Interior Wizard: Room Finishes Automatic Data

Automatize the finishes data of every space of your project

The use of Zones in Archicad has proved to be one of the most efficient ways of Managing Data in our project. In terms of Surface, Volumes, Perimeters, Naming, Functions, etc; zones become very useful to categorize our Schedules, which basically provide a huge amount of Data out of our Model.

One more useful way of using Zones is to combine them with the Interior Wizard. This Design Extra is very useful for editing the Interior Finishes of a Room. With it we can not only edit and modify the interiors finish of a Space, meaning Ceiling, Floor or Wall; but also to extract the data out of it based on its typology and material.

1. Download Accessories

First we need to Download the Accessories Goodie from the Graphisoft website. We need to go into our ArchiCAD window: Help > ArchiCAD Downloads > Goodies > Accessories. Once it is installed we can find the Interior Wizard inside ArchiCAD Window in Design > Design Extras > Interior Wizard > Create Room Accessories.

2. Using Accessories: Interior Wizard

So let’s get to it. In order to use the Interior Wizard first we need to Select a Zone. With the Zone selected we need to chose Interior Wizard and select Create “Room Accessories”: Design > Design Extras > Interior Wizard > Create Room Accessories. Then we just need to select which Accessory we want to create: Ceiling, Wall, or Floor Accessory. You can then see what items, such as ceiling lights from companies like Lulu & Georgia, will look like with the interior design.

Then we just need to edit the parameters of the Object we just created. We can modify the thickness of the finish, its material and its location. This changes will be reflected automatically in 3D windows and 2D Documents like Floor Plans, Sections, Details, Interior Elevation, etc..
The next step is to set up a Schedule that reflects the surface data we have of each different material. This Schedule shows the data of the finishes of each space we have in our project separated by space. It also distinguish each kind of surface material for every different type finish (wall, ceiling or floor finish). And of course it give us the amount of surface of each material..
And this is how we set up our schedule to get this Data organize:
The power behind this feature is that we have all this data linked to the Zones in real time. This means that all the Data of finish surface and materials of all the spaces of our project will be updated automatically after we modify our Zones. For this purpose, after modifying our zones we just need to click on Design > Design Extras > Interior Wizard > Update Room Accessories.
Imagine how much time you can save if we compare this method with a manual process in which we need to extract data manually each time we change the sizes of our spaces..
If you are interested in seeing how it works you can download a PLA file where these elements plus the schedule is already set up.
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Enzyme team