Is there a VisualArq manual?

I am trying to do the doors in the Villa Savoye tutorial. I could really use a proper manual. Is there one hiding somewhere?

Hi @stefank2 , are you following the tutorial on the VisualARQ website? Video tutorial - VisualARQ

You can find the chapter where you insert doors here: 2.6 Doors - VisualARQ
Remember that in order to see the full library of object styles, you need to have started the document using a VisualARQ template, or have imported the library from a .val file (I can't see VisualARQ object styles libraries. Why? How can I load them? - VisualARQ)

Please let me know if you get stuck at any point or have any questions.

Hi Francesc,
Yes I am following the videos.
I started with a VA template as one of the earlier videos shows.
No manual?
S.

Hi Francesc, I will take you up on your offer.
Door location alignment has me puzzled. I have gotten a little from VA for Grasshopper which has documentation though it doesn’t correspond exactly. Door Vertical Alignment is clear. Exterior/Interior/Center is clear except that I wonder how Exterior and Interior are defined. But so far as I can see from experiment, Horizontal Alignment doesn’t do anything. Left/Right/Center seems to have no effect on the door produced so I wonder what it does and how left and right are defined.
Regards

Hi @stefank2
The exterior/interior alignment of doors defines how doors are aligned to walls/curtain walls according to their thickness. However, in the case of doors whose frame is adjusted to the wall thickness, this alignment can’t be appreciated.

The horizontal alignment defines the insert point of the door. So for example, if you define it as “Center”, when you change the door’s width, it will grow from that center point.

The chapter “0. Overview” of the tutorial doesn’t have written text, but the rest of the chapters do.

Thanks Francesc, that helps a bit. With that I will try to work out how left, right, interior, and exterior are defined. All this may be obvious to the other telekinetically intelligent users of VA, but it isn’t to this one. I know about the text associated with the videos. By the way, if you could write the answer above, you are able to write the rest of the manual. (=;

I posted a related topic some time ago. You passed this link to me which is now bookmarked: Video tutorial - VisualARQ

It’s actually hard to find that link just by browsing your website. The tutorials are good but dated. Most likely due to their age, the available tutorials don’t do the capabilities of Visual ARQ and Rhino justice. Once I get into the program a little more I’ll be able to start contributing tips and tricks of my own (I’m actually on a bit of a tangent - learning C#… for Rhino Common).

If you browse YouTube and search for Revit tutorials you might come across someone called “Balkan Architect”. He does really good tutorials which kind of over-extend the practical capabilities of Revit. Most BIM programs (Visual ARQ is no exception) require the development of some sort of workflow to achieve the best result the respective program is capable of. To get Revit working as good as it is, it’s taken a lot of time and effort (and annoying work arounds)… and the results still aren’t that great when you consider the amount of time and effort spent. Revit’s popularity is really more due to marketing than anything else; yes it’s the industry standard but it’s far from perfect, especially for certain niches.

The crazy part about Revit’s marketing (and having a company as big as Autodesk behind them) is that most of the ‘marketing’ is actually done by their user base rather than Autodesk itself - they overcharge their customers and STILL get free marketing out of them.

High quality, up to date tutorials would go a really long way I think if the time is available.

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Totally agree, I have tried to learn Archicad before revit and because of the lack of updated tutrilas for the newest version I gave up and switched to Autodesk Revit.
Making a lot of tutorials for VisualARQ and just trying to recreate or model some existing pavilion, building … etch, will catch peoples’ eyes towards VisualARQ so they will earn many other users.
Unfortunately VisualARQ developers couldn’t get this point as thousand of students and even professionals use the software than has plenty of tutorials online more than a perfect software without any tutorials .

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Revit also comes packaged with a fully-annotated and documented sample project - there’s at least two of them (I haven’t peeked into Revit in quite some time). These models are ultra-detailed and obviously took a serious amount of time to put together; so much time in fact that they probably wouldn’t be feasible in a commercial setting. They do however flatter the program’s abilities.

The Villa is a decent little sample project but to my knowledge it’s not fully annotated and documented.

I’m not saying that Asuni should stop everything and get a better set of tutorials/sample project out the door asap… but rather something that should consider updating some stuff in the future.

I think what @stefank2 was looking for was a manual or help file. Some sort of official documentation that goes over each command step by step. The visualArq villa savoye tutorial doesn’t have anything on grasshopper styles for example. Is there a repository with all the commands and features documented?

Hi @Benjamin_Paolo_Fortu, you can check the VisualARQ User’s guide for the full program documentation: vaHelp command.
On the website you can find also tutorials for the VisualARQ Grasshopper styles: Grasshopper styles - VisualARQ

thanks! It would be great if what ever is there in vahelp is also online.

Yes, we are planning to publish the help online! I’ll let you know when we do it!

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