Author: |
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Creation Date: |
2006-01-16 |
• ArchiCAD 9 |
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Platform: |
• Mac OS X |
Audience: |
• power users |
TechTip of the Month Contest Winner of July-August 2005
Dan Kuschnik’s tip on showing zone length and width in the zone stamp!
„Here's a fun little challenge. I'd like to have a zone stamp that can show the maximum length and width of the zone. so that it might look like: Category Room Name Area Length by width A modification of Zone identifier 2 would be cool. Thanks.”
D.K.: - „You can "sort of" do it. I have a couple of graphical Hotspots scrtipted in my zones that I can move around once the zone is placed. The zone then displays the dimension between the manually/graphically determined points. It's not fully automatic or even perfect but very useful for displaying room dimensions on brochure plans... keep in mind that the desired room dimension you often want to communicate is not necessarily the actual bounding/overall dimensions of the zone.”
To achieve this, you need to modify the Zone identifier 2’s GDL script. Follow the steps as described below:
- Start ArchiCAD
Go to File...>GDL Objects>Open Object by Subtype...,
Locate ’Zone Stamp 02’ in the GDL Hierarchy Tree (it’s under General GDL Object>Drawing Symbol>Zone Stamp).
- Alternatively, you can also use Open Object... to locate and open the Zone Stamp 02.gsm file in the ArchiCAD library.
- Save a copy of it beside the original file so that it will be loaded when you load your library next time.
- * AA / dimension text offset "X" / 0"
- BB / dimension text offset "Y" / 0"
- A2 / ref line start point "X" / 1'
- B2 / ref line start point "Y" / 1'
- A3 / ref line end point "X" / -1'
- B3 / ref line end point "Y" / -1'
To do this, click on the ’New’ button to the upper left corner of the dialog. A new line will be added to the listing where you can rename the new variable and also set its Name, Type and Value (see screenshot below)
Hotspot2 0,0 !!!makes graphical hotspots for dimensions HOTSPOT2 0,BB, 1001, aa,1+128 !Base HOTSPOT2 aa,BB, 1002, aa,2 !Move HOTSPOT2 -1,BB, 1003, aa,3 !Vector HOTSPOT2 AA,0, 1004, bb,1+128 !Base HOTSPOT2 AA,BB, 1005, bb,2 !Move HOTSPOT2 AA,-1, 1006, bb,3 !Vector ROT2 -W~ !!!makes graphical hotspots for start point of length line HOTSPOT2 0,B2, 2001, a2,1+128 !Base HOTSPOT2 a2,B2, 2002, a2,2 !Move HOTSPOT2 -1,B2, 2003, a2,3 !Vector HOTSPOT2 A2,0, 2004, b2,1+128 !Base HOTSPOT2 A2,B2, 2005, b2,2 !Move HOTSPOT2 A2,-1, 2006, b2,3 !Vector !!!makes graphical hotspots for end point of length line HOTSPOT2 0,B3, 3001, a3,1+128 !Base HOTSPOT2 a3,B3, 3002, a3,2 !Move HOTSPOT2 -1,B3, 3003, a3,3 !Vector HOTSPOT2 A3,0, 3004, b3,1+128 !Base HOTSPOT2 A3,B3, 3005, b3,2 !Move HOTSPOT2 A3,-1, 3006, b3,3 !Vector DEL 1 DEFINE STYLE "RM_Size" "Times New Roman", 14'-0", 5, 1 SET STYLE "RM_Size" !!!makes dimension text string xx=abs(a3-a2) !determine width yy=abs(b3-b2) !determine height TEXT2 aa, bb, STR("%0.1ffi",xx)+'x '+STR("%0.1ffi",yy)- Now save and close the object.
In ArchiCAD, open a plan file, and assign the new Zone Stamp to the zone categories where you want to use this option (Options>Attribute Settings...>Zone Categories...).
- Place your zones where appropriate.
Select a Zone (you can do that with the Arrow tool or by shift-clicking on a hotspot of the zone) and you will see its black hotspots and some new, green (or coloured) hotspots. One of these at the middle of the ’2,0 x 2,0’ text allows you to drag the text around; whilst with the two others you should locate the two most distant corners of the zone in order for the text to read the maximum X and Y size of the zone.
Hint: should you be using metric units, then replace the last line of the GDL code with:
TEXT2 aa, bb, STR("%0.1",xx)+'x '+STR("%0.1",yy) - and also set the base values ofthe new variables to say 1000,1000,-5000,-5000,-3000,-3000 (if unitsare millimeters) in order to easily see all three hotspots when placing a zone.