Workflow

There are two approaches to Importing External Drawings:

1. Placement on Worksheets.  (Preferred Method)

Use this if the relevant drawing needs to be referenced on various stories, elevations, sections, etc. This is particularly true of a project survey which typically will be referenced into the project at it’s inception.

This avoids needing extra layers to turn on/off their visibility as described below in approach 2. An added benefit is that you can trace and reference these worksheets where needed, giving a clear distinction between what’s yours to edit and what is not, by adjusting the opacity and / or colours in the Trace & Reference palette. In Project Map, create a new Worksheet for each Consultant and name accordingly.

Open the relevant worksheet, and Go File>External Content>Place External Drawing. Select the DWG or DXF file for the relevant discipline from your Project Server. Place the External Drawing in relation to the project / project origin and at the correct scale. Lock the external drawing in place (Not just the layer) Edit>Locking>Lock to avoid it being accidentally moved. Return to your workspace and use Trace & Reference to view placed drawing.

Repeat these steps for each consultant.

2. Placement on relevant Story, Elevation or Section.

Use this if only needed as a reference in one place.

Should you choose this option, you will need to place the external drawing on an easily identifiable external drawing Master Layer, e.g. ExternalDrawing_Hydraulic (or similar). You can also add the extension “IMP” for import to the layer which makes it easier to organise and filter your layer list. Also lock the layer to avoid accidental edits.

To clearly identify the reference from your model you can set up pen sets dedicated to the various disciplines, which you can set to override the original pen set in the External Drawing’s settings window. In these dedicated pen sets, unify the colours to a single clearly distinguishable colour to mimic the Trace & Reference behaviour, with the exception of pen #91, which is always set to white

Go File>External Content>Place External Drawing. Select the DWG file for the relevant discipline from your Project Server. 

Place the External Drawing in relation to the project / project origin and at the correct scale. 

Place on a designated Layer (eg. Consultant Import_Structure).

Select the External Drawing and open its properties.

Select and apply the Pen Set that you created for the particular Consultant.

Repeat these steps for each consultant using a different colour pen set for each.

INFO > Method 2 is particularly useful for consultant coordination and clash detection of services, as you are able to view multiple consultants’ drawings as well as your own simultaneously by merely toggling on/off the relevant layers.

Ensure you update external drawings whenever new information is received from your consultants to ensure that only the most recent information is in your file.

In addition, avoid keeping superseded consultant DWG’s in your file as this impacts both your file size as well as, eventually, your speed.

TIP > In order that this be done effectively – a dedicated location on your server for Current consultant data is worthwhile on a per project basis so that everyone is aware of the location for referenced files.

If a consistent file name is used for the consultant drawing (Without a Revision/version Number), the file can be swapped out with a current version (with the same name) and Archicad will recognise that the file has changed and alert you so that it can be manually updated from within your project.

CAUTION > Warning:  If you relink the file to a new instance (instead of this method) – the files origin relative to your project may have moved or been modified and you will have to place again from scratch.