Workshop 2 Notes

COMPUTER AIDED ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

Workshop 2 Notes, Week of September 9, 2013

Graphics Primitives Continued, Symmetry Operations, Modify and Select Tools

1. PRIMITIVES REVIEW

Primitives consist of basic elements such as lines, circles, arcs, boxes, etc.

Primitive tools typically have dialog boxes associated with them to control the method of primitive creation (ie. a circle by edge, center, or diameter, copy, etc.). Remember to use these dialog boxes to control the ways in which your tools are working. The dialog for "Place SmartLine" appears below.

2. TOOL BOX ORGANIZATION

Within the tool bar, additional sub tools can be accessed by holding down the left mouse button on any tool icon with a triangle in the lower left hand corner. For example, by selecting "Open 'Create Curves' as Toolbox" in the menu above, a sub-tool palette below can be pulled out and displayed as its own tool bar as well.

3. CURVES

Point or Stream Curve: [7th tool in the DawingTask menu] This is a line based, simple curve that is very quick, but does not provide a lot of control or exact geometrical specification. On the other hand, the Create Curves B-Spline curves tool is obtained from 5th icon in Drawing Task menu and is more precise.

B-Spline Curves : [DawingTask Menu/ Create Curves Menu/Place B-spline Curve (highlighted icon in above menu)].

Note several methods available under this curve type:
Method 1: "Control Pts" where the curve is drawn by points which appear to attract the curve (similar to a kind of gravitational pull), where all but the end points don't lie on the curve. This will create a fairly smooth curve.
Method 2: "Through Pts" where the curve is drawn by points which are directly in the path of the curve. This will create a closer fitting curve to specific points. However, this results in a curve that is typically less smooth than the Control Pts curve.

Bezier Curves : [DawingTask Menu/ Create Curves Menu/Place Composite Curve (3rd icon in Create Curves menu highlighted above)].
Mode: WIth Bezier Curves, thecurve is defined by tangential lines. The length pf the tangent lines effects their impact on the curve.

OBSERVATION: When constructing a curve, don’t just trace a drawing. Work to figure out the geometric elements most descriptive of the design. This may help you to more completely understand the geometrical order of the design, and later optimize on finding a more advanced and appropriate technology to use (i.e. Helix tool for the Guggenheim ). That is, test varied type curves to substantively work through the goeometrical composition.

4. LEVELS (aka LAYERS in other programs)

Levels are created by either clicking on the level manager tool (icon above) centered at the top of the Microstation window, or selecting the menu item "settings/level / manager. By best practice, each level in Microstation should be given an independent color so as to be able to more easily understand the organization of drawing. To begin, create a new level for each different type element of your drawing (e.g, walls, roof, etc..). Work this way from the outset in order to keep in place an ongoing conceptual framework of the organization of your model. It may be that you will adjust this framework as your model develops or as new ways of parsing your project occur to you..

The active level can be changed more conveniently by selecting it in an abbreviated level manager tool box (showing the level "walls" in the figure above) also located at the top of the application windows.

A. Within the more complete settings/level manager dialog box, to activate a level:

Double-click current level
Single-click - level on/off

B. Within the settings/level manager dialog box, to create a level:

Select New level icon in upper-left corner, and enter into the text box for the new level any aribitrary name ( e.g., "mynewlevel")
Double-click on name "mynewlevel" to make it active

C. Color can be displayed on objects in three different ways:

(1) where it is assigned directly to the object independently of the level.
(2) where it is assigned according to a color selected for the level (the "by level" methood), and
(3) where it is forced to be associated with a level color (the "loverride" collor option) even if assigned by one of the first two methods. This last technique is bit confusing, and so we didn't over it in the workshop. Some illustration is provided here.

"ByLevel" color - for any given level, the color of an object put on the level inherits the color assigned to the level. In this case, you need to use the " bylevel" symbology as further illustrated below.
"Override" color - for any given level, a second color associated with the level that will override the color of all objects on that level.

To choose the "ByLevel" color , in the level manger dialog box change Symbology to "By Level". For example, pick color (i.e., 7 -cyan) for the given level (i.e., "mynewlevel") as shown in the dialog box below:

3.1 Set the display to the ByLevel symbology option in the Level Manager dialog box (see captured image above) and note:

If you draw an object in any directly assigned color (i.e., yellow)

then the new object appears in that color (i.e., yellow, not cyan)

Conversely, if you draw an object in the "bylevel" color

then the new object appears as cyan.

3.2 Alternatively, in the Level Menager dialog box, adjacent to the word Symbology, choose "Symbology: Overrides" and pick yet another color for "mynewlevel", such as orange (we didn't cover this example in the workshop).

Here, the override color will force all objects are on a particular level to inherit the overrides color. To display this color, you also need to turn on a unique attribute in the view attributes window.

3.3. Furthermore, in conjunction with 3.2, you also need to do the following:

From the Settings menu, choose View Attributes (or press <ctrl-B>).
or, In the view window control bar, select the View Attributes icon in the upper left-hand corner by means of a downward-pointing triangle

The View Attributes dialog box opens as depicted below.

Turn on "Level Overrrides" option as depicted below.

if you do steps 3.2 and 3.3, then all elements on the level (i.e., including the yellow and cyan elements) are forced (overridden) to appear as orange.

5. Edit select by attributes/toggle general button
Select

Type - elipse
Color - select and pick color
Level - Pick all

Mode

Try inclusive and then exclusive

5. OBJECT SNAP TOOLS

Bring up the snap tool palette - button bar

Snap Mode on/off button (1st from left)
Near - snap to closest point on element (2nd from left)
Keypoint - division point (typically mid-point) or end-point of element (3rd from left)
Midpoint - locate mid-point of an element (4th from left)
Centerpoint - find the geometrical center of an element (e.g., circle, arc, polygon) (5th from left)
Intersection - snap to intersection of two elements (8th from left)

Snap shortcuts

C - center
N - near
I - intersect
K- keypoint

6. SYMMETRY TOOLS (Move, Rotate, Mirror, Scale)

Copy element. Method: type in # of copies in dialog box if more than one copy is desired at the same distance from one another.

Move element tool is vector based and can be translated from a point not within the object being modified. Click on or outside element once it’s selected and move in desired direction, typing in distance in Accudraw if you like. The Move element tool can be used with copies and with repititions by selecting the appropriate options in the dialog box.

Move/Copy parallel tool moves complex figures by segment maintaining the relationship of the parts.

Scale tool can be used with numeric input or the three point method. This tool can also be used with repetitions.

Rotate tool can also be used with copies and repitition. To rotate an object to a specific angle, type the angle number in the dialog box after selecting the object to rotate.

Mirror tool can be used to make an exact mirrored copy of a desired object along a selected axis.

(see array tool in 7 below)

Make sure to pay attention to the instruction prompts located in the bottom left corner of the screen for the specific usage steps of each tool.

7. SOME CURVES

Archimedes and Logarithmic Spiral (7th tool from left)

For both curves:
ensure radius is not 0
angle refers to number of revolutions (i.e., 720 degrees is equal to two revolutions)

Orient rectangle to a bspline curve

Enter first corner point of rectangle at end-point of bsplne curve
Enter "RE" and move mouse over bspline, drawing compass (Accudraw) orients to bspline
Hold down leff-mouse button to size rectangle by position of second corner point.
Release and then select left-moust button to finalize the rectangle.

Apply array tool with "Along a path" option and specify number of copies.

Select rectangle.
Enter data point on curve to start array.
Enter second data point on curve to spread copies of rectangle along curve.
Use rotate option to have rectangle copies follow tangent line to curve.

8. MODIFY TOOLS

Modify element. This very generic and useful tool can be used to alter a primitive multiple ways, including: a point (by clicking on a point), an edge (by clicking on a midpoint of a segment) or size of an element (by clicking on a point of a circle, box, etc.).

Delete part of an element breaks an element into two separate pieces and deletes a part of an element.

Break a selected element at a point.

Extend line extends a line. There is also an option to type in the distance of the resulting length.

Extend two elements to intersection extends two lines to each other

Extend element to intersection extends one line to another, or to an implied intersection.

Trim element cuts one object. Option: pre-select two elements with the control button to cut another.

Intellitrim is more complicated than the regular trim element, which works in most cases. It combines defining area to trim into the tool.

Insert vertex

Delete Vertex

Circular Fillet

Construct Chamfer

9. SELECTION / PRE-SELECTION

You can pre-select before using other tools to alter more than one element at a time.

a. Using arrow (aka element selection) tool, click and drag to make a rectangle around the things you want to select.
b. Use arrow tool to click on individual elements, holding ALT button to add to your selections.
c. Use power selector (arrow with light bulb). Offers different methods (areas), modes ( add/subtract from selected elements), or click on arrow at bottom of box to select by colors, element type, levels, etc. {technique "c" not covered in workshop