Connectivity
All building elements such as walls, slabs, roofs,
doors, windows and roofs remain connected after you
make a change. This allows you to quickly alter a
design without manually updating various parts of the
model.
Parametrics
Design alternatives can be created quickly by using
expressions with variables and operators. For exam
the vertical position of a window can be specified as
"height/2-20" - which ensures it's always positioned
20 units below the middle of the wall.
Native DWG support
Architecturals offers native support for the
industry-standard AutoCAD DWG file format. Custom
objects created with Visual Basic plug-ins can be
viewed by other users without installing special
object enablers.
Solid Modeling
Architecturals uses the ACIS solid modeling engine to
model the most complex buildings, including those with
doubly curved surfaces and extrusion profiles. Exact
volume and surface quantities are instantly
calculated, and accurate 2D sections and elevations
are easily generated.
3D Rooms
In Architecturals rooms are 3D forms that hold
additional information such as room areas and volumes,
room types and the measurement of floor, ceiling and
wall surfaces. This information is particularly us
to quantify room finishes. Whereas normal forms
typically describe building elements, a room can be
though of as a special form which describes the space
that is left over by its bounding forms. As with any
form in Architecturals, connectivity is maintained.
This means that moving any one of the boundary forms
will also force the room to update, hence dynamically
modifying its measurements and parameters.
Project Management
All materials, styles and other settings can be
specified at the project level to be shared by all
members of a design team. This enables you to make
changes in all files of a project simultaneously and
facilitates archiving and transferring project
information.
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Creation or editing of material definitions is not
allowed. Architecturals Ltd is delivered with a fixed
set of well balanced material definition libraries.
Library Project database
The Library Project database is delivered in Imperial
and Metrics units.
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Frames, materials and cost groups are limited on this
database only.
Picture Menu
This is a user defined menu system that allows to
launch commands by clicking pictures that illustrate
the coming action. Besides the command and it's
options, style settings that apply can be defined
along. Picture menus are a convenient and easy way to
setup and implement office standards.
Form Styles
All building elements such as walls, windows and slabs
can be linked with a style that specifies their
appearance, materials, cost and shape. This offers
top-down design approach, where all walls in the
entire project are changed from simple to multiple
walls by modifying the style definition.
Control Surfaces
Control surfaces are complex 3D shapes that specify
the position of walls, slabs, roofs and openings.
Change a single control surface, and all building
elements linked to it are updated automatically.
Frame Builder
Complex doors and windows with inner and outer sills,
bearings and panes can be created graphically. You can
change the definition of the opening at any time - all
doors or windows of that type update automatically.
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Limited but well balanced library of door and window
types.
While Architecturals Ltd does not allow creation or
editing of frame scripts, all of the approximately 100
different available frame types do offer parametrical
height, width and depth control so they can be used
for any size of opening, in any single or
multi-layered wall construction type.
Roof Builder
Quickly create complex roofs with multiple slope
angles, eaves and profiles. Once the roof has been
created, its definition is saved for later use and can
be modified at any time during the design process.
Stair Builder
The built-in stair builder allows you to create linear
and spiral stairs that can be further customized using
Visual Basic for Applications. After placing a stair,
you can alter it by double-clicking on it and changing
parameters.
Plug-ins
Plug-ins are user-definable, intelligent objects
written in C++ or Visual Basic that can reconfigure
themselves depending on the model. For example, a
stair plug-in can automatically create new steps if
the distance between two floors has increased.
COM Interface
All parts of the model are accessible to other
applications via the Microsoft Component Object Mo
(COM) interface--information such as geometry,
position and attributes can be read and modified via
external applications written in C, C++ or Visual
Basic.
XML support
All styles, materials and other attributes are now
specified using XML (eXtensible Markup Language).
facilitates integration with other systems such as
e-commerce applications and allows experienced users
to make changes using a XML editor instead of a CAD
program.
User Defined Tags
Tags are user-definable pieces of information that can
be attached to building elements. They identify a
particular subset of the model or interface with other
systems for cost estimation, construction scheduling
and the like.
Buildings and Storeys
In Architecturals a project consists of one or more
buildings; in turn each building consists of one or
more storeys. Every entity in the 3D model belongs
one specific storey. A storey defines a set of
parameters: thickness of the structural slab,
thickness of the floor finishing layers, sill height,
lintel height, ceiling height and the overall floor to
floor height. Since the storey parameters are
project-wide, forms can share the same style
throughout the project, but still take on different
heights depending on the storey to which they belo
The storey notion also allows you to move or copy
existing forms from one storey to another.
Assemblies
You can create complex buildings by combining
different models into an assembly. Alternatively, you
can define sub-assemblies, where parts of a building
are excluded to simplify the representation or
evaluate alternative configurations.
Drawing Representations
Representation scripts are rules that define the
appearance of layers, materials and styles in 2D
engineering drawings, depending on scale or target
audience. If you make a change to the 3D model, the
entire set of drawings is automatically updated.
Automatic Dimensioning
Architecturals can automatically render 2D drawings
based on user-definable dimension band styles. Once
you define the styles, your plans are automatically
re-dimensioned when you change the model.
Door and Window Schedules
You can attach tags to doors and windows that specify
basic information such as left- or right-hanging door,
dimensions and place in the building. A table that
lists all the door and window properties can be
generated and placed in the drawing or imported into
other systems.
Cost Items and Cost Groups
Architecturals makes it easy to define cost-item unit
prices, measurement units amand pricing rules. By
combining cost items into cost groups, you can
automatically calculate prices of compound elements,
such as a wall with two layers of brick, insulation
and plaster.
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Cost Items and Cost Groups are disabled.
Quantity take-off
Architecturals creates reports that list all building
elements and their position, size, volume, surface
area, perimeter, center of gravity and cost group.
This list can be imported into a procurement
application, a spreadsheet or database for further
grouping and sorting.
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Cost information is not available.
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