Speed up your structure modeling and editing in Archicad

In a structure view plan, we have basically four elements: grid lines, columns, beams and dimensions.

Each element of these have a dedicated tool in Archicad. You can insert grid lines, columns, beams and dimensions separately. But with the grid system you can enter the grid positions and Archicad will do the rest for you, provided you set up the grid system correctly.

In this article, you will read about:

• How to insert a grid system with the columns, beams and dimensions in one command.
• How to edit an existing structure.
• How to manage structure elements IDs

Orthogonal Grid System

To access the grid system settings, click on the design menu, and choose grid system.

The grid system settings dialog box has four panels: general settings, grid elements, naming rules and grid positions.

Note: this the default display of this dialog box, you can change the order these panels are displayed, you can prefer another order with the grid positions first for example.

General settings

In the general settings panel, the first thing to do is to choose the geometry of the grid, is it orthogonal or radial?

Let’s begin with the orthogonal geometry.

Now, choose whether or not you want to place columns, beams and dimensions with the grid lines.

At grid line intersection you can place a column or an object like an architectural column. By clicking on settings you open the column default settings where you enter all the settings related to the column tool. When you finish click on OK.

For beams, here you have a greyed option that says straight, this is the only way beams are inserted in an orthogonal grid, there’s another option for the radial grid system.

Same thing as the columns, by clicking on settings you access the beam default settings dialog box. After setting up the beam click on OK.

For the dimensions, there’s two types: dimensions between the grid line and the total dimension. Enter the distance between the gird marker and the dimension lines, and the distance between the dimension lines and the total dimension.

There’s this option: keep column and/or beam within grid perimeter. If you enable it you will have all the columns in the grid line intersections except for the columns in the perimeter, and all the beam will be centered on the grid lines except for those in the perimeter.

here’s the difference about two grid systems, one with the keep column and/or beam within grid perimeter unchecked and the other with this option checked.

Grid elements

In the Grid Elements panel, enter the extension value of the grid elements at the grid’s system sides.

The anchor point is related the naming rules, I’ll talk about that in the next part.

Next chose the sides you want the markers on.

You can check the auto-stagger grid marker if they overlap to avoid having overlapping markers and staggering them manually.

By clicking on grid element settings from the grid elements panel, you access the grid element default settings, after setting up the grid line click on OK.

Naming rules

In the naming rules panel, with the Generate names automatically option enabled, choose the style of the horizontal and vertical grid lines. You can add a prefix and/or a suffix.

If you check the custom option you will be able to name each grid line here in the grid positions panel.

You can choose the order in which the grid elements will be named. For the horizontal grids you can choose whether you start naming them from the bottom or from the top. Same thing with the vertical grids, choose whether to start naming them for the left or the right.

You can also choose the first letter or number for the grid lines.

For the anchor point, you choose this accordingly to the order of grid elements naming. In this case you have horizontal grids from bottom to top and vertical grids from left to right, so if you chose the bottom left anchor point, your insertion point will be the intersection of both the first horizontal grid line and first vertical grid line, in this example it will be the intersection between the grid lines A and 1. If you choose the top left anchor point, the insertion point will be the intersection of the last horizontal grid line and the first vertical grid line and so on.

Grid positions

The last panel is the grid positions, it’s quite simple, you stat from zero for both horizontal and vertical grid lines, and enter the distances between the grid lines.

Add or remove grid lines using the plus and minus buttons.

There’s a distribute option, by checking it, you will enter only how many grid lines you have and then specifying the overall dimensions graphically after clicking on OK and Archicad will split the between grid lines spacing equally.

Note: This option can be used with the keep column and/or beam within grid perimeter option in the case of a given land lot when you specify the anchor point and the limits of the parcel, and then modifying the grid.

Now choose the layer for the grid lines, for the columns, beams and dimensions layers you can assign them through the setting in the general settings panel.

Radial grid system

For the radial grid system, there’s three points to take in consideration, the rest is the same as the orthogonal grid.

1. enter the outer radius value, in a way this value defines the arc with the larger radius of the grid system.
2. Choose whether to use straight or curved beams.
3. The spacing of the circular grid lines is set in distances whereas the radial grid lines spacing is set through the angle values. By entering the spacing values here, you will define the smaller arc of the grid system.

Edit the grid system?

Edit elements by stories

Now, that the grid system is set up and inserted into your model, with the columns and beams, you would want to copy these elements to the other stories of your project. For this use the edit elements by stories command from the design menu.

Of course this command is not only for structure elements, you will be able to copy all kind of Archicad elements in different stories. But grid lines are not in this list, that’s because a grid line is a unique element in a project, it can’t be duplicated through stories. In the other hand there’s an option that allows you to display the grid lines in the stories you want. You can do it in the grid element default setting dialog box in the floor plan panel.

Adjust beams height with Find & Select

Columns positioning can be made through a bottom offset to home story and top link, so when copying them their height will be adjusted automatically.

In the other hand, beams positioning is made only on the basis of offset to home story, so if you have different heights of your project’s stories, which is generally the case, the beams will not be positioned correctly in all the stories, so you will have to adjust this manually.

To do that I would use the find & select command, and beside the element type add another criteria: elevation to project’s zero, this way you will select all the beams in a given story and adjust the elevation of beams in each story.

A useful thing you can do here is to store the selection sets for future changes.

Add new elements to the grid system

Now, let’s say that you want to add a grid line and some columns to your project.

For the grid line you can insert a new one using the grid element tool, or you can copy an existing one and change the corresponding grid lines names, then add a column and/or a beam in the place you want.

Then select the columns or beams and multiply them by using the CTRL+U shortcut. Here choose Elevate option and choose the input method that suits you the best.

In this case I chose the Spread graphical input method.

Keep in mind that in the case of stories with different height you will have to do an additional adjustment.

Change the between axis spacing

Archicad offers little constraints, that’s way changing the between axis spacing requires a two steps operations.

First move the grid line to its new position, then lock the grid line’s layer so you don’t move it by mistake.

Second, draw a marque tool around the part containing the columns and beam of the grid you moved, remember to choose the all floors selection method.

Basically here you will do a stretch operation, you can access this from the edit menu and then reshape. But you don’t have to do this every time, can use the CTRL+H shortcut or just click on a node in the interior of the marquee you just drawn and specify the distance of stretching according to the new position of the grid line.

Make sure that all the layers of the elements you want to edit are visible and unlocked (walls, slabs, ...)

Manage structure elements IDs

After modeling the structure and making different changes, a good practice is to manage IDs of the columns and beams to identify and group elements and for easy takeoffs making.

In Archicad, if a number is included in the ID, drawing successive elements will increment this number for each new element, provided that Assign New Element ID to Each New Element?is enabled (Options >?Work Environment > More Options**). Also, i**f elements are duplicated, the IDs of the duplicated ones will remain the same as those of the originals. That’s why I use the Element ID Manager to rename IDs in a more readable way.

In general, columns IDs are set according to the intersection of the horizontal and vertical grid lines. For the A grid line for example, select the columns on this grid line by drawing a selection rectangle and open the Element ID Manger dialog box. (Document > Listing Extras > Element ID Manager).

Sort Elements

In the Sort Elements Tab, choose the element type and enable Unique ID for Each Element.

Leave the selected criteria area empty.

ID Format?

In the ID format panel, choose how many fields you want to use, and the format of each field.

In this example, in the first field I put the A letter (fir the A grid line) and a hyphen, so the type is Text and the number of characters is 2.

For the second field, I set a counter starting from 1 and 2 characters for better formatting.

When you click on Change ID’s, a dialog box with all the columns which IDs will changes displayed, click on OK.

The IDs are set in the order the columns were created, so by using the grid system the IDs will be set correctly. But if you make some changes on the grid system (duplicating or deleting columns) the IDs will not be se in order, to fix this, select the columns one by one in the right order and use the Element ID manager.

Redo this operation for the columns in the B grid line and so on.

To change the beams IDs, it’s quite simple: you can do it manually if you don’t have many beams, or you can use the Element ID Manager in the same way.

Here I shared with you how I model and edit structure elements and their IDs in Archicad using a couple of tools. I would be interested to read about how you model these kind of elements or if you have any questions.

If you like this kind of article / tutorials, please subscribe to the AIM DESING Tutorials newsletter.

Hope this helps.