By Jim Mahoney 
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Part 3 of 3 on modeling masonry coursing in ArchiCAD will cover working in Section. Part 1 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. Part 2 covered using the Profile Manager to create a wall with multiple materials and a simple projecting profile on one side. It also briefly covered using a Solid Element Operation to insert a precast masonry accent panel into the wall.
PART 3:
Big Picture
Ultimately unless it is a no budget project, there is a certain level of detail I like to get in my model so I get as much out of it as I can.
That minimum ideal level of 3D detail I like to use is:
- An accurately modeled exterior. The Exterior Elevations are made into a drawing. But the plan is they will be updated from the model throughout the project.
- Accurately modeled Kitchens and Bathroom where the Interior Elevations are made into a drawing, but once again the plan is they are will be updated from the model throughout the project.
- Floors, ceilings and major structural elements are in place in 3D. I use composite walls for the wall types since they help starting the sections and details. Remember you can always use Model View Options to hide the skins of the composites in drawing where you don’t want to see them.
- Whole building sections will be created from from the model. They are generally at the same scale, or one scale less than the floor plans. They will be turned into drawings and Model View Options will be used to turn the walls solid. The full building sections will be updated from the model throughout the project.
- Any sections, such as wall sections, at a scale larger than the floor plan’s scale are taken from the model. They are turned into a drawing and normally do not get directly updated from the model again.
- Details are taken from the plan or larger scale wall sections. They are turned into a drawing and normally do not get directly updated from the model again.
Building Sections
Generally the whole building sections are done at the same scale as the plan, usually 1/8” or 1/4” scale. The model I have created has 3D floors, ceilings & structural members in it. At these scales it makes no sense to put any detail in the walls. You are trying to show major spaces, levels and level changes. The ArchiCAD doors and windows show enough level of detail at this scale. What I do is go into the Model View Options found in the Document Menu>>Model View Options and set the Fill Options to “Override Cut Fills”. This gives you a Building Section with enough level of detail coming from the model to show what is needed for a drawing at this scale. Making the walls solid covers some details at floor/wall joints and head/sill details that may not be accurate. They will be shown accurately in larger scale drawings and there is no reason to get them perfect here.
Wall Sections
The next step is to go around the building in plan and elevation and identify all of the conditions that are unique and will require a wall section. I generally do my wall sections at 3/4” scale. At that level of detail what comes out of the ArchiCAD model will need some tweaking. The idea here is after the sections are cut they are turned into a drawing that is not intended to be updated from the model from this point forward. Further work is done in this window. I ALWAYS turn any section or elevation or interior elevation drawing that is to be used for a working drawing from a 2-way linked view into a drawing. Drawings can still be updated from the 3D model, but it is now a one-way, not a two-way link. That way if I accidentally delete a line in a section or elevation that is from a 3D wall, I didn’t just take out the north wall of my building in the model. Accidents happen and this is just a safe way to work.
After the wall sections are located and generated, the next step is to put some brick coursing guides in and start adding more detail into the wall section. One of the first things that needs to be done is to remove the general brick fill that came in from the model, and replace it with actual coursing. There are several ways to do this, but the first step is to add coursing marks. We will use 4”x8” nominal brick coursing in our work today.
Now coursing lines can be done with hot spots, but I like to use lines. They are easier to see at certain zoom levels. Having the coursing as lines also helps when I am creating custom fills for the brick. I put these coursing lines on a No_Plot or Layout Lines layer you turn off when you print. One of the things I do with this type of line is use a unique pen for this type item. I use the bright pink Pen 9 only for this purpose. That way if I see pink when it is time to print I know I have to change my layer combinations or I have some layout lines on the wrong layer. The first step is to draw the first line at the level where the vertical coursing starts. Then you select the line and let ArchiCAD’s Multiply dialogue box to help you. With the line selected, go to the Edit Menu>>Move>>Multiply... When the Multiply dialogue box comes up, type “3” copies and “Distribute” for the Vertical Displacement. Hit the “OK” button and begin moving your cursor vertically. Type 8” which should fill in 8” in the “Distance” field of the tracker. You should be left with three lines 8” apart total.
With the last three lines selected (do not add the original line to the selection) it is time to run the coursing up the rest of the elevation. Once again go to the Edit Menu>> Move>> Multiply... When the Multiply dialogue box comes up, set “Spread” for the Vertical Displacement and type “8” for Spacing and hit the “OK” button.
For your starting point select the base line (the one that is not selected) and start moving your cursor vertically. You will begin getting a series of coursing ticks every 8”. Continue pulling the cursor vertically until you reach the top of the masonry wall. When you are done, all but the first 4 elements will be selected. I would suggest selecting the remaining 4 ticks and doing several things: First I would go to the Edit Menu>> Grouping>> Group and Group these items. This will allow you to easily select and move them as a group if needed. Secondly while the items are still selected, I would copy these items. This will allow you to paste these masonry coursing ticks into other wall section drawings you may be working on. Lastly, I would then lock these ticks so you can’t accidentally delete these ticks. Do this by going to the Edit Menu>> Locking>> Lock. At this point you could switch to your other sections and paste in the coursing lines you have in your clipboard. You can add coursing ticks in a similar fashion as required for any 4” or 8” modular coursing.
Another thing you may want to do is decide how you want to handle your masonry. Depending on the scale of the drawing you may want to make a custom fill that shows the brick coursing in it’s entirety or use fills for the individual bricks and arcs for the joints. Let’s look at both. Before we add new fills, we will need to remove the old fills. Here is the way to use Find and Select to help you do this. Step 1 is to select a sample of the fill you wish to remove. Make sure Grouping is suspended so you don’t unintentionally select any other items when you select a brick sample. With a brick sample selected, go to the Edit Menu>> Find and Select.... This brings up the Find and Select Dialogue Box. Step one is to click on the button just above the “+” button, as seen in the picture below right.
It sets Find and Select to use the settings of the item you’ve selected, in this case that particular type of brick fill. The dialogue box is set to use Fills as the tool type. All that needs to be done here is to add another setting for the Fill Name. Now that this is done we are ready to hit the “+”. Now all of the brick fills of this name in this drawing are selected.
Take a quick look to see that the right fills and only the right fills are selected. Then hit Delete to remove the fills. The masonry fill should now be deleted. In the picture below you can see the brick veneer on the right side has been emptied out on multiple stories. Repeat as necessary for any other fills you wish to remove, such as the steel symbol where the steel studs and insulation need to go.
Once you have made way for the new brick coursing, it is time to decide what to use. The approach I take is to use a custom symbol fill for the 3/4” scale full wall sections. These drawings are at a small enough scale that you don’t need to show a detail level where things like raked joints need to be shown. These would be difficult to show & use in a symbol fill. For larger scale drawings like 1 1/2” or 3” scale details I use individual fills for each brick and an arc for the raked joint. We’ll see that approach in a bit.
I have made a sample section of 4”x8” nominal coursing that is 8” tall. I have used pink layout lines to help me establish the coursing and joints. I have made the bricks from 3 fills that are 2 2/3” high x 3 5/8” deep. The guidelines help with drawing the fills to match the exact height of the bricks. As mentioned earlier, this is one reason why I use lines over hotspots to show coursing marks. In addition to the 3 fills, I drew a vertical line on the front and back sides, starting at 0” and extending up 8”. I’ve set it up so 0 is at half a joint and the top falls at half a joint. To create custom the fill I’ve selected the 3 fills and the two vertical lines. Be sure not to select the pink guidelines. Copy the lines, then go to the Options Menu>>Element Attributes>>Fill Types... Press the New button and when the Add New Fill dialogue box comes up select the “Symbol fill” radio button. Name your fill carefully using your office standards, to help make it easy to find again later.
Next click on the Paste button that appears and a repeating version of your fill should appear in the preview as shown in the picture below. A yellow highlight appears showing a single instance of your fill. You should check that the values under Motif Size and Strokes are appropriate for your fill. In this case 3 5/8” and 8” are the size we are looking for, so we can hit OK to save our changes.
I also have a second Symbol Fill I made with no hatch. To do this I simply took the 3 brick sample pattern used just now to make the first fill and changed the fill pattern from face brick to an empty fill. Once again copy the elements and create a new symbol fill as before.
The picture below shows how to use the fill. I have the two fills highlighted to show one of the tricks to using them. To draw the fill, you choose to make a fill with a border and a user defined anchor point. You place the anchor point on the exterior face of the wall in the horizontal direction, and you position it vertically on one of your coursing tick marks. As you can see the brick coursing aligns perfectly. Now there is one more thing you must do. The fill you’ve created goes on forever in all directions. The unhighlighted fill on the right in the picture below shows this. When you make your fill make sure to make it 3 5/8” wide. If you have your anchor point aligned correctly on the face of the wall you should get a border all around the fill. Don’t sweat it if it is slightly cut off, you can always use the Pet Palette to offset that edge of the fill 1/16” of an inch.
Large Scale Details
At this point even though there is still work to be done on the wall sections, it is a good time to look at the big picture. There are probably some large scale details that need to be taken from these wall sections. Things such as head and sill details at doors and windows, coping or fascia details, etc. I often don’t take the wall sections any farther at this point. Instead I place detail markers and begin work on the large scale details. This is where you work out some of the technical issue. Often items from these large scale details can be copied and pasted back into the appropriate wall sections, often multiple times. Rather than draw the same detail twice, once at 3/4” scale and then later at 3”, I do it once at 3” where you can work out the issues at an appropriate scale. Then I take information from this detail, group it, and paste at least some of it back into the wall sections. The reason I say “or at least some of it”, is I may leave out items which won’t read well at the smaller scale of the wall section-things like flashing, fasteners, or other tiny bits.
When I open up the detail for the first time, I add in masonry coursing ticks and then lock them in place, just as we did in the wall sections. To get masonry in the larger scale details I start out in a similar fashion to making the custom fill type. Using layout lines to give me the coursing I draw an 8” high sample.
This time I use arcs to represent the raked joint or lines if appropriate for a v-joint etc. I do not make a custom fill out of these items. Instead I drag a copy or copy and paste these lines and fills into the detail. I then use the Multiply command to make additional copies. I find at the larger scales working this way give me more control and flexibility with things like line weight, joints etc. Plus you usually aren’t dealing with many courses at large scale. In the larger scale details, I will use manufacturers 2D CAD files to replace the ArchiCAD windows. Also I often draw large scale details of the various precast profiles that are grouped together on a sheet. These precast sections can be used in a similar fashion. If I use a fill to draw the precast window sill or head accurately in the 3” scale window details, I can use that same fill and paste it in on my precast details sheet. Once I get the 3” scale window detail drawn, I can select the actual manufacturers window, the new precast head and sill and paste these into the various wall sections. Since the windows are often drawn in part in the large scale details, it may be necessary to paste them in off to one side and fix the breaks in the glass. Then I group the windows, and the head and the sill which makes moving it around as a unit easier. Now the window can be dragged into place and multiplied up or down to other floors.
The 3/4” scale wall section above shows some of these principles in action. On the left side you can see the coursing ticks, drawn in pink and on a No_Plot layer. This building had a mix of 4” 8” and 12” coursing and the ticks reflect that. The ArchiCAD windows, as well as the precast head and sills have been deleted and replace with the actual manufacturers window, copied from a 3” scale window detail and the actual precast head and sill profiles intended to be used. The bricks immediately below and above the windows were drawn with a custom symbol fill as discussed earlier.
The pictures above are from the same wall section blown up. As you can see there is really no sense drawing these items multiple times. You pick the best place to draw it and then re-use it in other drawings and at other scales.
Conclusion
This wraps up our three part serious on Modeling Masonry in ArchiCAD. As you can see you can get quite a bit of masonry detail in the model, so that your elevations and building sections can come primarily from the model and be updated from your model. When you take your larger scale wall sections from the model you will be well along the way. Creating custom fills for masonry can help you quickly add the coursing into the wall sections. By working smart and leveraging some of your large scale details to use in your wall sections, you can draw many items once at the appropriate scale and then use them multiple times in other drawings. Thinking big picture and planning ahead a bit in ArchiCAD can lead to some great time savings and more accurate drawings-Win Win.
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