By Jim Mahoney   Share

ArchiCAD 13 includes a new pet palette icon that offers additional control for each edge of any slab and each edge of every hole you place in that slab. Select the desired slab edge, or similarly select the edge of a hole you’ve made in a slab. When you click and hold with your mouse cursor over this edge, the pet palette will appear. There is now a new icon at the right end of the top row of the pet palette. This is the “Edge Setting” icon and if you select it a new palette entitled “Slab Edge” appears.

This new palette gives you control over three aspects of the slab edge: The scope, the angle and the material. “Apply On:” controls whether you are doing just one edge, all edges of the polygon you selected ( IE: the outer edge of a slab, the edge of a hole in the slab etc.), or all edges of the entire slab.

The second setting, called “Edge Angle:” allows you to set an angle other than 90 degrees. If you set the angle to less than 90 the side slopes away so the bottom of the hole is smaller than the top. If you want to set  the edge so the bottom is bigger use an angle greater than 90 degrees. In the slab sample I’ve included the green edge was set to 120 degrees and the purple edge was set to 60. The last of the three controls is a pop-up for the “Side Material”. As you can see from the picture above, you have quite a bit of control.

The slab shown has the outer edge set to a yellow material. There are two holes that have a different color for each edge of each hole and a different angle for two of the side. The picture below shows a common use people can put this new feature to: You bring the slab edge out to the line of an exterior wall, say brick. You cut an interior hole for a stairwell. You need to set the materials for the hole and the outer edge differently. Now you can set the slab’s exterior edges to brick and the interior hole edges to match your stair wall and the slab edges blend in.

Try it out for yourself and see the new modeling flexibility this feature gives you.

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