+ Documentation

Materials, presentation and site

Graphite4D keeps what an element is separate from how it looks. A wall can carry material = "brick" as data, and the current display style decides how brick appears. You can change the look of a whole project without touching its geometry or its data.

Paint faces with the Paint bucket

1. Press B for the Paint bucket.
2. In Properties, leave Attribute set to Material (paint) and choose a Material.
3. Click faces to paint them.

The Paint bucket works on faces you draw, including inside a group you have opened by double-clicking it. To paint a Box or another step, select it and choose Convert to 3D Sketch first. When you start painting, Graphite switches to a display style that shows materials.

Give a whole element a material

Select the step, open the Outputs tab in Properties and expand Edit step attributes. Enter material as the Attribute name, a Value such as brick, concrete, wood, glass or stone, then choose Set attribute. The Architectural materials display style maps these values to appearances through the project's palette.

Choose a display style

Open the view menu in the toolbar (it shows the current view, such as Perspective) and pick a Display style:

• Drafting shows the model as clay with edges, shadows and translucent glass. Use it for massing studies.
• Architectural materials shows each element's material.
• Insulation R-value colors elements by their insulation_r_value attribute, in ft²·°F·h/Btu. These are values you enter, not a thermal calculation.

The same menu can show or hide the ground grid.

Edit appearances

Choose Appearance settings in the view menu, or press Shift P. The settings have tabs for Views, Attributes, Appearances, Patterns, Palettes and Environment. Changes are staged: choose Apply visualization to save them, or Cancel.

On Appearances, pick one with Edit appearance. Editing an appearance updates everything that uses it. Use Duplicate appearance to start a variation.

• Base color, opacity, roughness and metalness set the basic finish.
• Light and reflectance adds specular intensity and color, and emission for self-lit surfaces.
• Transparency sets the Alpha mode: Opaque, Cutout mask, Transparent blend or Automatic from opacity.
• Texture maps assign images to base color, roughness, metalness, normal, alpha, emission and specular channels. Choose Import texture image to add a PNG or JPEG of 256 KiB or less.

Images are stored inside the project, so they travel with saved copies and project files.

Add perforated panels

Under Procedural perforation, choose Enable visual holes. Then set:

• Hole shape: Circle, Square, Triangle or Hexagon, with its own angle.
• Hole arrangement: Rectangular grid, Staggered rows or Triangular lattice.
• Hole size source: Uniform, an Expression (with Regular, Wave and Radial presets), or an image.
• Enable hole edge clearance to keep holes back from panel edges, by omitting whole holes or shrinking them to fit.

Color the model by its data

On the Views tab, choose Duplicate view to make your own display style, then add rules: Add numeric scale, Add categories, Add palette, Add highlight or Add pattern. Later rules win over earlier ones. To restyle specific elements, select them, open Element exceptions, choose an Exception appearance and select the Override button. Reset to rules removes an exception.

• Show legend adds a legend to the 3D view.
• Show only limits the view to elements matching a filter, such as @component == "massing".
• Export in the project menu can save the legend as an SVG.

Use the Attributes tab to give an attribute a readable label, type and description.

Set lighting and the environment

On the Environment tab, pick a Lighting preset: Generated studio, Soft studio, Daylight sky or Venice sunset. The last three are photographic HDR panoramas. Adjust Environment intensity and Environment rotation (degrees). Turn on Show environment background to see the sky, with its own intensity and blur. Reset environment restores the defaults.

Lighting applies to the whole project. Reflections stay on when the background is hidden. Exported files don't include the lighting.

Place the project on its site

Open All tools and choose Site & Context.

1. Under Project location, enter the Latitude and Longitude, keep Use approximate ground elevation checked, and choose Set location. You can paste a pair copied from a map service, such as 38.9897, -76.9378, into either field.
2. Under In this view, choose Diagram for simple buildings and terrain inside a rectangle. Adjust the rectangle under Diagram bounds, and use Fit context to frame it.
3. Choose Photo for detailed 3D surroundings streamed to the horizon. This needs a Google Maps connection.
4. Choose Off to hide the surroundings in this view.

Diagram uses OpenStreetMap buildings and open elevation terrain, and needs no account setup. If a public source is busy, Graphite retries once on its own and keeps whatever has loaded in view; Retry context sources tries again after that.

Set project north

Under Project location, open Project north and origin. Enter the angle from true north to your project's north, counterclockwise, and choose Rotate surroundings. The surroundings, terrain, photo tiles and sun turn under your design; your model keeps its coordinates. Undo reverses it in one step. If the project has an acquired editable site, remove it first and acquire it again after the change.

Re-express coordinates (keeps world position) is for matching a survey or engineering frame. It moves the local origin or north while the design and its surroundings stay where they are in the world, so nothing appears to move. Each saved view keeps its own surroundings setting; name one under Saved views & presets and choose Save view. Changes to sources and rectangles are staged until you choose Apply context changes.

Connect Google Maps

1. In Google Cloud, create an API key with the Map Tiles API and billing enabled.
2. In Site & Context, open Data sources, paste the key under Google Maps and choose Save key to my account. One connection serves all your projects.
3. Choose Photo, then Add Google tiles to this project.

Google bills usage to your key. Google tiles are for viewing only: they are streamed, not saved in your project, and can't become editable ground. Choose Remove key to disconnect.

Design the ground

On the Site design tab, draw a closed boundary in plan with Draw rectangle or Draw plan linework. Choose it as the Acquisition boundary, pick a Terrain source, then choose Prepare site acquisition and Apply site change. The ground inside becomes part of your project.

Under Design from plan, pick an Operation, such as Grade region, Path / road corridor or Spot elevation, choose its plan linework and select Add design step. Each step stays linked to its linework. The Editable site setting shows Proposed ground, Existing ground or both.