Designing with architectural elements in general

The following section provides tips to follow for effective design using architectural elements:

If you have never worked with Allplan before, we strongly recommend that you take the time to attend a course at our Campus. Do not experiment on an ongoing project.

• Don’t just "start drawing": Spend some time thinking about how best to structure documents and layers for your purposes and create the structure. An introduction to this effect can be found here:
  Using projects, documents and layers

  Tip: Structures that have proven to be useful can be saved and reused whenever required!

• Define the default planes so that they are suitable for your project – consider the room height and the floor thickness in mind. Associating the architectural elements with the default planes will facilitate your work and ensure that any changes you make to the room height later simply involves altering the default planes.

  Tip: By means of planes, additional stories with similar layouts can be created quickly and easily with the Raise File tool.

  Note: Use Floor Manager if you work with the building structure.

• Draw in three dimensions and use architectural elements such as wall, door, window, etc.
  As you design these elements, assign them materials and other attributes like calculation mode.

  Tip: Consider defining styles if you frequently need the same type of element – a mouse click that can save a lot of time later!

• Use symbols or smart symbols instead of drawing standard fixtures and furnishings from scratch each time.
• Enter rooms and assign them finishing surfaces right from the outset – this serves as the basis for subsequent floor area calculations.
  For more information, see
  Basics: Introduction to quantity takeoff
• Open an animation viewport to check your work at regular intervals and to consider design alternatives. A walk around and through the building only takes a few mouse clicks and can be saved as a short movie that you can present to your client – thanks to virtual reality, any changes the client might require can be detected early on and before construction actually begins.