IntCad

By Jim Mahoney   Share

This is Part 2 of 3 articles with tips on modeling masonry coursing in ArchiCAD. We started off with a basic wall which had one texture per side and we looked at aligning the textures of this simple wall. Different projects and budgets will often decide how far you need to take things to get the level of detail needed. In Part 2 we will look at using the Profile Manager to create a wall with multiple materials and a simple projecting profile on one side. We will finish by using a Solid Element Operation to insert a precast masonry accent panel into our wall.

View Part 1 Here

PART 2:

While I am not going to repeat the steps here, you need to make sure any of the materials or fills you will need for your wall are part of the project. These steps were covered in Part 1 of this article. The Big Picture is that Profile Manager is a dialogue box that controls the environment within a special ArchiCAD window where you can create profiles for ArchiCAD Walls, Columns or Beams. In the case of profiled walls, these are drawn in a sectional type view using ArchiCAD’s 2D fills to create the various elements of the wall. This assembly of 2D fills is saved from this window and becomes a profiled wall. While the profiled wall can be created from scratch using the Fill Tool to draw the wall, there is an easier way. If you already have an existing ArchiCAD composite wall with similar properties to the wall you plan to create, the task can be greatly simplified. Simply draw a short sample of the wall which is then used to create the profile for the Profile Manager. This is the approach we will take here. Remember that you also can create something from scratch if you don’t have a similar composite wall to start from.

Create the Wall Profile

The wall we are going to create is a commercial wall type consisting of brick veneer, air space, rigid insulation, 6” metal studs & 5/8” firecode gypsum wallboard. The base of our profiled wall is a 2’-0” high band of CMU and there will be a projecting precast sill course separating the brick from the CMU. The top of the wall will now have an 8” soldier course. This wall can not be represented with a conventional ArchiCAD wall, but it is easy to do with a profiled wall. We will use a standard ArchiCAD brick veneer / metal stud wall as our starting point. In the picture above I have drawn a short section of this wall. Be sure to set the finish materials correctly as well as the height of the wall. In terms of height, set the height to the lowest height you think you will use. A profiled wall can go higher, but not lower than the height it is drawn at in the Profile Manager.
 
Next select the sample wall and go to the Design Menu>>Complex Profiles>>Capture Profile of Selection menu item.

A new window called Custom Profile - Profile Editor will open up. In this window you will see a section cut of your wall. All of the elements of the wall have been converted into 2D fills. When working in this environment Fills and ONLY Fills will get converted back into 3D wall elements when you save out the wall. Any 2D lines you draw in this window are for guide line purposes only. You will also see a pair of dashed horizontal and vertical lines and a pair of solid orange vertical lines, whose purpose we will cover momentary. For now don’t disturb these 3 pairs of lines. We will begin to edit the wall fill for the brick veneer to make way for the 3 new masonry elements: the CMU base, precast trim & brick soldier course.

 
Let’s start with the 24” high CMU base. The first step is to roll the fill for the brick veneer up 24”. It is just like editing any other 2D fill, select the fill and click on the edge you want to offset and use the “Offset Edge”  icon on the “Pet Palette”. We type in 2 for the Distance value and hit enter. The base of the brick should now be at 2’ above the base.

Next we draw a fill representing the CMU base of the wall. It is just like drawing any other ArchiCAD 2D fill. Set the fill you wish to use, the pens etc. For a layer choose the “Construction Layer” if isn’t already chosen for you. The completed fill is shown in the picture above right.

With the CMU in place, the next step is to roll the fill for the brick veneer up 2 more brick courses to  make way for the precast accent band. We click on the edge you want to offset and use the “Offset Edge”  icon on the “Pet Palette”. We type in 5 2/3” for the Distance value and hit enter.



Once again we set up the Fill Tool to create a fill that looks like precast concrete. To draw the shape first draw the fill in the hole left when we offset the brick veneer. Next select the fill and offset the edge 1” off of the face of the brick as shown above right.

Click and hold on the top right node and click on the “Fillet/Chamfer” icon on the top row of the “Pet Palette”. When the Fillet/Chamfer Dialogue box comes up, select the “Chamfer” radio button and enter in 1” as the value’

The precast sill is now complete. We will now zoom in to the top of the wall to add an 8” soldier course.
  
As before, we offset the brick running bond 8” to make way for the soldier course. Then we go into the Fill Tool and select the 2D fill we wish to use. In this case I switched to a different brick fill pattern so the soldier course is shown as a different fill from the running bond brick coursing below. You can see this in the picture above right. The view you are seeing of this wall is also the way the wall will appear in a Section Window. That is why I am taking the time to use a different fill, so the soldier course will show up as a separate entity in a Section Window.

Setting Our Limits

At this point we are done modifying our wall. The next step is to adjust the three limits ArchiCAD allows you to impose on your wall. They are the Horizontal & Vertical Stretch Limits, as well as the Opening Reference.

In the picture above you can see “Vertical Stretch” in the  “Design Layers” portion of the Profile Manager dialogue box. Profiled walls have essentially five layers which you can hide or show while working in this environment. “Construction” is intended for the 2D fills used for the walls. “Drafting”  is for user created 2D guidelines. These 2D lines do not show up in any window but this one. “Vertical Stretch” is a pair of lines the user can move to suit the wall created. When the height of the wall is adjusted in ArchiCAD, that adjustment will occur only in the area between the pair of lines. So for my “Vertical Stretch” I adjusted the lines so so that only the height of the running bond portion of the brick wall will be affected. The 2’ CMU base and the 8” soldier course will retain their exact heights if the wall is made taller. It is worth repeating that the height of the profiled wall CAN NOT be less than the height of the wall shown in this window, Our wall is 10’ high and we can make it anything over 10’, but no less. If need be you could use the Marquee Tool to shorten the wall in the Profile Editor window to the lowest height you plan to use.


The two images above illustrated the horizontal stretch range in action. The wall on the left is our wall at it’s standard 10’ height. The picture on the right is the same wall set to 12’ high. Notice that all of the growth has occurred in the running bond portion where we set the “Vertical Stretch” limit.

The “Horizontal Stretch” works in a similar fashion and it’s action is seen in the Plan View. In our example seen in the picture above on the right, the “Horizontal Stretch” is set to fall between the studs. So for us if the wall width increases, it will fall entirely in the stud cavity.

The “Opening Reference Line” allows you to determine where on the wall the plane of door and window openings are placed. This is particularly important for a sloped wall. You can tilt these lines so windows  will follow the sloped plane of the sloped wall. If you make them vertical on a sloped profiled wall, windows & doors will be vertical. In the picture above I have hidden the layers for everything else so only the “Opening Reference Lines” are showing. For our wall they are placed the outer face of the gypsum board on the left and the outer face of the running bond on the right. The accent piece projects 1” beyond the “Opening Reference Line”

Setting Materials

The last step before we use our wall is to set the materials for the new sections of wall that we added. Assuming we set the materials correctly on the sample wall we drew in the 2D Window, any existing sections of wall should be correct. But it never hurts to double check them.

To set the materials select the fill for the portion of the wall you wish to edit. Click and hold your mouse on the edge of the selected fill that you wish to change. When the “Pet Palette” pops up, select the last icon on the top right row. As shown in the picture above left, the Custom Edge Settings dialogue box should pop up. Set the material, in this case we will use “CMU 16x8” and we want to apply this new setting to “All Edges”. Say OK and we are done with the CMU. In the picture above right we’ve just set the material for the PC accent course to “Concrete-Beige” & “All Edges”. I think you get the idea. We still need to change the soldier course material in the same manner to “04| Soldier Bond” and apply that to“All Edges” . You should quickly check the other materials to see if they are correct.

Setting Components

This is where you tell ArchiCAD whether a piece of the wall is a “Core Element”, “Finish Element” or “Other”. This affects the walls appearance when you do 3D cutaway views, and more importantly how the wall is dimensioned. New to ArchiCAD 13 & 14, you also have the ability to control the origin of the 3D fill pattern. Prior to AC13 the fill’s origin was ArchiCAD’s Global Project Origin. If your brick was off coursing you had to use the “Align 3D Fill” command as discussed in Part 1 of this article. This is a big improvement and allows us to set the brick fill so it aligns with the base of the brick, the CMU with the base of the CMU and the soldier course at the base of the soldier course. This is very handy when you adjust the height of these walls.

To start we select the PC accent band. Spill open the “Components Selected” portion of the Profile Manager Dialogue Box. We want to set the “Component Type”  to “Other”. This means if we set ArchiCAD’s Dimension Tool to “Dimension to the Core of Composite and Complex Walls”, it will ignore this projecting accent piece and dimension to the face of the running bond walls. If you want to have it skip the Gypsum Wallboard as well you should change it to “Finish”. Make sure the CMU, running bond brick, & soldier course are set to be “Core”. All interior items should also be set to “Core”.

Next we will adjust the orientation of the various masonry courses so they align with the base of the material and not the project origin. In the example above we have selected the CMU course and in the Profile Manager Dialogue Box we pop up the “Orientation” popup menu and change it from “Project Origin”, to “Element Origin” as seen above. This means that no matter what vertical height we use for the base of the wall, we will always have a full course at the base of the wall. We will need to do this for the running bond and soldier course sections of the wall as well.

Saving the Wall

Now that our work is done we need to save the wall and name it. Then we can start using it.


Before saving the wall use the icons under the “Use With: heading to tell ArchiCAD whether this item is a wall, beam or column. There is no sense having these profiled items showing up in tools they aren’t appropriate for. In this case we will select the wall icon only. Click on the “Store Profile" button as shown above and give it a name that complies with your office standard naming conventions. If you don’t have any now is a good time to start. 

 

The wall now shows up in the Popup list for “Profiles” both here and in the appropriate section in the Wall Tool. The top picture above shows “Profiled Wall” selected as the wall construction in the Wall Tool. In the “Complex Structure” portion of the Wall Tool parameters we have the list of profiled walls displayed and our wall selected. Notice the list is shorter because only the profiles appropriate for use as a wall are shown. The lower picture is the popup for all of the profiled elements in the Profile Manager, this list is longer because it includes walls plus columns and beams.

When we last left the Floor Plan, we had a short section of wall selected. Let’s apply our new Profile to this piece. ArchiCAD allows you to take any wall and select it and then apply a new profile to it. As shown above: Make sure the name of the wall you wish to create is showing in the “Choose Profile” popup. Then click on the “Apply to Selection” button.  You will momentarily be switched to the Floor Plan, where you will see the wall change to your profile, and then back to the Profile Editing environment.

Note: This is also how you change existing profiled walls already in your plan. Once a wall is drawn with a profile, it doesn’t change unless you select it and say “Apply to Selection”.

Final Tweaks

First let’s check to see that our dimension work. With the Dimension Tool set to “Dimension to the Core of Composite and Complex Walls” we will dimension the wall.

As you can see above, because we told ArchiCAD the PC accent course was not a core element, it’s 1” projection was ignored when we dimensioned. The gypsum wallboard was similarly ignored, because it was identified as a “Finish” and not “Core” component of the wall.

The last thing we must do is select the wall and set its end material. Profiled walls have only one material on the end surface. This is set in the "Model” portion of the Wall Tool dialogue box as shown above. This type of wall typically returns so this is not a big deal. If the wall doesn’t return at the end, you can usually use a “Solid Element Operation”  to simulate a return. We will briefly cover a different type of “Solid Element Operation” in our last section below to add in a precast accent band. 


Now that we have done all of that work let’s see what our wall looks like. I’ve lengthened it to 3 feet in the Floor Plan and lets bring it up in 3D. From left to right above we have the wall in the “AC Internal Engine’s” “Hidden Line” & “Shaded” views, plus a “Lightworks Rendering Engine” Photorendered view. As you can see all of the masonry coursing starts with a full course at the base of each section, so the work we did earlier with the “Orientation” popup paid off. 

So far everything we have done involved a piece of wall that ran the entire length of the wall. What happens if you have something like a precast accent course that is inserted in various sections of the wall, but is not continuos? For this we can use ArchiCAD’s “Solid Element Operations” which I may call SEO’s as a form of short hand. Lets say we want to insert a 16”x16” precast accent panel at 6’ above the base of the wall

The first step is to create the accent piece. For this I will draw a section of wall 16” long x 16” high at 6’-0” above the base of my wall. I set the material to “Concrete-Beige” which is what we used on our other precast. Initially I created the accent piece outside the wall, as seen on the left above. Next I grabbed it by the center and dragged it to the center of my brick wall as shown on the right. At this point you don’t want to leave it like this - 2 walls inside one another. In 3D you may see pieces of both materials displaying where the accent piece is. Section cuts will not display correctly too. Lets use an SEO to correct this. An SEO can be performed from the Floor Plan, 3D or a Section or Elevation Window. Pick whichever is easiest for you to select the elements from.

As can be seen above the precast band does not display right in the Section Window. Since we’re in here anyway, let’s do our SEO from the Section Window.  


First we go to the Design Menu>>Solid Element Operations... which will bring up the Solid Element Operations dialogue box. Next we will select the precast accent piece. In the SEO’s dialogue box we will click to designate this as the “Operator” by clicking on the “Get Operator Elements” button - see the image on the left above. The “Operator” does something to another item(s) called a “Target”. After we have designated the “Operator” Archicad will show there is “1 Operator Elements”. Next we select our wall. This we will designate as a “Target Element”  by clicking on the “Get Target Elements” button - see above right.

Once the “Target(s)” and “Element(s)” are selected, click on the popup for “Choose an Operation” and select “Subtraction”. The precast piece will remove the brick wall anywhere it overlaps with the brick wall. Click on the “Execute” and the operation will be performed. Notice in the picture above that the precast has removed the brick. This will be true in and Section, Elevation or 3D Window. In the Floor Plan you can use the “Send to Front” command to make sure the precast displays correctly (if you wish to see it) or hide it from view in plan and only display it’s layer in 3D type views. You must keep the “Operators” in your model for the SEO’s to work, but the layer they are on can be hidden if desired.

Here is our completed wall in 3D with the precast accent piece. This wraps up Part 2 of Modeling Masonry Coursing. As you have seen: There are a number of steps involved in making one of these profiled walls, but they are pretty straight forward. Once you have made a few of these  profiled walls they will go pretty fast. Some people use profiled walls to create molding only type pieces for custom moldings applied over regular walls. Profile’s created in one project can be moved to other projects (or better yet your office template) using ArchiCAD’s Attribute Manager. Believe me once you start using the Profile Manager you will find many uses for it.

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