topic Re: Select multiple elements and fill them in Project data & BIM

Select multiple elements and fill them

Paopao — Tue, 30 May 2023 10:44:46 GMT

Hi guys,
I am new to Archicad (I used Autocad before) so sorry for the simple question:
I am working on a large urbanistic project where I need to edit a lot of elements at the same time and I don't know how to do it. I need to select all the elements on a layer (which I can do) and change their properties so that I can selec and fill them with a different colour (this is the part I can't do). I can do them individually but there are thousands....
Any help please?

Thank you so much

Pao

Re: Select multiple elements and fill them

Anonymous — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 15:37:10 GMT

We need more information. What kind of elements? Do you want to add fills or change the fills they already have? The magic wand in ArchiCAD does not have the discontinuous option like in Photoshop if that is what you are looking for.

Re: Select multiple elements and fill them

Erika Epstein — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 15:47:02 GMT

Use Find and Select

Edit>Find & Select. This will allow you to make very refined selections.
Opt/Alt clicking on an object will set the F&S to that object and its parameters. Then you need only add filters of the parameters by which you want to select.

Re: Select multiple elements and fill them

Paopao — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 16:05:58 GMT

My problem is not selecting the objects, my problem is how to apply a "fill" to the entire selection without changing it by hand. I have a plan of a city and I need to fill each building perimeter with a gray filliing as they are only outlined.

Here is a screen capture: I need all the selection to look full, like the gray building. I hope it helps.

Re: Select multiple elements and fill them

TMA_80 — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 16:24:56 GMT

really a good question...

you could by using the Magic wand but you have to do it for each contour manually....

what would be adapted to this situation is a sort of routine (script that would automate this...) & I have no idea if it exists for ArchiCad...

Re: Select multiple elements and fill them

Erika Epstein — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 16:49:45 GMT

You neglect to mention what type of objects you used to create the buildings. If for example you made them with slabs, you can turn on the cover fill option. Similarly you can do this for the roofs or even meshes.

Model View Options (MVO) will allow you to control when these cover fills are seen.

If you created all these buildings with lines, then you made work for yourself. Magic wand slabs, zones etc onto them will give you the coverfill option you want as a byproduct of creating a 3D city.

Re: Select multiple elements and fill them

Paopao — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 17:52:14 GMT

they are polilines, the overall file is a patch of smaller dxf files covering the territory. It's the standard for urbanistic files nowadays here in Italy apart from shp. So it's a file generated by aerial pictures of the territory.

Re: Select multiple elements and fill them

Anonymous — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 20:45:58 GMT

There is no way to apply a fill to multiple polylines in one go. There might be a way to do it in AutoCAD with a clever Autolisp routine...

Now that I think of it, there might be a really odd way to do it in ArchiCAD by making all the polylines into a 2D GDL script and using search and replace to convert them polygons with fills. The part could then be placed and exploded to get the fills into the plan. If you have no idea what I am talking about then this is probably not the way to go.

You may do best just to fix yourself a nice pot of tea put on your favorite tunes and settle down to a lot of magic wand work. I've done thousands of ceilings this way (with or without the tea) and it's not too bad. At least it's WAY easier in ArchiCAD than it is in Revit.

Re: Select multiple elements and fill them

Paopao — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 00:42:26 GMT

Oh my God....I envision lots of caffeine in my future....

thanks for the replies guys.

Re: Select multiple elements and fill them

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 04:31:05 GMT

One suggestion you might like to try... Create one giant fill that overlays all the individual polyline boundaries. Using the pet pallette and magic wand, subtract out the negative space represented as the area between polyline boundaries. I've noticed that this works better if the outer boundary of the giant fill is connected and overlapping at some point to one of the polyline boundaies located at the periphery of the group.

Might save you some time if it's not too late.

Re: Select multiple elements and fill them

Anonymous — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 14:52:31 GMT

Matthew wrote:
Now that I think of it, there might be a really odd way to do it in ArchiCAD by making all the polylines into a 2D GDL script and using search and replace to convert them polygons with fills. The part could then be placed and exploded to get the fills into the plan. If you have no idea what I am talking about then this is probably not the way to go.

I have the similar situation than discussed here almost 2 years ago. I have ca. 13 500 closed square polylines (don't ask...) which I wanted to be fills. So manually used magic wand is out of question.
Matthew's tip was really good; it took only a couple of minutes to get it done. After saving the GDL script there was poly2_b{5} commands (which has fill value). The fill value was set to "Empty". Just replacing all of them with word "Solid" did the trick.
Thanks!

Re: Select multiple elements and fill them

CharlesC — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 20:25:47 GMT

Hello there!

I've tried that methode but didn't work... anyvideo you can share of how you did this?

Regards

-CC

Re: Select multiple elements and fill them

LorinW — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 12:01:42 GMT

Hey Charles, Not sure if you still need an answer. But i found a workaround. Funnily enough with a competitor software.Since they're all owned by the same megacompany I don't feel to bad. If you import all your polylines to Vectorworks they will automatically be hatches. Just add a fill color, and remove the outline, so it's just a fill. then export as DWG and import into Archicad. voila, you got yourself several tens of thousands of fills into Archicad. You can also try with rhino, but rhino takes a very long time to create hatches, compared to vectorworks. i tried with around 150'000 polylines that needed to be fills.

hope this helps,
Lorin