topic maintain area, change dimensions in Libraries & objects

maintain area, change dimensions

Anonymous — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 22:19:47 GMT

If I'm designing a room that must be 100 square meters i could draw a slab that's 10 meters by 10 meters. Now suppose i want to see all the different possible dimensions of the room whilst maintaining the prerequisite of 100 square meters. Is there a way to reshape the slab without changing the area?

You'd think this would be something architects and designers would have to wrangle with all the time so I'm surprised I haven't found a way to do it yet. Any help would be appreciated!

Re: maintain area, change dimensions

Karl Ottenstein — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 22:43:16 GMT

Relatively easy for someone who knows GDL to write a custom library part that would do that ... but none of the built-in tools can do it. Someone may have already written one that they might share...

Re: maintain area, change dimensions

Anonymous — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 22:58:30 GMT

yeah that'd be helpful! guess i'll just wait for someone who knows some GDL or has the library part

Re: maintain area, change dimensions

Anonymous — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 23:40:40 GMT

It would be almost trivial for a rectangular form. Quite the contrary for an arbitrary polygon. In the latter case the only serviceable approach I can think of would be to require the user to specify which edge should adjust, but the conditional array for the adjustment hotspots would still likely be quite a head scratcher.

Re: maintain area, change dimensions

Anonymous — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 03:07:05 GMT

This falls into the be careful what you wish for category.

Let's leave some art in architecture. The architect should determine the shape of the room. If it's 105m2 or 95m2 who cares if the building works? Design the room then check.

If you really want to do this, create a simple spread sheet in another program.

Re: maintain area, change dimensions

Anonymous — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 03:22:54 GMT

phubbell wrote:
This falls into the be careful what you wish for category.

Let's leave some art in architecture. The architect should determine the shape of the room. If it's 105m2 or 95m2 who cares if the building works? Design the room then check.

If you really want to do this, create a simple spread sheet in another program.

I don't really think wanting a simple way to do this in archicad would be taking art away from architecture. I'm designing an urban infill project that has far too many spaces to visually conceive of. At this stage I'm just designing circulation routes and trying to see which rooms work on which floors. I'm sure excel could do it but it doesn't really give you a spacial idea of your room volumes (yet... i dunno microsoft might be working on something!). I'm just working with rectangular blobs and it'd be nice to be able to lock the area and see where how you could change the dimensions to make them work. Again, since i don't really know GDL if anyone has such a library part I'd be very grateful

many thanks

Re: maintain area, change dimensions

Anonymous — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 03:45:25 GMT

You may be on to something. Forgive my old school, sketching on tracing paper approach.

In the preliminary phases, it would be cool to bump an edge in and the room would expand elsewhere. In the ideal world the other spaces would adjust themselves to adapt. I'm imagining bouncy little blobs settling into their perfect places.

It would be great... just not part of ArchiCAD at the moment.

Re: maintain area, change dimensions

Barry Kelly — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 04:34:56 GMT

nimai2 wrote:
Again, since i don't really know GDL if anyone has such a library part I'd be very grateful

Here is a quick one that I edited from a grey water disposal object I made.
Sorry it is in metric for all you Imperial users.
Created in version 10.
Barry.

Re: maintain area, change dimensions

Anonymous — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 05:40:15 GMT

You can download the Raumblock by Mario Volkmann. This (free) object does what you want. However I think it can be much improved.

note: fill in your wishes in the field and you will be redirected to the download page.

Re: maintain area, change dimensions

Anonymous — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 13:50:25 GMT

This goes to the issue of a set of simple massing tools to layout the initial form of the building. Something that could very easily be implemented using Archicads existing tools and openGL rendering. It would only really be useful if it involved constraints as asked for in the OP and proper feedback as part of a more enhanced and user friendly scheduling system. I think any self respecting CAD program nowadays should be able to give the designer/architect realtime feedback for the changes they are making. It a shame that GS have over looked this vital part of the workflow.

Very simply Archicad desperately needs to have the option to have multiple viewpoints open on the workspace. As you work on the plan in one view port you can have a section or elevation also open reflecting the changes made in realtime, a simple customizable scheduling/spreadsheet viewport too that gives you feed back on changes to volume, length, angle, roof surface, m2 etc etc.

Its a shame they didn't get these basics sorted out before diving into Teamwork 2 which has obviously been the priority.

Re: maintain area, change dimensions

Anonymous — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 19:21:10 GMT

OK, it does not have constraints (who wants them?) but you get direct feedback. Place zones (or fills with the area text on) while displaying the measured net area. This will give the area (without the need for zone update). Just keep in mind the original area and adjust any side you want. You can use one of the parameters for listing to fill in the original area and you cab compare it in a schedule to the measured area.

Also check out this little add-on. With this add-on you can create zone from a text file with area and rooms. It even can keep up relations between zones!

Re: maintain area, change dimensions

Aaron Bourgoin — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 22:38:03 GMT

This is functionality that existed in applications like Visio and now in Trelligence Affinity.... If they can do it, why can't Graphisoft.

It would add a great deal of diesel to the Zone tool.

Having some GDL block tool doing this work - they used to exist, too - is really not a solution.

Re: maintain area, change dimensions

Anonymous — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 08:15:46 GMT

Aaron wrote:
This is functionality that existed in applications like Visio and now in Trelligence Affinity.... If they can do it, why can't Graphisoft.

It would add a great deal of diesel to the Zone tool.

Having some GDL block tool doing this work - they used to exist, too - is really not a solution.

I agree, zone tool could be way better... The GDL block tools mentioned earlier are frustrating and not what i wanted. I don't see why it would be so hard to have multiple views and see changes in real time as well as having an area constraint that lets you see all the different possible shapes you could make a 100 square meter room

Re: maintain area, change dimensions

Stress Co_ — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 05:59:19 GMT

Found this old post while searching for the "Offset Edge-Fixed Area" command.

(I found it.... it's in the pet-palette)

Works for zones and fills (but interestingly, not slabs)

If this were a wish... it's solved.