Archicad Training - The Swift And Easy Method To Produce Material Schemes

At time, you have to put a lot of thought and effort into planning a design. Consider this double when it comes to the building blocks. Record everythign and bring it back up lickity split. Got more then one material, NO PROBLEM. ArchiCAD makes flop flopping a definition cake. This will let you get your work done quicker and with less effort.


I've known people who have to take a lot of tries and problem solving to work out materials. Use ArchiCAD's expert tool, the Attribute Manager. Use this will make quick work of trying several material forms.

Using Attribute Manager, we can record everything about material settings before making a change, and even rework more than one material at once. It's very easy to reload an attribute file because each attribute has it's own file.

All your options are available under the Element Attributes menu. To get to that, use the Options menu. From there, you will be able to set up table for easy interaction with attributes. Select the Materials tab (the one with the paintbrush) and click the Name column to sort by material name.

By selecting the overwrite button, found in the middle section, you can experiment with assorted materials. The material will be assigned an index number which is used the identify the material. Repeat for any other materials you'd like to save. Use your shift or control/command to select multiple materials at a time.

If you don't save the window, it will read untitled at the top. Once you save it, untitled will be replaced with your chosen name. AAT stands for Attribute Manager file, a file that records attribute names and definitions. Click the Save button to name and save this file to your hard drive for later use.

At this point you haven't yet made any change to the materials, but now can freely go ahead and change them, knowing you can restore them easily. Now make a change. As long as you've saved the AAT file, you can reload and compair your materials in 3 dimentions.

Now, after you have completed these steps, do to the Attribute Manager. On the right side you'll see Open. Choose which AAT file you wish to open. Choose one or more of the materials on the right side, and click the Overwrite button to bring back their original definitions into the current file. Once you return to the 3D view, you'll see them restored to their previous state.

That's not all. It's possible to save as many AAT files as you choose. You can make each one of these a different material, if you choose. You can now save an many material schemes as you like and switch easily each of them in and out.

You can also open up a PLN file on the right side of Attribute Manager, and copy materials or other attributes from another project file.

You can save default material styles for quick use. Maybe you want to have a default paint or wall exterior. It's excellent to have them ready to use. That way you won't be modifying materials that are already set up to represent real world finishes, such as woods, metals, etc.

You can change the materials from within the project without needing to change the elements by changing the material index numbers. This will prevent you from accidentally changing a valuable characteristic. This means you can save name variations in your material schemes AAT file, such as "Wall Option 1" vs. "Wall Option 2", as long as you use the Overwrite button to bring these materials (with different names) back in with the same index number.

Do not change the default build in material names though because it can cause the internal structure of ArchiCAD to fall apart. If you copy and paste in elements from another project that reference the original standard material names, you'll get extra entries added to the materials list rather than having the pasted elements reference the corresponding material.