ArchiCAD Tutorial: Creating Isometric Views, Stairs & Second Storeys

today we're going from a single story house which we'll be adding a second story onto along the way we're going to be adding in a set of stairs as well as a roof and some exterior details after that we're going to create an isometric view that we're going to break apart into multiple sections so we can get a cool view of what's going on in the building it's actually pretty easy so let's take it step by step and get started so we'll be taking this file here and going through each of the different steps until we get our final result so to get started let's go into our floor plan view now to get a second story we're going to want to add in a set of stairs to do this we'll want to have adequate space so let's take some Dimensions I'll just go into floor plan view just by tapping F2 or the Mac equivalent so just here I've put a list of a lot of the archicad shortcuts that I'll typically use throughout the process including swapping between 2D as well as 3D on Windows and on Mac so you might want to take a screenshot or write them down from here let's take some Dimensions to make sure we've got enough space for our stairs we'll go to our Dimension tool just up the top now before I get too much further I'm going to go to options I'm going to go to work environment and go to work environment again from here I'm going to double click on architectural profile 26 and then go apply once I apply and go ok it's going to rearrange my user interface so that it matches what I've got just here that way we're all working in the same interface and all the tools are in the same places now down in the bottom left hand corner we're going to find document and we're going to find the dimension tool I'll take this one and I'm going to measure our walls just to make sure that we've got enough space to fit a stair in at the moment we've got 1.9 meters so I'm going to want to extend that out say another 90 mil just so we've got at least two meters from here I'm going to connect up these walls to cycle I'll just click on the wall and holding in shift I'll select these other two walls here to connect these up I'm going to use the intersect shortcut just here and that's going to connect my walls together I'm going to take my slabs and I'm going to shift these up as well and this one too there we go let's go ahead and delete the bed and we'll go straight into the stair tool so just on this left hand side here we'll double click on this tool just here and then we'll go to the settings just up in the top left hand here there's going to be some information that we need to fill out to make sure that the stairs can automatically change to the heights that meet the construction code all the parameters are just in here now it all seems a bit daunting but once we type in the right things it's actually pretty quick and easy I'll just drag in the National Construction code just here and I'll lift this one up to the top right here so the information that we've got here at the moment tells us what the maximum Riser is so the Riser is just from tread To Tread the height just here all right there can't be any more than 190 mil which we've got typed into our parameters just here it also can't be any less than 115 mil so now that we've got the Riser sorted out this one just here we also need to make sure that the going is correct as well so the going is 355 Max and minimum is 240 which we've also got typed in here slope relationship it's a little bit tricky explain but just make sure that even with these parameters typed in that it's still a comfortable stair to be stepping on so we'll just need to type in these parameters as well for Max put that one in there and Min we'll put that one in there so with all those typed in we'll link our stair to the ground story and the top to the first and this will mean that it can automatically do a lot of different things for us width-wise I'm just going to type in 1000 and I'm going to want to reduce the amount of stairs so I'm just going to go up to this toggle just up here and then I'm going to type in say let's see what 16 does for us this brings this up to a 188 Riser now there's a lot of technical stuff here at the moment I know but it's all worth going through just before we do do the stair we'll get to it in a second I promise and we've now got 188 browser so this step is now at 188 which is a little bit below what the maximum can be so with all of that done let's get to the actual fun stuff of drawing some stuff in let's go okay all right so let's start with the stair so I'll click on this wall just where we want the stair to start I'll drag it all the way across until we hit the node just of this wall here now I'm going to drag it on down holding in shift I'm going to go shift d which is going to allow me to type in the dimension for the stair itself so I know that I need this to be be two meters because we've set up that width at 2 meters and the minimum width of the stair to one meter so let's type in 2000 and go okay from here let's drag this one along this way and we'll type in say 2600 and we'll go okay now the cool thing about the schedule is once we've got those parameters set up it's automatically going to adjust the going to whatever it needs to be so that it suits the Australian standard let's pop into 3D to check out how it looks hey there we go so we can see most of it up to this first landing here let's turn off our 3D cutaway and have a bit of pan around look at that yeah very nice so we've got our stairs now if we say click on the edge of the stair just here and we go to the stair settings we can adjust if this is just a landing at the top or if it's a Winder for the time being I'm going to keep it pretty simple and just leave it as it is here at the moment and I'll most likely make a dedicated video on stairs themselves one day now one thing I highly recommend just before we get to the next step is going up to help and turning on tool tips so we go show tool tips so this means when I hover over the top of something it's going to tell me what that thing is so to kick off our next step we're going to want to go to the project map the project map is where we're going to set all the different heights for our project it's going to dictate the heights of what our wall is going to be as well as the slabs and the framing as well as the roof so for a quick practical example going to hold in the eye dropper tool and go select all I'm going to select all these walls here and I'm going to make sure that they're linked to the first floor now you'll notice this little grade at 3 000 just here at the moment if we just go okay and then we right click on say our stories and go to story settings you'll notice that we've got 3000 written here as well so if I change this to say 6000 and we go okay first of all our stairs going to freak out because they've been automatically lined up with the heights as well but we'll come back to that in a second we'll just go okay and you'll notice that all of those walls have automatically changed in their height now thing is we can't go Ctrl Z to undo this so if I try and type in control Z here at the moment nothing's going to happen so what I need to do I need to right click and go back into the story settings and we'll just type this one back down to three thousand we'll go okay and there we go now what I want to do for this project is I actually want to add in a floor frame so I'm going to go in I'm going to go story settings and then I'm going to go insert above I'm going to go floor frame and then I'm going to give this one say 300 millimeters which will give us enough space for a typical floor framing 300 is about the minimum I try and keep for floor framing so with that typed in let's go okay now the stair warning is going to pop up here again so I'm just going to go okay and I'm going to really quickly pop back in now that we've got the framing in I'm actually going to change this back 300 mil so it's 2.7 meters so 2.7 plus 300 is going to give us 3 meters overall but what I typically like to do I like to go to 750 so we've got enough space for a bit of plasterboard as well as flooring just below and we still get that nice head height so we'll just go okay now stairs are still purple which is a great indicator that we need to adjust them they're also going back into 2D using our shortcut F2 we'll also notice it is purple in the 2D so let's click on this down and then go to the stair settings and it's given me a little warning just up here so what I'll do I'll just type in xero and that has adjusted our stair parameters so just over here on the right hand side it's made it so that now our minimum number of Rises is 17 as we'll see just over here so I can't select 16 anymore just because we've bumped up that height the extra 50 mil so from here let's just click ok and that will automatically change the stairs so that they now work I can also adjust the stairs in say 2D just by clicking and dragging them so if I want them to line up with the bottom stairs I can just click it and drag it just until it lines up with that so we still have manual control over where the stairs can go and the settings make sure that it all falls into the correct parameters anyway all right let's go back into our 3D so we've got our stairs in there just at the moment they're looking good we now want to put a floor frame just above this alrighty so from here let's select our slab and go Ctrl C to copy it now let's hold in control and then press up to go up a story let's do this again just until we get to the first floor so we can see which story we're on by this little text indicator just up here so from here we'll go Ctrl V to paste it in all the Mac equivalent and we're going to make sure that it's in the original location and we'll go paste and then we'll click off making sure that it's in the original location we'll make sure that it's lined up exactly with where it was downstairs now at the moment my walls are intersecting with the slab itself so what I'll want to do is I'll hold in alt and I'll use the eyedropper tool and go Ctrl a on all the different walls and then I'll go to my settings and then I'll just make sure that it's linked to the floor frame and we'll just go ahead and make sure we go zero for this one just here and then we'll go okay and that will bring it back on down there we go now our floor material isn't the same as our walls so to change this we'll just click on our slab and we'll go to surfaces just over here and we'll turn on this Edge surface just here let's select that material just to see what our previous one was so this one is sliding light so if I click on this one go to the overrides and then just click on this one here I'll go siding and then I can click on siding light there we go now it all matches up as we go up now we've got a little Gap just here at the moment if we Zoom one in we can see that so this slab is at 250 there at the moment we'll want to change this to 300 so it matches the frame that we typed in earlier guys we've got a second story to our cabin so from here we'll want to extend the walls up but to do this we'll want to go back to our floor plan go back down to our ground floor and we'll select all of our walls using the eyedropper tool then go go and control a we'll select all of those walls then we'll go Ctrl C and then we'll just need to hold in control then tap up twice and then we'll go Ctrl V to paste this one in we'll select outside the Marquee to deselect that and then we're going to go into our 3D and we have two stories we've got two stories to our cabin look at that that all happens pretty quick pretty cool now to get this to what our example file looks like which is this just here we're going to need to go through a couple of steps just to massage the actual upstairs itself so I've popped this Inside Story in and I've popped this Inside Story out just here so let's go back to our drawings easiest way to do this will be in 2D so we're on our first floor here at the moment we know this because we've got this just here so I'm going to get these two walls here holding in shift I'm going to select both of these walls and then I'm going to go to intersect so I'm going to intersect these two walls and then I'm just going to go ahead and delete this one here I'm going to go ahead and delete this window as well and I'm going to shift this opening door just over to here let's go into our 3D hey look at that let's pop back into our 2D let's pop out this back one just here and then we'll go ahead and delete this wall here and we'll connect these two just using the intersect again as well I'll go ahead and delete this wall here and then connect this wall just up to this wall here I'll shift this door here just a little bit over type in control D and then tapping on the Node here and just bringing over say 700 there we go all right now we've got a slab here at the moment but it's also covering over the top of our stairs so let's go into 3D and you'll get a better view of what I'm talking about so if I pin over we can't get up our stairs because we've got our slab over the top floor framing so let's go back into 2D we'll select this slab and while it is selected we'll hold in the ALT key to do the eyedropper we'll select our slab again while it's selected and then what we can do is we can click from this bottom left hand side up to this top right where the stair is and it's going to cut out of that slab a bit of an advanced technique by such a quicker way of cutting portions out of the slab let's go back into our 3D check it out hey look at that now to get a bit of a better view I'm going to go to a 3D cutaway so this is one we had set up before I'm just going to get rid of this cutaway here and then I'm going to grab this one just from over here and pull it over and I'm going to go finalize and now we can see what's going on with our stair check that out I'll pull it back just a little bit there we go cool so we've got our stair going from downstairs all the way up to upstairs uh this door here is just interrupting a bit so I'll go into here and just change this so the door is not opening in 3D and that's going to disappear I can do the same thing with the downstairs one as well I'm just going to type in zero once I go into the settings hey now that is nice and clean now I'll dive into another little trick just while we're in this view here at the moment we've got this material which is different to our internal wall material to change this so that they match up what we need to do if we scroll on in and we select the edge of this here and we click and drag it down it's going to bring up the pet palette from here we'll go to this little Edge the custom edge settings on the pet palette we'll click on this and we'll change this so it matches up with the material that we got just here I think it's sand beige let's go okay oh no it's different let's select this one and see what it is we'll go to various ah okay Whitehaven is what we've got this one selected as so let's do that again we'll select this bit just here and click and drag down so that activates the pet palette and we'll go custom Edge and we'll type in White Haven inspired by cold one yep that's the one and we'll go okay we'll do the same thing for this Edge just here we'll click and drag this one on down we'll go to White Haven we'll go okay cool now all that's nice and clean it all matches up with the interior finishes let's turn off our 3D cut plane and see what else we've got to do from here we'll need to put a post so this area here is supported it as just not cantilevered and we'll need to extend out the walls here and here let's jump into our floor plan and we'll select this wall here and we'll bring it just out in line with this one here do the same thing with this wall just over here we'll drag this one on out then we'll select both of them and now what we can do is we can use the split tool so we'll use the split tool and from this edge here once we get that little symbol that looks like this we can click on this Edge and then an eyeball will pop up I know there's a lot of random symbols that pop up this eyeball is going to cut in the direction the eyeball will mean it will cut in that direction and keep those elements selected so it's going to be quicker to understand once I do it so I'll click down from where I cut and that means I'm going to have both these walls selected now the reason why I've cut these walls is if I go into 3D I'm going to want to change the material of the exterior here but I don't want to change the wall material here so what I can do I can select both of these walls here and then I'll go to my Surface I'll click this Edge surface and then what I'm going to do that's going to turn on the edge surfaces here and then I can link all the surfaces together so this way all the surfaces are the same just going to wrap all those ones around there I'm going to do the same thing for downstairs so I'm going to pop on down so holding control and tapping down until I get to downstairs I'm going to extend this one on out and then I'm just going to split this section just off here I'm going to go through the same process click this one and then go to surface and Link all those together now I've got a little Gap in between so I can do I can just extend the slab out through here so to do that I'll just go to the first floor and then I'll select this little edge here I'll create a new node and then I'll put this just to here and then I'll just extend it out by using this little offset Edge tool just here there we go now I've currently got true line weight turned on I'm going to turn that off just so that when I zoom in I can see the exact node Point whereas if I right click and I put that back on it's a bit thick and sometimes it's a bit hard to select where that point is so I'm going to turn that back off and this way I find it's a bit more accurate a lot more accurate actually let's go back into our 3D hey start to get there let's click on now we've got these little weird Parts here where it's not connecting up the materials how we want them so what we can do we can select these walls just here and then we go to the settings before I do go to the settings I'll select the bottom walls as well just so we don't have to do it twice and then we'll want to go to the settings and we'll turn off end surfaces so that override using adjoining walls isn't on we'll go okay and we're going to do the same thing for this wall just here and then we're also going to lower the junction order so this one isn't taking priority for the connection to the other two walls it'll make sense in a second we'll just go okay and boom there we go so now with that Junction priority basically what it'll do it'll connect these two walls as the priority and I'll leave this one at a lower priority so it's basically its own little wall Now by doing the junction order I didn't actually need to turn off the end surfaces for that last one but that was just a little extra step I didn't need to do so don't worry about that one now because we've got a step down here at the moment or want to take this wall and we'll go minus 50. just so it extends this wall on down password this lab point is here typically you want to step down near where your entrances so if there's copious amounts of rain it's not going to seep into the actual dwelling itself there are different ways around this say having grates with drainage and whatnot but let's keep it simple if it needed to be accessible then we could do something like that so there's a zero threshold but at the moment typically always try and allow a threshold before it goes into the building next up we want to put our post in just over here so let's go back into our 2D we'll go down a couple stories One More Story and we'll extend this slab out just here and then we'll go to our post tool just on the left hand side here on to the column tool I should say we'll put we'll pop this one just in here I'm going to select this post and I'm going to change its parameters a little bit just so it's a bit cleaner let's go to the settings and then go to plane and then we're also going to select this to our number one pen all right let's select on out of here we'll click and drag this one just down to here now at the moment this one's gray and that's just because we've got the structure set to generic stucco I'm pretty sure generic structural I should say now the rest of our walls have been set to aluminum this one just up here just so that they're black the structure settings could be its whole own video so for the time being I'll just brush past it and let's get to more interesting stuff we'll go back into our 3D and we'll check against our reference from here we'll want to change our materials and add in a roof as well as some gutters and eventually this little bit of topography just down here before we get too far changing the materials I'll select this post and I'm going to bring it down 50mm and then I'm going to click and drag it and extend it up to the underside of the slab there we go now that one all ties in let's select all of our walls we'll go Ctrl a after we use the eyedropper tool on the wall and we'll go to surfaces and I'm going to change this exterior surface to siding dark we go I'm going to do the same thing for our floor frame on the exterior portion let's go to siding dark now you'll see this little warning here we've got custom planes those ones we did a little bit earlier for just the internal portion we don't want these to change so we're not going to apply it to the custom plane slash edges so we'll just go to dark and there we go now let's change those ones so that's changed all of our walls but I'll want to change this internal wall back to what it was just before so I'll select this top one and this bottom one and we're going to go to surfaces and we'll go to Whitehaven I think it was yep let's go to that one there we are now we've got our internal walls nice and clean we can also just quickly change this wall just here this part of the frame just here let's click and drag on that and then let's change our material back to Whitehaven there we go and we'll go okay oh I like how it looks nice and clean like that all right we've got most of the exterior materials done but we want to turn this one here into a bit of a lighter tone now to match up with the one that I had on the example file this one here I had to create a custom one I will quickly walk through just how I did that it's actually pretty quick and easy so I'll select my wall just here at the moment and then I'll go to element attributes then I'll go to surfaces so this means when I've got this one selected I was hoping it would have brought up the material on this wall but it hasn't so that's all right I can just click on siding dark this one just here and I'm going to create a duplicate so I'm going to go new and I'm going to duplicate it I'm going to go Timber I'm going to change the title to Timber and we're going to go okay and now I'm going to go ahead and change the actual surface itself so if I extend this out and extend this down I'll pop on up and I'm pretty sure it's a beige that I ended up going with so I'm scrolling up until I get to beige opt we'll go okay and from here I'm also going to change the surface color just so it's more representative of what the color actually is so I'll bring that to there and this one up to roughly here and then I'll go okay so that now changes the surface color here which means it's easier to identify just over here I'll just change this so it's a bit more of a muted tone we'll go okay there we are that's better a bit more beige let's go okay now let's select this wall this wall just here and we'll select all our ones facing the frontage so we'll click these with all of those selected let's go to override surfaces and we'll go citing Timber there we go I'll select these external walls just here this one just here now I want the internal material of this to be siding so I'll go to surface and unlink these so that they're not all linked together and I'll go inside face surface I'm going to change this to Sliding Timber we'll go that one there and then we've got all of that set up along through there following the same steps as we did earlier we'll just go into this one we'll go siding and we'll turn that onto Timber we'll go okay we'll do this for these other planes as well so we're setting up custom face materials just for these portions of this lab so we'll go to side Timber and we'll go okay just a couple more of these exciting Timber we'll go okay and one more just there siding Timber we'll go okay oh we've left out a wall let's do this one as well click on this exterior surface we'll go siding too but yep all right there we go now earlier in the piece I mentioned to turn off the edge materials what I need to actually do is just select both of these and turn that back on it was just the junction that I needed to do so my bad on that one and now if we pan around that's all looking good as we pan to this exact point looks like it picks it up a little bit there but as we pan around it's all smoothed down so right cool and we're all sweet on this side but looks for things now I want this to frame along this side here as well so we'll click this one just here and we'll go in and we'll change this one so and surfaces isn't on and we'll go okay now next up we'll want to lower this one's priority so we'll go back in and we'll lower it down to seven we'll go okay and that way this wall is taking over this one's priority so now let's go to the edge and we'll turn on sighting dark for our material and there we go same thing for this one just here for the slab what we can do we'll go up to the first floor we'll select the slab and then we'll grab this one and create a new node just by creating a new node for this face just here if we go back into our 3D we'll see that we've got this little rectangle here if I zoom on into this space and click this one and then click and drag and do our palette and creating a custom face again let's go siding we'll go dark and we'll go okay cool all right now we've created a lot of contrast between this front facade so we can frame it nicely let's just pan around a building just to see how she all looks it's coming up pretty cool next up is the roof so to do this quickest and easiest way is to go into our floor plan so on our first floor this one just here so I'll just want to click on the roof tool to make sure that we're going to do it to a gable roof we'll just want to make sure geometry method is to multiplane and the construction method this one just here if we click and hold is on Gable so if I click on the bottom left hand corner and drag just up onto the top right hand we now have our roof if we go into our 3D Hey There we go but it's on the wrong story so all we need to do we just need to click this one and we need to go link to story and we'll put this one to roof now we can do this in the 2D as well so if I go undo and then I go back to 2D I select my roof and I put this one to roof that still works as well now the cool thing about the roof tool if we've got it set up correctly is that we're going to have these dashed lines here that represent where it is over the top of this so this means we can manipulate our roof within the 2D plane so if I click and drag this one just here and drag this one in if I go back into my 3D we can see how that's changed what our roof looks like if we go back into 2D and I'll just undo that I'll uniformly change all of these Eaves just so they're at zero to do this I'll just go to zero for the offset and hit enter if I go into our 3D now we've got a zero offset for our Eve now for this roof we want to change this one's pitch up so it's 30. we'll hit enter and we'll keep these planes custom we'll click ok and that one's bumped our pitch up now to get our walls so that they go to the underside of this roof just here what we can do quick and easy way is if we select these walls these ones just here as well let's click and drag and then we'll go to the pet palette and hit this tool just here which is our stretch height we'll bring this all the way up to the Ridge and we'll click there we go we've got all over walls we've got all of our walls extruded up now let's select all those again then right click and go to connect and solid element operations from here we'll want to make sure that they are our Target and we'll select our roof and they are our operator we'll go down to choose operation we'll make sure this one is subtraction with upward Extrusion so the roof is going to cut all the walls above it and we'll go execute and there we go that has cut all of our walls to our roof plan let's put back to our reference to see how we're going so we'll want to change the materials to what we've got here so dark gray and basalt let's go back in we'll select and we'll go to our surface we'll turn on the top and on the side and we'll go dark gray and then we'll also go assault I'll also turn on our bottom one and I'll turn this one to dark gray as well cool so if we go down to the front oh look at that actually I don't want this one to be dark gray I want this one to match up with our Timber Just out the front here so I'll select it and I'll go to surface and I'll go to the bottom and I'll go sliding Timber there we go so now that all matches up along there and along there yeah that's coming together now from here another big win would be to get our topographic in to do this easiest way is just to pop in and for the sake of this one what I'm going to do I'm going to go down to the bottom and because it's not sloping I'm going to do this the lazy way just so we can get some grass on that ground floor going to hold in alt I'm going to click on my floor plan and I'm going to click bottom left up to top right so this is just creating a slab I'm going to hold in shift and I'm going to hit tab until I select the slab I just created I'll click that one and now what I'm going to do is I'm going to extend this out so it's 800 millimeters 800 millimeters there we go and now if I go into my 3D I've got the slab but it's not set to the correct material so I'll just go in I'll go to surfaces and I'll go to Grass go grasp Brown I'll pan up and then I'm going to change all surfaces so that they are grass Brown I'll go link together there we go now it's currently covering our current slab so all I will need to do is change the Heights or with the slab selected I'll go minus 150 which will bring that all down cool now we are getting closer but I very much like the little curved edges on this here these are very easy to achieve so we just go back into our floor plan and on the document tab what I'll do I'll just minimize this tab just here by clicking on it in the document tab I'll go down to polyline I'm going to click on this post just here this one just up top here and I'm going to hold and shift and pull an angle down to there to that bottom right until it hits that edge of the slab and bring it back to here I'm going to grab this Edge and I'm going to use the curve Edge and I'm going to change the radius to match what our offset was which is 800 I'll hit Tab and then I'll type in 800. I'll go enter cool so from here now if I select the slab and use the alt tool select and then hold in spacebar I'm going to be able to click this corner and it's going to cut that portion out so what I did was just use the magic wand to cut a portion of the slab out while the slab was selected another really powerful tool for cutting out of the slab what we can do is now just repeat that process I'll click on this one here that we just set up I'll go Ctrl M to mirror and I'll hit the middle point of our slab just here and then I'll tap control once just to create a duplicate you'll see the little plus icon just underneath where my mouse is and then I'm going to click now the reason I did it from this side and not this side is because this side is now shorter because we pulled that slab down I can quickly do this again just by hitting Ctrl m while this lab's still intact so I can use it as a reference and I'll drag this one on over this way oops that time I didn't duplicate it let's just do that again Ctrl M and then hold my mouse over the top of this until it gives us that little guide for the middle click and then I'm going to hit control once and that is going to allow me to duplicate it I'll just go through that same step just clicking on the slab holding in the ALT key just so I can use the eyedropper and then I will cut out these little Corners just here cool I'm going to take these little guidelines here and delete them let's go back into our 3D hey yeah I love that now another big difference that you'll see from this one to this one here is subtle but look at the sun the sun here is casting in through this way which I think it gives it a better aesthetic than what we've got here at the moment to change the sun it's actually pretty quick and easy I'm just going to pop into our view and then go to 3D view options and go 3D projection settings from here just over on this right hand side we'll see a couple of different icons this one here is our building this one is the camera and this one is the Sun so what I want to do is just drag this sun just so it's at 45 to where our building is so I'll put it roughly about here and then I'll click OK hey look at that we're a little bit closer I'm just going to pop into our reference one just to double check and see exactly what we've got set up before the 3D projection setting so it looks like I've got 60 and 230 so 230 is azimuth so this here is azimuth so when we change it around it's going to change that number down here so we've got that one at 230 so I'll pop out of there and pop back to our one here let's go to view 3D projection settings Azimuth let's go to 230 so that pivots a little bit more we'll go okay hey that's better now we've still got a couple of things missing we'll want to add in the window that we've got just here as well as some gutters so let's do the gutters next because they're a quick win so if we go up holding a control and going up our stories until we get to our roof there's a couple of different ways we can approach this we could do a wall or a slab find the quick and easy ways of actually doing the gutters if we don't need to show the actual profile of them so I'll pick up this slab I'll go up to the top and I'll click on this bottom portion all the way up to the top and then I'm just going to type in 150 so that's going to give us our width so I've got our width just here now if we pop into 3D we're going to notice we've got this big old chunky gutter we want to minimize the height of it so we're going to type in 80 so it's an 80 mil Gutter and we're going to change the materials so it's the same as the one that we've got on the top here which is going to be a dark gray no actually you're going to change to a Basalt so we'll go to surfaces we'll go to Bas for basalt and that way it's going to match in with our fascia let's link all that together as well as the bottom and we'll click out of that and now our gutter should be nice and subtle but it adds a little extra detail so let's click and drag this one up in the 3D view fine it's a nice quick easy way of doing it and we'll want to mirror this one back over to the other side so let's do that let's go to F2 let's go Ctrl M to mirror and we'll drag this one on over to here oh I didn't hit control so I didn't create a duplicate let's do that again Ctrl M we'll tap that middle one tap control and there we go so if we go into my 3D now we've now got gutters on both sides next up we'll want to add in a window just for this portion just here so to do this one of the quickest and easiest way to do this we just hold an alt and click on our window and we'll click on this bottom portion just here click once and click again so we've just absorbed the tool so we've absorbed the window tool so holding an ALT it selects that tool and then I can use that window tool and have the exact same settings from this window be applied to this new window here which is going to be handy in this case when I go into 3D it's all done and set up so we've got all materials as well as the pens all set up and done so from here I can change this one to say two meters and I'm going to go into seal height I'm going to change this to header to wall base and I'm going to change this to 2100 so the header is now set so it's from the header down to the ground I might change this one to say 1800 and we'll go okay there we go we've got a nice feature window just there what I do is I'd line this up so it's in line with our downstairs our downstairs door that gives us a nice even space along through here one critical thing I haven't mentioned yet is to always save always always save your file it's very easy to forget so we'll click and we'll go save and this way we're not relying on autosaves which are incredible in archicad but just save save save it's going to save you so many headaches down the track all right next up I'd like to change the walls so that we've got a bit Starker over contrast at the moment they're a bit gray so I'm going to select the walls go Ctrl a I'm going to just change the pen just from 87 down to one and then from there yeah oh shh that should all look a bit better I'll do the same thing for the slab go to one and one there we are now we've got much darker lines throughout the 3D which should delineate the different spaces although one more just for this lab down here as well there we go next up I'm just going to do some glass balustrates for this portion here now what we could do is use the railing tool and hold spacebar put in some handrails just for this portion but setting up all the different options for it it's going to be more of a pen than it's worth just for this little portion here and I just want a really simple aesthetic for this one so I'm just going to go ahead and select the slab sometimes I use tools in unorthodox ways just to get the job done so for this case let's go 900 each panel to be 900 by 50 mil and there we go now I'm going to set this one I'm going to go Ctrl D drag this one on down I'm going to offset it Ctrl d oh we'll go or go 25 mil 25 and we'll offset this one from the edge 25. let's duplicate this one just from the bottom here and go Ctrl D and we'll create duplicate and duplicate this one across say we'll push it across I should say 25 let's select both of these and create some more duplicates Ctrl D and select that one there the and let's space that up 50. all right so I think if we just go ahead and space this out another 25 mil and space this out say another 50 mil we're getting a little bit closer I'll Shuffle this one up say 50 mil so that gives us 175 just at this end but that's larger than what's acceptable for a balustrade if we just check out the NCC which is 125 sphere may not pass through balustrade so what we'll do what are we at the moment Ctrl d 175 way too much so I'm just going to bump this up so it's another 50 mil let's go 50. and then say 50. so then if I say grab this and this bumped across 50 this is not best practice I'll admit this straight off the bat right now but it's going to get the job done so much quicker just for this little use case scenario and it also kind of showcases how you can use tools in a bit of unorthodox way and still get the result so we'll type this one say 50 because at the end of the day these aren't construction drawings this is to create a concept now if we go into our 3D I'm going to notice all our balance trades are sunken into the slab because they've got the same attributes so we're going to change this one to 900 we're going to want to bump this up in 950. there we go we'll change the surface to say glass we'll go glass clear and we'll link all those together there we go so simple panel glass just out the front again best practice would be to have one set up in your actual railing tool which is this just in through here and you can do it you can go into the handrails and you can change this and go through all the different settings but it takes a bit of setting up and doing I'm not going to I'm not going to bore you guys with it today so let's just get out of that one that will be for a whole nother video which will be great we can go over it because it is such a powerful tool I mean if we just go into our 3D cutaway here and if we select our railing tool and hold it on a stair on the edge we can really quickly so if we just hover over our belt straight that we just did and then change the reference line we can really quickly have a belt straight on the edge of that stair or on the inside as well so if we hover and click that on there um yeah it's really powerful handy tool but let's get rid of those I'm getting sidetracked we'll delete that and go back to app 3d I'm going to go ahead and delete this window just here and I'm going to change this one so it has a mullion going down the middle the quickest way to do this is just go to our sash options and then we're going to go from no grid to HV grid we'll change this one so we'll just go into our elevation view we'll change this so that we've got three vertical panes and one horizontal pane from here we'll just go okay now one other thing I've noticed is all my windows are gray so I'm going to select all of those and I'll just change those as well so that they are going to be number one pen there we are so they're black all right now decking isn't going to work for this portion here because it needs to be waterproof so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to change this Surface 2 tile I'm going to change it to this one just here there we go so we've got a tile for our love render there at the moment but I want the inside to be say a carpet so I've already got this set up downstairs I'm just going to go down I'm going to select this slab just here hitting control Tab and I'm going to copy this one just up to the story here I'll paste that one in place it I'll drag it on along up to here I'll drag it just so it's to where our Landing is and I'll reshuffle our shape just so it covers this first floor portion just here now to quickly expand the shape of the slab I can just go add polygon and then I can click this bottom left hand here no at the bottom right hand up to the top left and with that we've created ourselves a little bit of carpet now we can't really see it there at the moment so let's just go to our cut plan and drag this one on out and go finalize and there we go we got carpet up the top I'm gonna change this one so it's 50 mil just five mil there we go five mil that way it's not interrupting uh the slab just here yes all right that's looking pretty cool we are getting closer and closer to our original just here next up so it looks cool when we do our 3D cutaways what I want to add next is this bed as well as some bedside tables and a little baluster just in this back in here so I'm going to copy this belt straight back over here and I'll show you which elements I've used to create this bed the textures and the bedside tables so I'll select all of these I'll just copy them and paste them on in to the icad layer and their original location oh it looks like it's shifted a bit there so let's just reshuffle this back over there we go let's go back into our 3D let's do our cutaway let's delete this plan here we'll just check that one in the bin and then we'll cut one through the top just here and we'll go finalize we'll check that out yep that's all good okay so for the bed I've just got this one as a double bed zero five 26 so it's the Ikea 26 library and I've just got the material set up to the carpet05 that we set up in the previous tutorial for the pillows themselves these ones just here these are just icad 26 pillows and I've just got this one here selected for the siding tables they're just a coffee table I've just rearranged the size and shape and for the plants I've just got houseplant model 26 so if I'll just pan around there we go so it looks a bit more cozy and homely now the only thing is this window here will want to change this which is quick and easy we'll pop into our 2D grab this one we'll shift along and we'll pull it down say 150 mil and we'll pull it down going Ctrl D with from this node here we've got 150 and then we'll resize the shape of the window so it's say about 700. let's create a duplicate control D and drag it down tapping control once and then we'll bring it all the way down to this edge here and then we'll do the same thing we'll bring it off 150 mil let's pop into our 3D there we go so we've got some nice highlight Windows not highlight Windows we've got some nice side windows just to either side of the bed all right so next up we'll just duplicate this battle straight just here bring it on over and I had a little plant just here that I've duplicated from downstairs or grab this one and bring it up a couple of stories and I'll just go paste and I'll put that in next to a balustrade as well brings a little bit of life into that room as well some other little flourishing touches just before we move into our cutaways let's just delete this plane here and then we'll pan across and create a new cutting plane just here we'll go finalize I want to select both these doors and I'll change these so that they've got glass I like this so it can let extra light in as well as transparency for when we're doing our 3D colorways so let's go to a door settings and opening we'll go to this one just here and we'll go to no grid go okay and there we go we've got our glass also select this wall just here I'll click and drag this one up just so that it also is all correct in the 3D cutaway as well let's go connect solid element operations keep that one as the target we'll select the Riff is the operator and go subtraction with upward Extrusion and go execute I'll click out of that one and we'll turn off our cutting plans let's check against our reference and I think we're there I think we're ready to actually make it all happen so we're up to one of the most fun Parts we're about to create our isometric view as well as the puller Parts which are going to show us our Interiors so to do this we just need to go to view we'll go to 3D view options and 3D window 3D projection settings from here we'll just go to the isometric accentometry and we'll click on that one and we'll go okay just going to bring us to an isometric view so that we can save the view let's go right click and go save as View and we're going to give it a custom name and we're going to give it a custom name we'll call this one ISO metric View and from there we'll go create but before we do just know that we're going to change some of these parameters so that we can get a higher resolution a little bit later on in the piece so we'll just go create all right so next up you'll notice that nothing's happened over here on the side that's because we're still in the project map what we want to do is move into the viewmer which is going to have all the saved views that we've created so we'll minimize these top ones just up here and just on this right hand side we'll see this 3D that we've just created so if I double click on this one it's always going to take me back to this view so I'll have pen over to save the site here if I double click it's locked onto that view just there which is going to come in super handy for when we're actually setting up everything on our page now to set up a page itself we'll just want to go to the next Tab and we'll go to our layout book so this one just up here we've got a bunch of different stuff set up because this is from the archicad template so they've given a lot of different options of different ways projects can be set up for me it gets a little bit bulky so I typically just set up my own custom new one so I'm going to minimize all this and to create a page I'm just going to right click up the top and I'll just go new layout I'll call this one a symmetric View and from here it's going to ask me to select what the mask layout is at the moment I'm just going to go to A3 cover page and we'll go create and that's brought me just to here now for these isometrics I'll actually want it to be portrait so what I'm going to do is I'm going to change the cover page I'll go to just down in these Masters just here I'll just go to right click on the master and I'll go Master layout settings from here I'm going to change it to portrait with the size being A3 ISO and we're going to change these borders down to five millimeters each just clicking tab to shift down each as I go along all right cool with all those typed in I can now just go okay and let's change my page and that's now changed it to Portrait if I go back up to the page that I just created the isometric view this one just here when I double click on it you'll notice that it's changed to that as well so from White so from here what I can do I can just go back to the view map this one just here where we save the view of what we just created earlier I can click and drag this one onto our page hey there we go now with our 3D what I can do I can click and drag these Edge points just here so if I click and drag and I'll go off the edge and I'll bring this one on in and same thing for this one just here what I can also do is if I go up to the top and I use the middle scroll wheel on the mouse and I bring this across there will be an option for me to go transparent background which is very handy so I'll click that one on and also I also don't want this title just here for this drawing so I'm just going to go to title type and I'm going to go no title to resize this so it fits on our A3 page I'm just going to shift this one on down go Ctrl D and then go Ctrl K which is going to allow me to resize I'm going to do this with these settings Define graphically it'll make sense in a second if I go okay I can click on the bottom and then I can click at the top just to here and then I can drag this on down and that's you'll see the edges in the top all coming down so I'm bringing the scale down so I'm going to bring the scale this one way back down to Here There we go until it's just about that drag this top in just there yep all right so this should give us enough space to be able to break this up into multiple pieces before we get too much further with this you'll notice that when you scroll in it's really pixelated it's really blurry if you want your 3D to be higher resolution I'll go through the steps now we'll come back to the three cutaway in just a second but just so that you know how to capture high resolution images we'll go through a couple of the different steps so we'll go back into our view map and we'll double click on our symmetric View for the sake of this example I'm going to create a duplicate of this isometric view just so that we don't affect our current view setup Okay click and drag it down holding in control and you'll see a little plus button next to my cursor that is going to create a duplicate of this view so if I click on this one then I click back to the original you'll notice that they are the same I am going to change the name of this one just so I can delineate the difference between the two I'm going to call this one high res hi-res so we'll go okay this is going to be my high resolution option so next up I want to right click just on this tool palette just here actually I'll click out quick overview so in archicad when you save a view here it's going to do it based on the size of your actual monitor or at least this window just here which means it's going to be a relatively low DPI which is pixel density so to change this so we've got higher resolution all we need to do is right click and we need to go to set window size so when we change the window size it's going to change the resolution at which the 3D is going to be captured I'm going to link these two values and I'm going to bump this way up so I'm going to 4X this I'm going to put it to 8000 and I'll click OK and now you'll notice that the window has popped out it's actually too big to be displayed on the screen so to get it so that our 3D can actually take up this entire window just need to double click middle Mouse button double click and that's going to Center our drawing into this window it'll make sense in a second so if I right click on our view that we just set up and redefine current window settings and then I go back into our page I double click on this one I'm going to take this one that we just had before I'm going to duplicate it just by tapping control after dragging it across and then I'm going to link the drawing to the one that we just set up this one just here so once I've got it linked this is going to disappear here in a second it's going to take a little bit because it's going to be such a high resolution and I'm going to go from crop to frame to fit frame to drawing it's going to take a second to load now here we go so this is our drawing now if I zoom in you'll notice much much crisper lines here and more more detail so if I zoom in I can see all these books here whereas if I go back out to my other drawing I zoom in way more pixelated I'm not gonna lie it's a little bit of a pain the way that you have to go through this process to get a high resolution image but hopefully in the future it might get streamlined or realistically you'll be importing your actual 3DS into an external piece of software so like twin motion lumion or any of the other 3D or D3 render any of the other 3D external rendering systems but we're doing this all internal in archicap at the time being so if you do want a high resolution image then that's those are the steps that you'll have to go through and from there you if you wanted high resolution but brought it onto the side of the page we just grab that rescale it bring it back down and bring it over to here and then again if we compare between the two images we'll zoom in on this one and we'll see that it's quite pixelated whereas when we go back up to our other image when we zoom in it's got way more detail so if I zoom right in we can see so much more detail on that sync versus if I go to this one I zoom in yeah we're losing a lot more detail even though the images are relatively similar in size when they're put on the page the way that we have to set it up we just have to go through those steps anyway that was a side tangent of actually creating our cool 3D cutaways to create 3D cutaways what we'll need to do we'll open up this view just here the one that we just created a little bit earlier so we could do that we could go back to the isometric view I'm going to change the window size just back down to what we had it a little bit earlier we'll go 2000 well I'll do I'll just change the window size just so it's back to what we had earlier just so we don't have as much Weighing on the system we'll just go okay and what I'll do I'll just double click this window just here there we go so that's resized it just so that the window size matches up with that okay all right so 3D cut away let's finally get to the juicy interesting cool bit so with all of our modeling done to create the 3D cutaway we'll just need to use the 3D cutaway tool just up top here shortcut is Ctrl y so to create cutaway planes we just click and drag these scissors once we've got the 3D colorway tool selected so to create that bottom floor one let's make sure that we've got our view set up correctly so just bump me over there a little bit at the moment which is perfect we want exactly the same we have to have it set up the same for each view if we want this done correctly so we've got our first view just here so we're going to keep this one whole so we're going to click and drag this one and we'll create a duplicate we'll go rename we'll call this one cut away we'll go okay and I'll double click on this one just to make sure this view is active let's go to a 3D cutaway tool and I'm going to delete all my previous cutting planes and we'll create a new one so I'm going to cut from the top I'm going to drag it on down until we just below the header for the doors so just about here looks good and we'll go finalize from here I'm going to right click on our 3D view I'm going to go readathon with current Windows settings so we've got our first one done let's go to our page double click and let's go ahead and Link this drawing to the 3D that we just set up so let's go to cutaway and we'll go link there we go so we've got our first one now to create a second one we'll just go through that process we'll go back to our 3D and we'll click and drag while creating a duplicate we'll just double click make sure we're in this view from here we'll right click on this plane and we'll go reverse cutting plan Direction so now it's cutting upwards which is a massive Time Saver and we're going to create another cutting plane and we're going to pull this one down just until it's just below the header of the door in the windows again I'm going to go finalize excellent and from here we're going to redefine with current window settings so from here I'm just going to go back into my page I'm going to click this one I'm going to drag it on up creating a duplicate just by tapping control we're going to go 100 from here I'm going to link the drawing to the one that we just created 3.08 with one there we go now what I want to do is I want to make sure that this is transparent it's going to make it so much easier to kind of line things up I'm going to drag this Edge just up here until we're at the bottom corner and then I'm going to create a node just at this point here so this way I can drag this edge up to here this Edge just up to here this is just so that um the drawings don't overlap on the bottom and top sometimes uh it can be a little bit you can see this Distortion just on the edge I like to try and avoid that so I just adjust the actual drawing itself so that they don't overlap right so anyway let's bring this down Ctrl D let's drag it down until we're just above this portion here okay so we've got our first one and our second one so that leaves us just with our final third one to do let's pop back into our 3D and again we'll go through that process we'll click and drag this one down we'll double click let's go ahead and click this cutting plane just here and we'll drag it until it's deleted and then what order should I do we'll click on this one and reverse cutting play and Direction so it's going to cut upwards now so from here we're going to click and refine with current window settings that third view that we just created we're going to go to our layout book double click on isometric View we'll select this one we just created a little bit earlier control date click and drag this one up tapping control to create a duplicate or right click or go link drawing two and we'll go to that third one that we just created we'll go link and now we have our roof where I can do I can click and drag this one so it comes down in the view a little bit there we go like that now click and drag this one up just so it's not intersecting with that one there control day I'll drag that one up and I'll drag this portion just here down now we want to fit this within the page so I just need to do a little bit of reshuffling pull this in there let's go Ctrl D and drag this one down and let's drag this bottom one down just a little bit more Ctrl D and we'll drag that down just so it comes up above there we'll crop that bottom part crop the top part just so we're not overlapping on the page and there we go one thing that really sells these kind of 3D cutaways are the dash lines that go in between them so to do this we'll just click the polyline and we'll set this one so it's a small dashed we'll click on this bottom portion just here and we'll have it go up through all the different 3DS double click there we go so we'll do the same thing we'll click and drag this one over creating a duplicate tapping control and we'll drag this one to this edge here we'll just do it on each of the different edges Ctrl D and duplicate just to this Edge just here and that should line up since we've got it all in the same view and we've just brought it up exactly holding a shift as we do it each time every one of these lines up perfectly and because we said about planes so that cuts from the exact other point all of these also should line up perfectly so let's say if I drag this one just to this edge here if I bring this down if I go Ctrl D and bring this one on down to this point here you'll see how it should perfectly line up with the bottom story even though it's cut so let's undo that and there we are uh last one I would also do in this back right hand corner Ctrl d tap that one into there but I would slice using this tool just here and I'd cut this so that it's just going through the areas that I want it so I'll cut this one as well got this one here let's delete that one I'll drag this node on down here so it's just there let's go ahead and click and drag this one just up to the top so we've got a duplicate and so that we can kind of almost animate between these two different options what we can do let's go ahead and delete these top two deselect this bottom one and delete this line just here we'll select this bottom one and we'll go link drawing two and we'll link this one to our first isometric View and we'll go link so from here when we click on this page then we'll click on our second page it's almost like the building just explodes that into the view you can see into each of the different rooms now I'll just go back into the example file real quick now in my example file I took a little extra a step further so I'll go from the first one to the second stage where it just pops it up to the top then to the third stage where it takes off the roof then I went a little bit further actually and I even exploded out on the other plane as well which is a bit of fun but honestly I don't think it's quite as clear what's going on so in the end I think this is the most aesthetic and readable isometric even though I do think this one is kind of cool now to get access to this file or any of my other tutorial files they're now available in a free trial over on the patreon which I'll have link to Down Below in the description there are limited spots though it's a space where I can look after a small group creating and sharing custom assets and resources now if you're Keen for more tips and tricks I think you'll love this video just over here

Channel: Arch Guide

Views: 2,654

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Id: TeVsy0F84Xw

Length: 61min 31sec (3691 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 21 2023