CU1705

SOFTWARE review
Predicting your next step
Predictive Design Technology lies behind ARCHICAD 21's enhanced stair and railing design
Graphisoft has chosen to focus on
patent pending Predictive Design
Technology in its latest release of
ARCHICAD, Version 21, highlighting it as a
part of the new stair and railing tools, which
are designed to take much of the hard
work out of the problem. It's along the lines
of another recent addition to ARCHICAD,
Predictive Background Processing, which
tries to work out what you are trying to do
with your designs, and prepares the next
processing steps in the background using
your computer's spare capacity. Here
though the Predictive Design Technology
compares what the architect is trying to
achieve, based on the position of the stairs
within the model and defined by its polyline
outline, with thousands of alternative
design options, using the software's Stair
Tool algorithms.
This is all carried out in real time. The
software throws up a selection of optimal
designs that may satisfy the architect's
creative aspirations - and which will, of
course, conform to local building codes.
The intention is to give architects as many
opportunities as possible to exercise their
creative juices, instead of having to worry
about design details. Once the stairs have
been established the design can be
tweaked using ARCHICAD’s intuitive
design tools and finished off with other
structural elements, materials and finishes.
Adding railings to match the design is
another complex task that is accomplished
just as easily with 'one click' using the
Railing Tool, and coming up with a
selection of railing types to add to the
stairs and associated features.
ARCHICAD's customising capabilities
can then be brought into play using the
Railing Pattern Editor to fine-tune the
patterns and add material finishes to
posts, panels and other stair features. And,
much like Stairs, Railings are constrained
predefined rules and standards.
In fact the Railing Tool can handle more
than just railing design, as it can be used
to do a similar job with trees, lamp posts
and railings on a site plan, or even roof
eave and guttering details - anything with a
linear repetition of elements.
It's an interesting choice on which to hang
the latest release, but I am reminded here
of the complex issues that sometimes
bedevil stair layout, compared to all other
elements of a building, having sweated
over a bespoke piece of stair design
myself. Working here in my barn
conversion, I spat on my thumb and
carved out a hole roughly eight foot by
eight foot in an old pine floor, and then set
about fitting in a two-turn staircase with two
mini-landings - only to discover that the
outer wall was not true but cut back by 5%.
I spent a couple of days minutely
calculating angles, risers, stringers and so
on before we cut the first piece of oak.
This exercise would have been shortened
to minutes, had I used Graphisoft's Stair
Tool, and I would have probably had half a
dozen alternative style options at my
disposal. It would also have rejected an
earlier design that failed to provide more
than a 5 foot head height on the final
two steps.
ARCHICAD 21 FEATURES
I wonder if that last statement comes under
the heading of Collision Detection - now
one of ARCHICAD's standard features,
instead of previously being available within
BIM collaboration tools? Groups of
elements can be compared through userdefined
criteria sets - Element Types,
Classification values, Property values and
attributes like Layer Names and Building
materials. Detected collisions can be
identified, highlighted and even edited
using ARCHICAD's Mark-up Palette and
shared using BCF file formats.
ARCHICAD 21 also includes a new
flexible way of classifying elements and
spaces, enabling architects to support
national standards - Uniclass, Omniclass
and UniFormat. These classifications,
together with their properties, can be
displayed with any output, allowing for
better distribution of element related BIM
data. Examples of this are Labels and
Zone stamps, where they can be used as
criteria for searching and scheduling, or as
Fields in Element Schedules, or they can
be just mapped as IFC data for IFC model
exchange. This is designed to simplify
classification and allow it to be coordinated
centrally using the new Classification
Manager function.
24
May/June 2017