I mentioned in other posts that I had been working on a template. It’s really not much but might be useful. The completion date for that project is for now indefinite. I expected to put a bit of time into it over the holidays but that project just petered out for a few reasons. I might put this on hold until I get into Rhino 8 so that I can adapt it to the new features available.
What I’m hoping to achieve by posting this? Well… this stuff will just sit on my hard drive collecting dust, so I figure there’s no harm in posting it. When I started this project, I was hoping to gather momentum towards building a Visual ARQ community and creating a strong starting point for potential users. It takes a monumental amount of time to create a template where things look and act the way you want (and/or conform to conventional drawing standards). For many this is game over, they simply don’t have the time, but making a very useable template that would also offer a great starting point for custom templates, it would more or less eliminate maybe the biggest barrier to entry for many potential users. More users = bigger community = more content and help available; I preach that Revit’s success is more due to the large community rather than the merits of the program itself. I would resume this project (or help someone else) if enough people are interested. But for now this is on the back shelve.
Buyer be warned you get what you pay for. I can’t guarantee the VisualARQ styles and grasshopper definitions will work as intended all the time. They work pretty good with limited testing.
The two main win’s are the successes I’ve had with creating complex wall styles and windows that look good (at least for what I was aiming for) in sections:
The window and door definitions might be messy compared to an expert level GH programmers standards, but they work pretty good and at the very least serve as a good demo. The grasshopper definitions also contain bare frames. It takes so long to create any unique geometry (for example, a paneled door complete with handle) that one approach I was pondering was simply to use the vaWall and vaWindows to cut holes in the walls, then fill them with ordinary 3D geometry.
The file itself is a bit of a mess, made worse by me messing with it to get it under the 20MB limit. Don’t pay too much attention to the contents. It’s really just a vehicle for the Visual ARQ definitions created from the above GH definitions, along with the various other vaStyles I’ve created.
@keithscadservices That’s an awesome stuff! thanks for sharing it!
I encourage you to publish these VisualARQ styles in food4Rhino, so more people can find them out.
Admission and disclaimer: I don’t use VA in an office environment and never completed an actual project . That was the intent of course and it’s a project I’ll hopefully be able to resume in the future .
Hey @keithscadservices, I’ve been diving into your templates to learn from the techniques you’ve developed. First off, once again fantastic stuff, thanks so much for sharing! Your window style alone has saved us weeks of work.
I wanted to ask why you chose to use a 2D view for annotation and a 3D view for geometry instead of putting your annotation in layout space ontop 3D view details. We’re putting annotation in layout space ontop of 3D geometry details to avoid having to line up two different details and export/update which seems to work, but seeing how clean your drawings are makes me want to ask why you set your layouts up this way.
Thrilled to hear that you’re using those definitions! It makes me want to get back into creating this stuff. At the moment I’m taking a break from VARQ as I realized that I need a stronger understanding of Rhino’s fundamentals. I started using VARQ so early on that I never even realized certain features were specific to VARQ.
Regarding annotating the 2D view in model space, don’t pay too much attention to it. I’ve had bad experiences annotating in Layout Space in AutoCAD and have preferred to simply avoid it. But now that I’m actually testing out Rhino’s annotations I realize that they work pretty okay in Layout Space.
I may however still annotate the old way. VARQ’s section/plan views include titles and such. If it comes down to it, I would rather all the annotations either be in model or layout but not both. For me, having the 2d stuff in model space is pretty alright. But we’ll see (I’m puttering around with everything as we speak).
Layering plan views: This is a technique I learnt during my brief foray into Sketchup. you get the best of both worlds when you can’t decide between one view style or another. One benefit is vector output (I believe the “Hidden” style does this but not the others). Having one “Detail View” (which is effectively a “Viewport” for us AutoCAD users) with your shaded visual style, and then one for the VARQ 2D plan/section view with a display mode that supports vectors. Such a combo should, in theory, produce a combined vector/raster output (I just tried it out using BlueBeam’s virtual printer and I think it’s working, but I need to test it more).
Also, for what it’s worth I realize that the 3dm file I’ve attached is a mess. I deleted the basement for whatever reason so the layout example is pooched :-S . Maybe I’ll throw something cool together in the near future.
. That was the intent of course and it’s a project I’ll hopefully be able to resume in the future 
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