On Land

Dwight Atkinson follows up his expert treatment of LightWorks in Archicad with The Artlantis Attitude. Dwight provides plenty of technical detail and strong opinion, while never losing sight of the professional and artistic goals of rendering production. You should buy this book and then you should read it.

The Artlantis Attitude is being distributed as a personalized PDF file. If you are skeptical you can contact Dwight directly at info.beginnernomore@telus.net to ask for a sample, and he's easy to find on Archicad-Talk. You can buy the book from various outlets that would show up in Google, or you can Paypal US$85 to that address.

The 3D printing consultant was fine with our 3D DXF until he got to the grade mesh. He requested that we send him an STL file, which we did not know what was. It is a 3D Stereolithography file and it's common in 3D apps. Archicad doesn't support it for export. We tracked down an open-source app called MeshLab which saves STL. It does not, however, open DXF. It does open 3DS. So we saved as 3DS from Archicad, opened that in MeshLab, saved as STL, done. From illiteracy to FTP upload complete in about three minutes. MeshLab is free and runs on OS X, Linux, and Windows.

What happens if you revive an ancient project and you want use the layout structure of the current template?

More»

Does everybody know that you can do calculator actions directly in Spotlight in Leopard?

I use it for arithmetic, but it will do most scientific functions if you know the syntax. Trig functions are intuitive, but others (pow(x,y) for x^y instead of x^y) are less so to me. As usual, intuitiveness is in inverse proportion to the need to know syntax. Search Calculator's help for 'abbreviations' to see a complete list of functions.

All 3D elements have a User ID, known simply as the 'ID'. It can be observed and edited in the Info Box (near the top in our setup) and in the Settings dialog under the Listing And Labeling division.

The only 2D element with an ID is the Fill.

I wish other 2D elements had IDs. Then I could 'name' topo contours after their elevations.

You can access the ID field of a selected element by typing 'I'.

If the default settings ID ends with a number, the number will increment (increase by one) as elements are placed. Unless you switch off this preference in Preferences -> Miscellaneous. N.B.: The numbers will only cycle through the available numeric places. I.e., ABC9 will be followed by ABC0, but ABC09 will be followed by ABC10.

The default IDs of the tools in your templates should consist of an identifier for the tool (E.g., 'Roof' or 'R') followed by at least two digits, maybe three. This gives the incrementing room to operate.

Other than the automatic increment, Archicad never changes IDs by itself, and there's no problem with elements having identical IDs. (This is different from viewpoints, where the name/ID combination must be unique.) When you drag-copy or multiply an element, the copies will have the same ID as the original. When you eyedropper (alt/opt+click) an element, the ID of the next element will match, but the next one will increment, assuming the switch is on.

The ID is picked up by the eyedropper, but an existing element's ID isn't changed by the syringe.

I keep that Auto-increase preference on, and the only time it bugs me is when I'm placing Shape Tag objects for revisions, and I have to make sure the triangles say 2, 2, 2 instead of 2, 3, 4. (Really, that's just an illustration, because that object has a setting to use a custom text instead of the ID, but using the ID is easier because you edit it directly by typing 'I', bla bla bla)

Letter IDs do not increment, which makes sense now that I think of it. (WALL, WALM, WALN,... that's no good.)

If an element has an error in it, the ID will often appear in the report window warning. This is helpful, because you can use Find and Select to find elements by their ID, then track down the problem from there.

When you're searching for errant elements in this way, you will probably find many of a given ID, because of the drag-copying and eyedroppering described above. To isolate the troublemakers further, you can manage element IDs using a schedule.

We schedule doors and windows by their IDs, and you can change IDs directly within the schedule.

The only element type we deliberately give a blank ID is doors and windows we want to leave out of the schedule. This includes empty openings and weird openings like trim panels.

Zones have the same ID field as other model elements, but we ignore it in favor of the Zone Number field.

The GDL global variable for user ID is GLOB_ID. Elements also have an internal unique ID which is unmodifiable and invisible except in GDL. That global is GLOB_INTGUID. (I promised you trivia.) I can't recall using that one, but you need GLOB_ID all the time for markers and labels.

Two tweaks to the Railing JM9 object.

Somebody asked:

I have finally gotten frustrated enough with the way line types are (dis)organized to focus some effort on it. Have you figured out any tricks to getting line types to show up in any logical sequence at all in your files? I can't believe that after all this time GS hasn't just made it alphabetical. How hard can that be...?

Linetypes are sorted by their internal ID. All attributes (pens, materials, fills, etc.) have an internal ID. This ID is never visible in the general Archicad interface, though it winds up being very important. In settings dialogs, object parameters, and within other attributes (E.g., a composite uses a fill), the ID is what matters, not the name. The only place you can view and (sort of) manipulate IDs in in the Attribute Manager.

The other attribute types sort alphabetically in their lists, but for some reason linetypes don't. There's no excuse for this from the user's perspective, but you've probably noticed it's not the only charming eccentricity of AC's interface.

If you want the linetypes list to sort in a predictable way, you will need to hack their IDs. This is both a pain in the chair and not entirely free of risk.

If you change the geometry and/or name of the linetype at ID #4, all placed instances of linetype #4 in the project will change. If library objects have linetype #4 in their default parameters, suddenly they will have new defaults in those linetype parameters. Elements only care about IDs. Modifying libraries to adapt to such a change is prohibitive. Where the Archicad library is concerned, it's practically impossible because it's bad form to modify it at all. And, if you modify your own library, you have to be wary of affecting past projects going back however far, should you ever reopen them.

I did try to sort my linetypes a few years back. I survived, because we don't actually use very many, and I did some investigation to see what linetypes the AC library cares about. There is compromise involved. Our primary dashed line is at ID #2, but the AC library expects a dashed line at ID #4. If I put something else at ID #4, AC objects will display that instead of a dashed line. If I delete ID #4, those objects will have a missing linetype, which renders as solid, same problem. Meanwhile I can't abandon ID #2 because my libraries are hooked to that. So I'm stuck with two dashed linetypes at the top of my list, nothing I can do.

One more thing: If you do whip your list into shape, it will still be two lists, with the symbolic types following the vector types. Like symbolic and vector fills, that sorting can't be hacked.

As for how hard it might be for GS to fix this sort of thing, well, empirically it looks impossible. Hope to proved wrong.

Another one for the well-under-4KB* series...

The length of the object is the length of the long line. The length of the short line is set by the Short Line Factor parameter. You can adjust this factor graphically. The spacing of the lines is controlled by the Spacing parameter. Also graphi-justable.

This is a good one to place with the rotate and stretch geometry method (fourth button). With this method I had an intermittent glitchy behavior where the object would appear offset from my clicks, but I couldn't reproduce it.

I wanted to add this symbol to our doors and windows directly, but I don't think it's possible to force the lines to tilt rightward in every case, once you factor in the orientation of the door and the viewpoint and all that.

Download (AC11)

* Until you add the preview image.

Converting 2D elements for use in 3D.

Any 3D element(s) can be saved as an object with the Save Project As... menu command. (In Archicad 11, Save 3D Model As...) This technique is known as 'slabifying' since such models are often built from slabs. Objects saved in this way are dumb (not parametric), but it's still a useful trick.

2D elements can't be saved this way, because they never appear in the 3D window, where 3D object saving takes place. Despite the fact that GDL contains commands for 'flat' shapes in 3D, including LIN_ (a line) and PLANE (not a joinery implement). But there is a workaround for 'slabifying lines'. When you open a 2D DWG as an object, 2D lines are created as LIN_ statements in the 3D script. When you place the object in the model, you get the 2D geometry in 3D.

It's that simple at it's simplest, but real world applications need some tweaking. In this example, I'm converting an Archicad library 2D tree elevation symbol so I can use it in a sketch render image. Other applications might be a complex ornament in a hidden line elevation, or a busy glazing design placed in front of a conventional window.

More»