialog will be collapsed, and the Island Detection options will not be visible.Click on the arrow icon in the lower right corner to expand the dialog and expose the Island Detection area.To set the value directly, set the value of the HPISLANDDETECTION System Variable as desired:
0 = Normal
1 = Outer
2 = Ignore

Reset the default value in your template file(s) if you want the initial value in new files to be something other than Outer.

Facelift

After nearly six years, I decided to revise the template for this blog, converting to Blogger's newer Layout templates from my old "classic" template. I hope you enjoy the change.

Running Slowly?

Various suggestions have been made over the years in the Autodesk Discussion Groups and the AUGI Forums for dealing with AutoCAD^® Architecture running more slowly than normal. Here are a few things that I have found are helpful in that situation.

1. Bad Shortcuts: If you have a shortcut file in the AutoCAD Search Path (as defined on the Files tab of the Options dialog) that point to a non-existent folder or file, every time ACA need to check the search path (more often than you think), it will dutifully keep trying to resolve the bad shortcut until times out. One frequent culprit is the Add-A-Plotter Wizard in the Plotters folder. If you copied your plotters from a previous release and grabbed the Add-A-Plotter Wizard shortcut file as well, and then uninstalled the previous release (or otherwise moved or deleted the referenced program file), you will experience delays while ACA tries to find the missing file.
   
   
2. Bad File Locations: Check the entries for the Search Path and other file locations on the Files tab of the Options dialog, to make certain that all of the folders/files specified exist (in the location given). We had an office standard profile that had network path that referenced the hard drive on a local computer. (Don't ask me, I did not set it up.) So long as that computer was logged into the network, all was well. As soon as it was logged off, things slowed down, while waiting for the search for that file/path to time out. It took a while for me to realize that the speed issues I was having only happened after 5:00 pm, and it was only after I found the improper pathing that I understood why.