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Credits
Courtesy of GRAPHISOFT
Contents
CONTENTS
Introduction _______________________________________________4
Conceptual Design in ARCHICAD _____________________________6
Starting ARCHICAD _____________________________________________ 6
Creating Site Geometry _________________________________________ 7
Creating a Base Geometry _______________________________________ 9
Copying an Existing Edge _______________________________________ 10
Offsetting Faces of the Morph ___________________________________ 13
Creating Another Morph________________________________________ 16
Splitting the Morph ____________________________________________ 19
Additional Site Geometry _______________________________________ 22
Cleaning Up Intersecting Geometries_____________________________ 26
Creating a Morph in Sections/Elevations __________________________ 30
Modifying All Edges Simultaneously _____________________________ 32
Placing Objects in the Surroundings _____________________________ 38
Applying Surfaces _____________________________________________ 40
Visualizations _________________________________________________ 41
Learn More About the Morph Tool _______________________________ 45
Introduction
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 - Conceptual Design in ARCHICAD
Vol. 3 - Intermediate ARCHICAD
Vol. 4 - Advanced ARCHICAD
Vol. 5 - Using Teamwork
You are now reading Vol. 2 Conceptual Design in ARCHICAD, a comprehensive hands-on
training to familiarize you with the conceptual modeling and massing concepts of ARCHICAD.
This guide is meant for new ARCHICAD users, prospects as well as students and teachers using it
as part of the BIM Curriculum Exercises.
Contents of the training material
PDF guide an e-book including detailed explanation of every step with screenshots
Video clip on the ARCHICAD YouTube channel to help your learning process
Narrated movie clips are available on the YouTube channel for GRAPHISOFT ARCHICAD
(https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=7v99ZUc5LpA&list=PLnXY6vLUwlWWJawLurhjmdS9-W1oaUSnQ) providing
step-by-step instructions for each step of the training guide. The ARCHICAD YouTube channel
can also be accessed via the ARCHICAD Help menu by entering the title of this training guide
into the search field.
Install ARCHICAD
Follow the instructions in this PDF guide
Start the related video clip on the ARCHICAD YouTube channel
Introduction
This training does not require any specific ARCHICAD versions*. The e-book was made with the
INT (English) version of ARCHICAD, therefore we recommend you to download and use the same
version for practicing, but it can be used with any other language version of ARCHICAD.
How to get ARCHICAD?
If you do not have ARCHICAD yet, please visit http://www.graphisoft.com/downloads/ to obtain
a FREE installer:
If you are a student, a teacher or a representative of a school, download a fully functional
version of ARCHICAD and claim for an education license from https://myarchicad.com/.
If you are a professional architect, download a fully functional version of ARCHICAD and claim
for a 30-day trial license from https://myarchicad.com/. Projects saved with this version can
be automatically upgraded to full versions when purchasing a commercial license.
Please contact your local distributor for purchasing commercial ARCHICAD licenses at
www.graphisoft.com/info/where_to_buy
We hope you will find this training useful and wish you success with your future ARCHICAD
projects!
Good luck,
The GRAPHISOFT Team
* above ARCHICAD 16
Starting ARCHICAD
Double-click the ARCHICAD icon to launch ARCHICAD. The startup soon will prompt with a
dialog box. We would like to use the default settings of ARCHICAD, so select Create a New
Project, choose ARCHICAD 19 Template and Standard Profile 19 work environment.
Click New.
2 Activate the Morph tool, choose Box geometry method from the Infobox.
4 Move the cursor upwards and set the height of the morph by typing d1000.
2 Click the Morph tool in the Info box to open its settings.
3 Activate the surface override by clicking the Surface button on the Model panel.
4 Choose Paint Titanium White and click OK to close the settings.
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5 To create a copy of the edge, press either the ALT or the CTRL key (a plus sign will appear) and
move the edge into the middle of the face. Move the cursor along the top edge, the cursor will
snap to the midpoint. Click to create the new edge.
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2 Draw a new edge along the existing bottom edge starting from the corner on the right to the
midpoint.
3 Choose Arc by 3 Points from the Pet palette and click the corner you started from. After the
click you can curve the edge drawn.
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5 Select the newly created morph face with CTRL+SHIFT+click. Hit TAB to toggle between the
site morph and the curved face.
6 Click the face itself and use Push/Pull to extrude it upwards by 6000.
7 Select both morphs. Use SHIFT to add the second element to the selection.
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This way the two morphs will be handled as a single element from now.
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3 Hover your cursor over the apparent intersection line of the morph and the Editing Plane,
until a blue Snap guide appears.
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5 Click one of the blue Snap Guides to select an edge of the cutting plane, and then click on the
point where the other Snap Guide intersects the vertical morph edge.
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7 Open the Morph settings from the Info Box and change surface override to Paint Sand
Beige. Click OK.
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8 Now select the resulting ridge only and apply Fillet/Chamfer from the Standard Toolbar
(also available on the Pet palette), using a radius of 1000 for Fillet.
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2 Since the morph was selected, it will be automatically marked as a Target Element the
operation will be carried out on these types of elements. Select the plinth geometry only
(with the palette still opened) and click Get Operator Elements the operation will be
carried out by these elements.
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Lets modify this terrace now and say we want to modify the height of the morph.
1 Use CTRL+SHIFT to select the top face.
2 Use Drag and elevate the face by 500 (keep SHIFT pressed to maintain vertical movement).
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2 Lets drag the East Elevation marker (and the view itself at the same time) to the right side of
the building. The morph we create will use the vertical plane defined by the elevation
viewpoint.
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3 When placed, use the Open Elevation command from the context menu (with the marker still
selected).
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4 Now repeat with the curved extension, pick its top plane, use Offset All Edges and copy
the edges inwards.
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We can either copy the existing edges of the terrace to achieve a similar result or draw a
completely new edge using the Add Polyline/Rectangle/Box/Revolved Morph command of the Pet
palette. Lets see how the latter one works.
1 Lets create Guide line segments 200 from the outer terrace edges. Select the Create Guide
Line Segment from the Guide Lines menu of the Standard toolbar.
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3 Repeat these steps to create another Guide Line parallel to the longer terrace edge.
4 Select the morph, and click Add Polyline/Rectangle/Box/Revolved Morph command of the
Pet palette.
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6 Select Remove All Guide Lines from the Guide Line menu to remove the Guide lines.
7 Select the face only and use Push/Pull to extrude it upwards by 1000.
Note: Any elements of the project can be converted to morphs. Simply select the
elements and choose Convert Selection to Morph(s) from the context menu. This
way all elements can be freely edited, however they can not be converted back to
their original element types.
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4 Place more instances of people, you can either place the same object and change them oneby-one later or place different types of objects.
5 Do the same with cars, use vehicle as search term and use the Orbit option to rotate the
model and place the objects on the other side of the building volume. The objects will
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Note: Any selections can be saved as GDL-objects. The Morph tool is often used to
create smaller custom objects besides massing. Select all three morphs that
represent the building and choose File/Libraries and Objects/Save Selection
as/Object. The object then can be freely used as any other objects, this way
multiple instances of the same geometry can be placed easily for modeling the
surrounding buildings.
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Applying Surfaces
To make our model more realistic, we can quickly apply surface materials.
Select Document/Creative Imaging/Surface Painter to open the palette. Here, you can see all
available finishes with previews, and simply drag and drop them to any surfaces to apply
overrides of the original. As you drag a new finish to the model, highlights will help to override a
particular surface or the entire element. You can use the search field to find the appropriate
surface easily in the list.
Lets apply some overrides on the model, like:
Plinth: Stone Limestone
Straight terrace and Rooftop: Tiles Tan 30x30
Arched rooftop: Insulation Solid Brown
Ground terrace: Grass - Brown
Wall at the straight terrace: Glass Blue
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Visualizations
To watch the recorded version of this chapter, please start the 6th Video (6 - Visualization) on
the ARCHICAD YouTube channel.
As a final step, lets create some quick renderings of our sketch model.
1 Find an appropriate 3D view using the navigation tools of ARCHICAD (Orbit, Pan, Zoom).
2 Right-click in the 3D window and select 3D Window Settings
Click OK.
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5 Try other sketch scenes and play with their settings to explore the different representations.
You can also add paper backgrounds to the rendered images on the Background panel of the
palette.
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Congratulations!
You have completed this Training Guide! We hope that you have learned many new and exciting
things about the possibilities of BIM and understood how ARCHICAD supports the conceptual
design workflow. Please check the other volumes of this training series for more details about
ARCHICAD.
The following web page provides additional free training guides in other areas of ARCHICAD,
including building object creation, collaboration and modeling:
www.graphisoft.com/learning/training_materials.
Should you have any questions regarding ARCHICAD or other GRAPHISOFT products, please visit
the GRAPHISOFT Help Center, our online knowledge base at helpcenter.graphisoft.com.
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
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