ArchiCAD's Zone Tool for your sophisticated BIM needs

As you know, I am a big fan of the BIM Guru, Zolna Murray.

I even have a signed copy of her book and I feel very cool about it :)

She has a new blog post which I loved. She managed to explain the real "value" of the Zone Tool very well.

I have always been aware of the hidden gems in the Zone Tool but whenever I tried to explain it to someone else, I failed.

Here is the a trailer from the post:

The mighty zone tool – poetry in BIM-ming 

I’ve been besotted by ArchiCAD’s ‘zone tool’ lately.

I had not always been a fan of it, early in my career, seriously disliked it even, mainly because of its ugly, big zone-stamp.

That was when I was still working and thinking as an ‘architect’ and the aesthetics of the drawings I produced were high in life’s priorities.

Have grown out of that stage, thank’ goodness and amongst other more crucial things in life, I rediscovered the ‘zone tool’.

Sadly, the stamp is still pretty unattractive, yet the tool behind it is pure magic.

Not only can you use it for dynamic space planning with instantaneous monetary feedback on design decisions, it is a de facto massing tool too, you can track your shapes in 3D.

And not just boxes, but almost any shape, cut and trimmed to suit perfectly.

Should try it out, sometimes!

Other programs have ‘room’ tools, area calculators or slabs for massing.

Virtual clay to carve your virtual buildings out.

Yet, there is so much more to this (so poorly named) ‘zone tool’.

It sits somewhere between the real and the imagined – tangible and abstract even in the digital worlds of fuzzy reality.

It treats the user as an adult professional with sophisticated needs. 

Click here to read the full post 

I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!

Have a great day!

Diyane Koseoglu

www.bimes.com