Drawing Frames in ARCHICAD and most packages are typically drawn as rectangles… but why stick with something so simple? Did you know you can make the frame (boundary) of a drawing almost any shape?
Let's get one thing straight though before going too far into this - when we talk about a ‘drawing’ we are meaning a Drawing in the ARCHICAD sense. This is either an imported document (PDF, image, DWG, DXF etc) or a View that has been saved then placed on a Layout.
When you import a document or place a View on a Layout, the resulting Drawing will have a rectangular frame… but you are then free to customise the shape or even cut holes in it!
In the example below, the Drawing (linked PDF) has been selected and the edge clicked on to show the Pet Palette:
The top row of the Pet Palette contains all of the regular polygon editing tools that are available to any polygon based elements in ARCHICAD (Fill, Polyline, Slab, Roof etc). With these Tools you can add nodes, create curves, offset edges and add or remove from the polygon.
As soon as the frame is changed, the boundary changes from a Solid Line to a Dashed Line to show that the frame is no longer the original.
Using the various editing tools, the frame can be manipulated and holes even cut into the shape to create the end result you require:
If you go a little overboard, at any time you can go to the Drawing Settings and choose the Fit Frame to Drawing options from the Frame settings to return the frame to the original shape:
This can be quite useful when you get carried away with the Tools :-)
As it is difficult to show good examples in a written article, the video below has been created to go in to more detail and better show the capabilities:
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