ArchiCAD Skyscraper Tutorial Hotlinking under 30 Minutes

now if you come this far in the video and are wondering what's the point of this can i just duplicate it up and up and up and up and one yes absolutely you can duplicate this file you can simply highlight that all go command d and duplicate it up and up and up and up and introduce more and more windows and do a whole bunch of things to make this exactly what you want but the purposes of this video is very simple if anything changes and i can guarantee you from the first day you draw this to the last day goes out on site something is going to change every 10 minutes you don't want to have to go into this project and change the same thing 50 times if you have repetition of floor plans you want to create small modules or small parts that can be quickly and easily updated update it once save yourself so much time so many headaches if you're somebody that is in the architecture industry or looking to become an architect you're probably one day dreaming of designing your very own skyscraper well today i want to make it so clear so easy that anybody who knows even the basic understanding of archicad can start to create their own skyscraper okay so like always we're going to be starting with the arcade select template it is the australian 25 version for me feel free to use whatever template you have available to you guys the template selection isn't too critical for what we're showcasing today basically what we're going to be starting with is by creating the repetitive nature of the skyscraper itself as you may or may not be aware of most skyscrapers and any other building really in general has a fundamental planning policy that basically dictates the shape the structure the height and everything in between so with any skyscraper it's going to be extremely different that's why none of them look exactly the same besides creative flair of course so we aren't really going to be focusing on that base the base that basically dictates the ground the social interaction and the human element we're just going to be focusing on the repetitive nature of repetition of floor plans so there's a couple things we want to keep in mind when we start on the 25 select template one we want to make sure that all our story settings are identical throughout the project so that means any time that we do anything and start creating new files new master layers and new hot links we don't want to have any of our levels different so let's start by pressing ctrl and 7 to open up our story settings what you'll see is we have our ground first and our roof which is a very very basic setup i always just simply untick all of those on the side because i don't care about them in elevation but you can leave them ticked if you want that's just personal preference now let's say we're starting with a very big skyscraper we're going to insert something below and we're going to call it our footings footings on a skyscraper are huge but the footings layer isn't actually that important so we can make it whatever height we want we can make it 100 mil for a standard concrete slab we can make it three meters for mass concrete footings for those columns that are going to be supporting this structure or we can leave it as absolutely anything it's really not critical as long as it is identical throughout every single file moving up again it's all about that repetition it doesn't matter what these numbers are they're going to be unique to your situation your construction material and methods so what i put in here isn't exactly critical but feel free to follow along step by step so on our ground floor let's say we want three meter ceilings and then we want our ground ceiling space with skyscrapers obviously it's important that we have a ceiling first of all we'll probably have a suspended concrete slab that might be about 250 millimeters thick if not more plus another 300 350 ml for all your mechanical ducts all your clearances that have to go through in a high rise depending how big it is it might even be more it might be 500 because there's going to be a tremendous amount of services running through that ceiling space so in our ceiling space what we're actually going to do we're going to change it on this side over here to 600 millimeters for example next we're going to go to our second floor and we're going to repeat this step basically all the way until we get to our top okay so what i've gone through is done is gone up to six floors only because i really got lazy and i couldn't be going up bothered going up to 50 so we'll make it a six floor high-rise apartment i just couldn't bother typing that's literally it you can go as high as you want as low as you want it's completely up to you and your project but in this instance we're gonna stick to six floors and we're gonna make sure that every single floor has a three metre ceiling so for example ground floor has three meters second floor has three meters third floor has three meters and so on all the ceiling spaces are identical to keep it very easy for us to manipulate later on so let's go okay and start setting up this project in itself now let's say we want to showcase the slab all the way up to the next ceiling line so basically what we're going to be doing is using that ground floor and that ground ceiling or part of that ground ceiling really to create our actual structure so let's keep it really really simple and let's say we're going to be starting on our ground floor we're completely dismissing the principles of skyscraper activation and we're literally just going for straight tower repetition so if we start on our ground floor plan let's go drop one floor down by pressing command down and going to our footings layer we'll open up our slab and let's simply draw a 15 meter by 15 meter square now if you're new to arcade and have no idea how i drew that square the slab tool over here clicking once dragging out pressing tab allows us to change the dimensions typing in 15 000 pressing tab again and typing in 15 000 again then pressing enter creates our 15 meter by 15 meter square now i can simply go there and delete that square because i do not need it and go back to control up so we can go to our floor above which is our ground floor simply right clicking on the footings layout let's go show as trace so we can see where our actual floor is now if we come across to our wall tool we can make sure our layer settings are correct we can make sure our uh reference line is correct and we can go ahead and select our wall type in a high rise building it'll most likely be a curtain wall but not always not necessarily it could still be a traditional build if it's like six stories eight stories something like that but if you start going to 50 60 stories and creating a very proper skyscraper most likely it will be a curtain wall but for the purposes of this we're not going into curtain walls we're just going to select our 90mm stud partition and draw a big box around that entire slab so coming into 3d we'll see that our floor is way too low so let's just open up those settings project zero reference that to zero so it comes all the way back up and sits nicely in line with our floor plate next let's go back into the ground floor plan and let's open up a window we're gonna just make very generic windows throughout the whole space we're not really going to focus on how it looks again it's not about the design principles it's about how we fundamentally create vertical towers in arcade so let's go okay let's use one typical window and we'll introduce it into the space let's say we want that window to drag all the way across and if we go into 3d we'll see we have a highlight window we want that to be floor-to-ceiling glass so i'll drag that to the bottom extend that all the way to the top and then i'll go into the settings just to change a few things around because we don't want just one giant pane of glass that's that's a ridiculously expensive pane of glass and never really going to work so we're just going to go through these first of all i'm going to tick this box and change all my lines to black i hate orange windows i hate the standard template that is that's a different argument we're going to go through this and basically change our fundamental settings so we can actually introduce a few different things so if we click across to our sash options go to a hv grid let's say we only want one vertically and we probably want about or let's say 10 going horizontally the grid thickness needs to be a hundred mil and a hundred mil thickness this is commercial framing now you'll see we have one very big panel of glass that goes all the way from wall to wall and and the next thing i want to showcase is cornering so if we open up this again come down to our custom corner go custom corner on custom corner on we are going to make them 90 degrees and we click ok so if we come back to our ground floor scroll down we'll see that that window has been sliced at a 45 degree angle and then we can go ahead hold alt select that window so we replicate those settings drag and drop that window on the other side then command d line it up and introduce a corner window so if i come back into my 3d we'll see we have our corner all the way wrapping around and it's just solid glass it isn't anything from a wall point of view now i'm gonna quickly repeat those steps on the other two wall as well and there we have it now we have one basically super large big box that will be filled with officers warehouses whatever you want whatever you need that's basically what the function of the space inside our rectangle is going to be what you would actually do speaking from experience is you would dictate where your lift cores go where all your services are going to go where your stairs are going to go and then you're going to also position all your ducts line up your toilets as best as you can make sure your columns line up as best as you can introduce a grid system that is a whole kettle of fish that we can get into later down the track feel free to leave a comment down below if that is something that you're interested in and i'll definitely make some sort of video to basically run you through a lot more in-depth architecture of skyscrapers but more so this is again about replicating floor plates up and up and up over and over and over again so now that we have the fundamental basics of our shell we're just going to simply press the command up button once more or the control up button depending on what kind of system you're on go to our slab tool let's change this to ceilings and introduce a 15 by 15 ceiling which if we go command t we're going to change that generic roof let's just make it 10 mil and i'll override the surface it's just some glossy white so we don't have to worry too much about it it'll basically introduce one box here now what i'll do is click on that and simply drag all of our corners in a hundred mil so the ceiling actually sits on the inside of the building not the outside now just a quick little point before we get any further into this video i want to make sure that you guys are aware of the links that are down below in the description box there are some phenomenal resources for architects architecture students and anybody in the industry basically down below is a library of links that is going to allow you to better yourself and level up to the next level there is a whole bunch of architectural resources on my website for example there's a construction drawing checklist that you can go through and tick off one by one everything that you need on the construction set of drawings so you know and are very comfortable that when it leaves your desk it is done to the best standard possible there's archicad title blocks and a whole bunch of other things as well there is also a fantastic discord chat linked down below that is ever growing with some incredible people in there everybody in there is almost more experienced and more knowledgeable than me which i'm so thankful of and so grateful of that we can continue to create a community where everybody is able to help each other grow learn and be better professionals so even if you are a student if you're in for just learning archicad or if you're anybody in the industry make sure you join that discord chat because it is genuinely filled with some great people who are always happy to help out and make sure that we better ourselves each and every day anyway enough of my rambling let's turn back around now if you come this far in the video and are wondering what's the point of this can i just duplicate it up and up and up and up and one yes absolutely you can duplicate this file you can simply highlight that all go command z and duplicate it up and up and up and up and introduce more and more windows and do a whole bunch of things to make this exactly what you want but the purposes of this video is very simple if anything changes and i can guarantee you from the first day you draw this to the last day goes out on site something is going to change every 10 minutes you don't want to have to go into this project and change the same thing 50 times if you have repetition of floor plans you want to create small modules or small parts that can be quickly and easily updated update it once save yourself so much time so many headaches now basically what we're going to do with this is go back into our ceiling plan press command down or control down and select our marquee tool we are going to use the all floors selection and basically just marquee that whole building next what we want to do is go file save as what we're going to do is we're going to come down to our module file we're not going to save it as a pln you can save it as a plan and hotlink p lens in but i find it a lot quicker from an operating system point of view to hot link modules again million other ways do this i just find this relatively simple and easy so what we're going to do is go module file and save that to our desktop and click ok now what we're going to do is go file save as once more and save that as an archicad pln to our desktop so we have a base file to play with and basically then we're just going to reintroduce all those modules in to our arcad system so let's go pln save and continue working on this project now that we've got this saved as one a pln and two module file if we wanted to change something in the module file we'd simply open up that module in arcad change it save it and update it and it will do everything in this file itself so before we introduce a new module you want to create a hotlink layer that basically is going to store all of the information of the hot link on one layer that masters and turns it all off so by clicking ctrl l it opens up the layer settings i go new zero zero space hot link and okay so next we're gonna go up to file we're gonna go to external content and we're gonna go place hotlink we're gonna select our module from where we saved it so new module from file for me it was simply on the desktop so we select that skyscraper module one we click ok we want to input all our stories again remember that it's important these stories are exactly the same that's why i just simply saved this file so i don't have to go back and duplicate those stories click ok click select we are going to link it so it has a hotlink general file i'm going to go to my zero zero hot link file just because i wanted to show you guys really how to create a hot link the master id none of this is really important we want to keep our elevations as in the story structure of the hotlink source if something changes we can then adjust elevations to story structure of host project but for the time being literally all those settings work perfectly for us and we're just going to go place hotlink it's going to take a few seconds and then all you do is click ok and click once again off the file if we come into our 3d we're going to see that we basically see exactly what we saw a minute ago but if we press command l again and open up our layer setting we can then turn on our hotlink file go ok and you'll see it's doubled up on our environment so if i try and find our master hot linked layout which is completely grouped and basically free to move as i see fit we can then press command z and begin lifting that up like we originally intended to and then command d again and simply dragging it up all the way as far as we need to our top floor so there now we have six stories of identical tower done so quickly so seamlessly so easily that we don't have to worry about doing any other changes and as you can see moving around spinning it super quickly my computer still functions 100 okay it doesn't slow it down it doesn't lag it giving the model and this it shouldn't lag whatsoever but fundamentally speaking when the project size increases it doesn't lag so much as if you were to design it all in one master file for example an argument's sake let's go file open open and let's open our module file that we saved before i'm going to launch a new instance of archicad and change something up here so let this load i'm going to completely mess with the ground floor plan and show you how quick and how easy it is to basically change everything at once and with a snap of two fingers it changes everything vertically for you no problems whatsoever okay so my module file is now open over here and let's say we've we've done some cool things we want to change the shape of this building entirely it's no longer what we thought it was going to be so let's mess with it a little bit let's have some fun let's start by deleting that wall entirely replicating that wall system over here creating some sort of entry cut into the building jutting back at 45 and clicking okay if we come back into our 3d we'll see very different building very very quickly we're going to do the same thing on the opposite side of this building we're just going to basically introduce some sort of interesting characters some sort of interesting elements to make this building stand out and not look like a boring box now i'm going to go up to my ceiling plan right click on my ground floor plan show us trace by holding the space bar i'm going to cut everything out that i don't want again repeating those steps cutting out the building areas that i don't need and last but not least i'll come down to my slab and do that exact same step so holding a space bar clicking into shapes i don't want cuts it all out all gone there we go now we have two facades at the moment that our solid glass and a bunch of sides that are concrete we can leave it as that for argument's sake or we can introduce some more glass to make it one solid skyscraper i'm quickly going to go in in fill this with glass and then come back to this 3d window so you don't have to watch me replicate glass for 20 minutes so i've completed one side of the project entirely out of glass and the rear side i've left is concrete simply just to create something different in the project and literally it is very very simple from here on in now what we have to do is we got to come back in marquee that again go file save as scroll down to module file and replace our module by pressing ok now to update the master file all we have to do is come into file external content hot link module manager we find our module that we've hot linked let's quickly go re-link from file just to repeat the simple steps find the module click ok go okay and press done now it's going to update everything letting it do its thing pressing ok we are going to see a dramatic change in the building now as you can see this was part of the original hot link manufacturing process so we're simply going to delete that right click on our module above and duplicate that to our ground floor so it repeats all the way around and there we have it that's literally how easy and how quick was that to replicate and change six stories in a matter of seconds it is so much easier than having to go through and literally change every single thing multiple multiple times over you can do this with bedrooms you can do this with bathroom designs you can do this with whole floor plates if you want to if you're confident enough you can do it with lift cause you can literally do it with whatever you want because the fundamentals of this are exactly the same throughout anyway that's all for me today guys thank you so much for watching i hope you enjoy the tutorial i hope you learned something very valuable today that you'll take with you into your careers and hopefully one day design your very own skyscraper if you did make sure you smash that subscribe button down below and don't forget about the like button believe it or not that like button the little tiny little like button that turns blue if you hit it helps this channel so much with the youtube algorithm i can't stress it enough seriously the like button genuinely helps this channel grow it helps more people see these videos and it makes sure i keep making these videos for you guys but that is all for me today like always i'll see you next monday

Channel: David Tomic

Views: 20,131

Keywords: video, sharing, camera phone, video phone, free, upload, architect, architecture student, architect student, building architect, david tomic, Archicad, archicad 25, archicad hotlinking

Id: mwdoHL9bEQg

Length: 21min 36sec (1296 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 06 2021