Truss Maker Archicad

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Kayleigh Telega

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Aug 3, 2024, 5:52:36 PM8/3/24

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For the purpose of this tutorial, the dimensions you may set cross section as circular, change material to steel, and input section size as 100. However, archicad is only able to draw flat trusses. The only method to make space trusses is to draw Sections of a space truss and combine it together.

Draw a full row of columns. Then, copy this set and convert it to morphs. Finally, rotate it and intersect the two sets of columns. Combine the two sets with Solid Element Operation and convert to Morphs.

Search for standard trusses within objects library in Archicad. If the truss you want cannot be found, go to and see if there is any that that you need. If you found one, download the object, and upload the object into Embedded Library.

For non standardised trusses, the only method to do it is via drawing profiles and then using truss maker. However, the faster method would be to use a standardised one within BIMcomponents external library or in Archicads19 Library.

I have a design which has two buildings, one small, one very large. I had never used "Trussmaker" before so I read all about it and how to implement it. So as per the instructions I created a section line and then opened the newly created elevation view which is visible in the picture below. I next created the lines (red) that define the truss which I kept simple. As stated in the picture you will see that the truss created is not the same as the red lines. It is obvious that the design app didn't create what I wanted. My belief was that the Trussmaker function would use the lines as the outer boundry and all of the wood boards would be inside that boundary which is not what is happening here. I also notice some other odd behaviour. When creating the section line an eyeball shows up pointing to the right which is what I selected when creating the truss in the picture. but I really needed to be looking in the opposite direction. So I tried that by creating the section line and dragging the eyeball to the left of the section line. I created the truss in the same manner but the result was the creation of a truss away from where the section line was and was 180 degrees in the wrong direction for the ends. Can anyone explain what is going on? thanks and regards.

As you should have seen when you used the Create Truss command, the wood/timber members are centered on the linework selected prior to the command. Has always been that way, which is frustrating, but just has to be dealt with. It unfortunately means that you have to offset your lines according to the desired member sizes so that the lines will be located in what should be the that center (vertical) position.

Thanks for your response. I will experiment some more with what you indicated. You stated that fact that there hasn't been any functional updates to Trusssmaker in 20 years or so leads me to think that it is not a function used very much leading to the lack of improvement. It would be better if the user could identify the lines that make up the periphery and state what side of the line the member should be and all members should be based on their center lines. That way the truss would be as designed and should provide proper results when analyzed for stress and load bearing capabilities. Maybe that should be a wish list item. Anyway, thanks for the response as it was helpful. Regards

Yes, it would make a good wish item to have a way to define the outer members / top and bottom chords by the outer edges and the web members by their centers. It seems that they could do this by using a fill to define the area that should contain the truss - giving the outer edges - and lines for the web members. But, yes, it seems this is a little used function based on the amount of discussion it gets.

Creation of trusses with the ArchiCAD Trussmaker is a very simple process that involves the use of lines (documenting tools). The outline of the truss is drawn in ArchiCAD using lines then converted to a 3D object using the built-in ArchiCAD trussmaker tool.

The first lesson introduces you to create a new project, apply some custom settings (dimensioning units, working units etc), lesson 02 shows how to create internal and external walls. By the time you are through with the course, you will be able to work on an ArchiCAD project up to the documentation stage. Check out the course here.