Archicad 27 Work Environment

It's that time of year! Once a new release of Archicad comes out, the first step to upgrading from the previous is to rebuilt our Work Environment!

We recommend to always rebuild your new Archicad Work Environments from scratch, and NEVER import a previous version Work Environment. If you do this, you may lose out on the new functions that are available in the application.

 To download our fully prepared v27 Work Environment, fill out this form and we'll send you a zip folder with our latest build!

 Why is the Work Environment so important? Well it really defines the big pictures of how you customize Archicad for your use. Including the placement of palettes, and tool bars, and even the customization of how our information is displayed to us, and in what order. So for improving efficiency in how you work within Archicad, it's essential to dial in your Work Environment!

Steps to Building your Work Environment

1. Save Schemes & Save Profile
2. User Preferences & Company Standards
3. Tool Groups
4. Tool - Info Box
5. Customize Toolbards
6. Set Workspace
7. Redefine Schemes, Export & Backup Profile

Step 1) Save Schemes and Save Profile

For each of the 6 Schemes on the left hand column, you'll want to create your own Stored Scheme. These schemes ultimately save the customizations that are applied to the overall profile, which we'll create in the next step.

Once you start make adjustments to these schemes, a Custom stored scheme will be created. Don't worry about this. To update your scheme, just click on it, and then hit redefine. The custom status will then disappear.

Once you've created all your Stored Schemes, we can then create the overall profile from the top level Work Environment.

Click New Profile, name it, then edit to make sure you've assigned all your stored schemes.

There is no "redefine" option for the overall profile, only the sub-scheme settings.

Step 2) User Preference & Company Standard Schemes

These two generally go fast and are included together because they are similar in nature. Here are a few highlights we want to point out, and the rest of the settings the default can likely work just fine!

Dialog Boxes and Palettes

Unless you have a specific reason for hiding locked layers in the pop-up palettes, probably best to leave this unchecked. If you do have a reason for hiding select layers, to shorten your list when working, then great! Just know why you are doing this...

The Pet Palette and Text Formatting Palettes we recommend to set to a preferred position. Typically in the center, towards the top of the working view, that way you always know where it will be, and it won't be jumping around on you when you move your cursor.

More Options

There are a few settings here to point out. The first, being the detail/worksheet boundary. If you want to see the dashed line around your newly created details/worksheets (on those views) then use this checkbox. If not, then uncheck this option!

The Assign New Element ID we always turn off, just because we often use numeric details in our element IDs. For example FTG-1, or CMU-8 to define types or sizes of elements. When this option is checked, it will automatically start counting on your and you'll end up with a CMU-21 which doesn't exist!

Few other settings worth noting are the adjustment of drawing frames on layouts, and also how views and layout open in the same or new tabs.

More Options - Experimental Features

This second tab of the More Options contains the Experimental Features. New to Archicad 27 are the Enable Physically Based Rendering in 3D Option, as well as the Enable Distance Guides. In our main productivity profile, we are not utilizing the Physically Based Rendering option, as it does not allow for contour lines and we prefer more vibrant colors and lighting when working the model.

The Distance Guides is an awesome new feature that we can toggle off and on later in our toolbars, so we recommend enabling this!

On-Screen Options

Showing Contours on Favorites and Library Parts is useful, so use it!

Also, if you want to customize your Master Items on Layouts this can be where you set this color, along with several other workspace and energy evaluation colors.

Step 3) Tool Schemes - Toolbox Groups

Out of the box, the available schemes do not have an option that will list all the design tools for Architecture, MEPS, and Structural. We prefer having all of these at our finger tips, grouped by function. In order to enable all of these, we need to create some extra Tool Groups, and add the tools within.

In our profile, we've added Ductwork, Piping, Cabling, and Structural Tools under their respective Tool Groups.

Step 4 ) Tool - Info Box Reorganization

In our working method, the importance of IDs, Properties and Classifications are right up there with layers. So that is why we go through and re-organize how these parameters show up in our Info Box.

We always have our Info Box docked vertically on the left hand side of our workspace, so having these at the top is helpful! A bit tedious of a task, but well worth it.

Step 5) Workspace Schemes

 The Workspace Scheme doesn't have any sub-settings, but it does save all the locations of toolbars, palettes and docked and undocked positions when opening different dialog boxes and functions within Archicad.

This is an important one to set, and and to remember to redefine when making changes to the preferred layout.

Step 6) Command Layouts - Toolbars

 The Toolbars are another area that we do quite a bit of customization. We find that several of the default toolbars have some good commands, but they also contain so items we never use that just take of space. So we suggest going through these, determine which ones will be docked in your Workspace, and then selectively remove commands you don't need (because you use shortkeys or other inputs), and add the useful ones you do need!

We also customize a few new toobars we've gotten used to over the years.

See below!

Below you can see what we remove and what we've added to the Standard Toobar. Note the New Design Options and Distance Guides from AC27!

The 3D Visualization Toolbar we always dock on the bottom left of our workspace. The 3D Window icon takes up a lot of space, and we've never clicked on it once to go to 3d! We've also added the Align Texture Options to the far right... 

Custom Toolbars

This Tools and Profile Is useful for turning off and on palettes quickly. Also for adjusting background, grids, and editing planes, and also a quick way to apply profiles! Top Left for this docking...

A few useful roof, truss, grid and energy accessories.

Some useful functions...

Final Step 7 ) - Redefine Schemes and Export to Backup Profile!

Once you've made all your customizations, make sure to redefine your saved schemes, and export your Profile so you have it backed up!

To do this, go to the top level and export your profile! To import, select the root folder which will bring through all the sub-schemes.

Enjoy!

John from CONTRABIM

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