Work Environment

As you get used to working with ARCHICAD, you will develop personal preferences for using the program’s features and arranging the various palettes, toolbars and menus on screen. You will set most of these options in the many sub-dialog boxes opened from the Work Environment dialog box at Options > Work Environment > Work Environment.

You can customize any of these settings while you work: just open the needed dialog box, change the setting, and press OK. The setting will take effect.

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Tips to Set Up Work Environment

Each setting of the Work Environment dialog boxes is described in the sections below:

Dialog Boxes and Palettes

Selection and Element Information

Tracker and Coordinate Input

Input Constraints and Guides Dialog Box

Model Rebuild Options

Publisher

More Options

Advanced Redraw Options

On-Screen Options

Data Safety & Integrity

Network And Update Options

Special Folders

Shortcut Customization Dialog Box

Toolbox Customization Dialog Box

Tool Settings Dialog Box Customization

Info Box Customization Dialog Box

Toolbar Customization Dialog Box

Menu Customization Dialog Box

Saving Your Customized Work Environment

If you have customized a number of settings in Options > Work Environment, you may wish to save them for future use in other projects, so that your personalized Work Environment is ready for you when you start to work.

Individual settings are organized into six Schemes; saving your settings occurs at the Scheme level. Work Environment Schemes are saved in a local folder on your computer (not with the project file). You can store, import and export any or all of the scheme files.

See Work Environment Schemes for more information.

You can also combine any of the schemes into a Profile, and store the Profile under its own name. Profiles themselves do not contain settings; they are just a collection of schemes. Use Options > Work Environment > Work Environment Profiles to export and import profiles to/from folders of your choice.

See Work Environment Profiles for more information.

It is entirely possible to use ARCHICAD successfully without saving schemes and profiles; you can just adjust settings as you work. However, the option to save settings according to named schemes, and then to combine schemes into profiles, is useful for CAD managers, for offices working in teams, and for individual users who might want to alternate among several different sets of customized settings.

Creating an Office-Standard Work Environment

CAD managers can create office-standard Work Environment Profiles and install them as defaults when installing the ARCHICAD program at multiple workstations.

For more information, see the ARCHICAD Network Installation (Instructions for BIM Managers).