Archicad Tip: New CONTRABIM Method for Managing Model Content!

[@cameronstevenson1146]

Congratulations John! For those that still want to use hotlinks, John's renovation trick still works within a hotlink so you can still keep a retroactive library for an entire office without all the hassle of editing all your schemes! Great stuff John, always keen to see your new content!

[@CONTRABIM]

Thanks Cameron for the comment! And yes hotlinks can still be a great way of distributing the model content, in combination with the renovation filtering.

[@lorentofox2913]

Congrats on becoming a father man! Honestly I really want to see your channel grow into the leading figure for Archicad Content. The effort your putting into creating simplistic methods that can be used in the real world is incredible. Like seriously man keep it up.

[@CONTRABIM]

Thanks so much Lorento! Appreciate the comment, and yes I'll definitely keep going with it. Dropping another video tomorrow:) Lot's planned for the channel with some big plans for next year!

[@Emilio8987]

NIce!!! Man, I wish I'd come up with that. So simple, nothing new, just pure genius. : )

[@CONTRABIM]

Yes I wish I found this trick years ago! So much easier than previous methods I was using. Thanks for the comment!

[@EnderAydin]

Welcome back John and thanks for sharing this new method, great!

[@johnhallgarth1284]

Thanks Ender!! Hope you can leverage this new workflow!

[@ChrisStow]

Brilliant tip. What a great solution. Keep the videos coming please your channel is amazing. 👍

[@CONTRABIM]

Thanks Chris for the comment!

[@nielsonhuang6251]

Welcome back, Sir John. Congratulation on becoming a father. Wish you all the best for your happy family! I've been developing a similar workflow these past few months. And you are always one step ahead of me haha. This "renovation filter" is pretty powerful, as it uses less "layers" compared to "layer combination" method. I think the same method + Properties can be used to monitor elements that have/haven't been built in the site. This is quite useful because we can see the project progress by %percentage after exporting to Excel.

[@johnhallgarth1284]

Thanks Nielsen! Yes renovations are powerful, and it bypasses layers altogether to control visibility and reporting, but at the same time the layers are there are ready to be used within the project which is great. Your right that properties can be an easy way to status elements for planning, design, procurement, field install and eventually operations! Renovations would get a little messy to do all that, when a property status and few graphic override would do the trick! Thanks for the comment!

[@nielsonhuang6251]

@@johnhallgarth1284 I think it because Renovation are meant to be used for generic renovation scenario like Existing -> Demolition -> New Construction -> New Existing -> Repeat. It become a bit messy when I'm trying a different scenario in the actual practice.

[@videopeich]

Awesome job, John!!! Keep on inspiring us!! and congratulations on becoming a dad... that's the real big job in life. Best regards from Spain

[@CONTRABIM]

Thanks Nico! appreciate the comment and yes the new role is the big job:)

[@conmes3077]

Welcome back John … what a great news 😉 congratulation mate 🥰

[@CONTRABIM]

Thanks Conmes!

[@fusionbim]

Hey #SuperDad! congrats and many blessings for the 3 of you. Excellent workflow John and I'm now even more excited to dive into the new residential template. + this is going to add even more joy to working in the new Archicad 25 which brings us more refreshing new features to work with. I'm like a kid in a candy store #lotsnewtoys ;-))

[@CONTRABIM]

Thanks Francois! Appreciate the note and excited to work with you on the New Residential Template! v25 is coming next week!

[@arttilldawn155]

Hi John, a while back there was a discount run. I'm Australian based and hoping there is sale on soon with the full template. Also is it simply based on TPL file format. Love the videos!

[@CONTRABIM]

Hello, and thanks for the comment! I'll run a promotion here soon once I release the next update to the template. Thanks for asking!

[@rastkopecar1618]

Hi John, how do you make the content plan visible on all stories? Great work, thank you.

[@diogomachado1595]

Congratulations John!! 👏🏼👏🏼 One question Is this workflow and its content included in your residential template?

[@CONTRABIM]

Thanks Diogo! Yes this workflow is now central to the new residential template. Upcoming commercial template will utilize the same as well!

[@MorningThief_]

congrats on the new bub! i work in a small-ish office in Brisbane & we do teamwork projects & i'm always putting forth ideas to our BIM Manager. interesting use on the Pinned to Renovation Filter with the entire Building Yard elements. especially some extra useful tips near the end of the video with the ability to have the Building Yard elements on the upper stories & not just to the single story down at the bottom. what i'm wondering though is how these Model Content / Building Yard elements are managed in the long term? the advantage with Hotlink Modules was that everything was centralised. the disadvantage to that method was that dealing with element index numbers not aligning between the Origin file & the Host file/s. or is the long term management of these elements simply severed from the template? & any new elements to be brought in, someone has to go back & copy/paste from the template into their working file? & making sure to pin the new element/s to the same Renovation Filter?

[@CONTRABIM]

Thanks for the comment, and great questions! Your right that having a central template file and model content plan is ideal, and is something that should be continually updated when new or modified elements want to be added. Starting a new project from that template should include majority of what is needed, and when new features are required for that project, it'd be best practice to consider if adding them back to the main template would be useful. If so, yes you can copy and paste across. What is really nice with the renovation filter, is when you switch off the pinned filter, anything un-pinned jumps out, and you can easily select and pin if desired. It's a satisfying clean-up check to perform actually:) Test it out a bit and see what you think! You can always use this method with hotlinked modules as well, as use those as a means of transferring into and out of a central library/template file.

[@mortezaahmadi7009]

Hello from Afghanistan, I’m just wondering how you know all of these stuffs, I’m learning a lot of thins form your channel, thank you

[@CONTRABIM]

Thanks for your comment! Most of this stuff is either figured out by playing around with the software to work a little better, or by pieces different searches from online:) Glad you're learning and liking the channel. Hope you are well in Afghanistan!

[@qingluo8676]

Great stuff, keep it up. Congrats on your baby, which makes a lot of sense with your new look on video. :) For the above method, when you create new defined status, do you duplicate the 'planned status' to see everything together with pinned elements, correct? Second question, if you want to include all collections in the template, would the file be a bit heavy, any suggestions? Thanks!

[@CONTRABIM]

Hi Qing Luo! You can really use on of the statuses, but I like having the "SHOW ALL" option duplicated for the Model Content Plan. That way everything will show up if you have some elements preset for demolition status. The file size may increase a little bit, but I've found that this method to be much more responsive and faster in Archicad than using a trace and reference to access placed visual favorites. It feels much lighter than previous workflows of using Modules from External Files, and Tracing and Referencing. You can also filter the Model Content Plan renovation status to specific views based on Layer Combinations, which can hide a large portion of elements you may not need (Structural, MEP, Furniture etc...)

[@qingluo8676]

@@CONTRABIM Yes, all make sense. I knew the pain of another two methods. Combine with Layer combination is a good one. Thanks.

[@mariansdraila]

Hey John! Congrats for the newborn! Quick question: have you ever used the change tool, the revision feature and the issue history feature? I'm curious to know what is your process because I find it a little cumbersome, and I'm willing to bet I'm not the only one!

[@CONTRABIM]

Hi Marian. Thanks! and nice to hear from you. It's funny you ask about these tools, I was just reading up on the newer workflows last week (issues/changes/transmittals), trying to wrap my head around them. I agree a little cumbersome, but it's not something I've spent a lot of time with. I'll have to do a video on a workflow as GS explains it, and get comments then. For creating constructability issues, I've setup a different, standalone workflow using properties, where you can create or tag any model element to be reported. A little more manual perhaps but flexible too, plus interactive schedule based...

[@mikeeight5819]

Thanks John, this is great! quick question using the Model Content Plan, once you have used the eye dropper to select an item do you then go to the specific saved views eg Electrical Plan? Do you just toggle between the MCP and saved views a lot?

[@CONTRABIM]

Thanks for comment and question! There are multiple ways of working with this, and often I find myself simply having the model content turned on, while working on multiple types of drawings. So for electrical plans, I can work on that specific view which controls all the visibility of layers, and then quickly switch the renovation status to turn on all the related electrical content from the MCP. That way it only turns on elements from the MCP relating to that drawing view. If I want it to dissappear, just reload the base view, or switch back to a new/demo/existing status. Great question thanks for asking! Another way would be to copy all the elements from the MCP at once you plan to use, and then unpin them and work on that plan. Very flexible, and very responsive. I find the use of the Renovation much faster than using a trace and reference workflow, and it keeps the model view much lighter and doesn't bog down like a trace and ref.

[@mikeeight5819]

@@CONTRABIM Thanks John!

[@skripnigor]

Excellent tip, thanks! Wish I discovered these filters years ago, but better late than never ;)

[@CONTRABIM]

Yes I always knew the renovations where there, but I never thought about all the outside the box uses for them until recently. Now it's core to the new workflow!

[@bennetkatabarwa3662]

Awesome, how can I get your Residential Template??

[@CONTRABIM]

Hi Bennet! Thanks for the question. Check out www.contrabim.com and you'll see links to the new Residential Template 2021. Version AC25 is being released August 1st, v 24 available now!

[@arttilldawn155]

Hi John, dumb question but all the model content comes with the template?

[@CONTRABIM]

Yes of course! There's more included there now than when this video was recorded also... Thanks for the (very not dumb) question!

[@cristianoprea]

Hi John, why not using favorites ? This whole "library" is not slowing your computer down ? 10x. Chris

[@CONTRABIM]

Hi Cristian! Thanks for the questions. I like the placed visual favorite method more than saved favorites, because it enables you to do so much more with them. You can report them into interactive schedules to make sure the data is right. You can exchange data from excel. You can create details and standards from them. You can test pen sets and visual outputs. And it's easier to update. It's also easier to eyedrop and run with, or copy entire rooms and assemblies. Favorites don't allow you to do any of that really. I wouldn't say it's slowing down my computer at all. When I turn on the renovation status, it may take a few seconds to load everything, but it's much faster and more responsive than using trace and reference, or using modules. Using Renovations to hide office standards and favorites is the best performing method I've found! Great question though, I'd say test it out for yourself!

[@erickbukasa1698]

Hi John how can I get this template.

[@ghassankanaan1767]

👍👍👍

[@tsrblk]

I need all this in spanish! I can pay!!!