ArchiCAD Modeling Using CAD plans - Using Trace & Reference palette

This post is a follow up to "ArchiCAD Modeling Using CAD plans - Importing DWG files"

Read post here.

For this second part, I will consider importing DWG plans with the Place External Drawing tool.

Managing imported CAD plans:

After importing our CAD plans, I take a few minutes to think about how I will organize the imported plans.

Ideally, I put a plan or a view per worksheet, so that my imported plans tree looks really organized and it will help me when changing the plan I am modeling on.

Basically my worksheets will look like this.

Unfortunately, unless you have a CAD file for every plan or view (which is impractical for the CAD users), you will have to explode your exported drawings and then copy and paste every plan in its respective worksheet. And as we have seen in the first part or this post, after exploding drawing we lose the ability to update then one a modification is made to the CAD file.

Unless you are certain that the CAD files won’t change, like the case of as built plans, DON’T DO THAT (I’ve said it very nicely !).

Trace & Reference palette:

Now, in the case you have imported your CAD plans into a single worksheet (by the way I strongly recommend not importing drawing into your stories), you will have to be comfortable with the TRACE tool.

Click the Trace toggle button, on the Standard Toolbar to show or hide the Trace Reference in the current window.

You can show the Trace Palette with Window > Palettes > Trace & Reference or clicking on the Trace command and activating Trace & Reference.

Tip: Trace & Reference is a frequently used command, and not only when modeling through CAD plans, so it’s a good practice to make a room for its palette in your work environment, or assign a shortcut to show and hide it (like I did).

Visit my Instagram account @arhicadgeek, I made a post of how to assign new shortcuts.

The Trace & Reference palette is a simple yet powerful tool, which has a few options to take in consideration.

First, you will have to choose the Trace that you will work with, to do that you browse for the worksheet or the view you want to display as a trace.

In the Choose Trace  dialog box you will have all the available views. You can choose from the Project Map, View Map or Layout Book.

Once you choose a view for the first time, it will be listed directly in the Trace & Reference Palette.

Another quick way to select a view as a trace, is by right clicking on it in the Navigator.

Trace & Reference Options:

The first option Switch Reference with Active takes the active window and puts it in Referebce, and vice versa with the trace.

The Four other options are in order:

• Drag Reference

• Rotate Reference

In the case of having multiple drawings in a single worksheet, you will have to make several Drag and Rotate actions every time you begin working on a new CAD plan.

• Reset to Default Position 

After dragging and rotating the reference you can reset it to its default position.

• Rebuild 

Rebuild the Reference to reflect any changes in the source view.

You can change the intensity and the color of both the Reference and the Active color.

You can choose from several predefined colors or choose a custom color.

You can also keep the original color.

You can also pick which elements to display a Reference.

Last but not least, there's four additional settings for more control on how the Reference is displayed.

In order:

• Temporarily displace Reference.
• Reference on Top (I usually use this option with the Reference Color red when checking the modeling with the CAD plans).
• Show/hide Splitter (same as 3D cutaway, but it's in 2D with half Active and the other half Reference).
• Make Fills and Zones transparent (to make the Reference less dominating the view while modeling).

Here I described the way I work on 3D/BIM models based on CAD plans. I would like to know about your ArchiCAD practices in the comment section.