Program area studies

To get insights into the general modeled areas and see how you are doing compared to the design brief Arkio can show the total floor area of all modeled volumes in the scene (projected).

Activating the program mode

The program mode can be activated from the paint tool where you can switch between applying physical materials that will be rendered and exported or assigning program data to your smart volumes. Switching between the different paint modes will change your icon in the main menu so you can see what paint mode is currently active. The window will give you the ability to model new programs using the create tool or apply new program categories to existing shapes using the paint tool.

While the Program mode is active all your volumes drawn in the scene will default to none (white) and you can choose any of the predefined area categories that are loaded in the scene. You can also load your own program categories and area requirements into the scene using a custom CSV file. 

All shapes created or painted with one of the program materials will show labels with the size of each program category above shapes or stacks of shapes. You can turn these labels off in the programs drawer or minimize individual labels in the scene by clicking on them.

If the move tool is active on one of the controllers it will show the total area for the selection in the scene on top of the highest volume.

Importing your own program data

Importing program data requires a Pro or Enterprise license. You can learn more about our paid licenses on our website and can start a free trial from Arkio to try this feature.

You can load custom program names for your project by placing a CSV file with the following format in your Documents\Arkio\Import\Programs folder:

ProgramName,
Example,
Hospital,
Kindergarten,

You can also add additional columns for numeric values if you'd like to import volumes based on the area requirements for the project:

Program,Quantity,Area,Width,Length,Height
Example,2,100,0,0,3
Example,4,60,0,0,3
Example,1,30,0,0,3
Hospital,6,1800,0,0,3
Kindergarten,3,0,20,40,3
Hotel,3,0,10,80,3

• The first column ProgramName names the programs to load (11 different colors supported)
• Quantity defines the number of volumes you want.
• Area is for the required area (meters),
• Width, Length and Height define the the required custom size of that program (meters).
• You can put multiple spaces under the same program to generate multiple sizes
• You can leave the Area column blank (or 0) if you like to use Width and Length values or leave the Width, Length columns blank to get a square volume of the required Area

An example CSV file can be downloaded here.

After you close your CSV file and put it in Documents\Arkio\Import\Programs you can open Arkio and go to the program mode and use the import button on the bottom left to update the names or load your program brief requirements into the scene. Arkio only supports 1 CSV file in this location at the moment so please move or rename the extension of old CSV files if you'd like to load a different program into Arkio.

Once loaded, you'll see all your program shapes in front of the table as organized stacks of your chosen categories, you can then move them onto the worktable and stack them in any way you want.

Export your program data

When using the export button in the drawer An overview of all the objects areas in your active scene will be exported to

%userprofile%\Documents\Arkio\Export\Programs

This is also formatted as a CSV file and will give you the areas and quantity of all the volumes in your scene that can be loaded into your own database and spreadsheet software.