topic Re: GTX 660 in Installation & update

GTX 660

alemanda — Wed, 04 Sep 2013 11:57:55 GMT

I have a "quite old" video card onmy workstation. It is a nVidia Quadro 1700FX. I'd like to change it.
Does somebody have GEFORCE GTX 660 and work with Archicad? How is it? Is it fast? Is there some trouble during the navigation in 3D or 2D view?

Re: GTX 660

Laszlo Nagy — Thu, 05 Sep 2013 23:14:51 GMT

This page talks about Video cards for ArchiCAD:

http://archicadwiki.com/VideoCardsForArchiCAD17

I have a GTX 460M which is an earlier little brother of the 660.
I have not had any problem with it.
I think it mostly depends of the graphics card driver.
I have version 320.xx which is what they tested it with. It works fine with me.

Re: GTX 660

Anonymous — Fri, 08 Nov 2013 19:43:20 GMT

I have a GTX660 in my system and while most of the time I don't have any issues when using Archicad until just recently. Lately I have run into issues where the 3D view does not show items correctly. Sometimes walls have the proper skin (eg. paint white) on one face of the wall but all the other faces are transparent. I have a current issue where only part of a surface shows the proper visual information and the rest of it is clear/transparent. I have the most current driver for my card. My system has an i7 processor, 6GB Ram, with Win7 X64 Ultimate. My archicad is V17 with the most recent updates (4005). My settings are to use OpenGL. One thing that I have noticed is that Archicad displays the scene properly when I "Render" it but it seems to take a long time to complete the rendering.

Re: GTX 660

Barry Kelly — Mon, 11 Nov 2013 02:29:27 GMT

Dr Who,
Is it possible that your materials (sorry surfaces in 17) have a transparency (transmittance) value and that in the openGL window you have transparency set to "On"?
See attached image (from version 16).
Barry.

Re: GTX 660

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Nov 2013 17:41:13 GMT

Barry, as you suggested I checked the surface settings and transparency was not turned on so that obviously was not the problem. The following is a copy of the email I sent to Archicad about my problem.

I am currently having an issue with what is displayed in the 3D working window. I have attached a file that currently shows the issue (at least on my PC). Now my PC has the Windows 7 X64 Ultimate OS, an i7 processor and 6GB of RAM. The video card is a GTX670 from EVGA which has 4GB of memory. I am also running V17, build 4005 of the 64 bit International Archicad software. If you open the file you should see a slab with cutouts. On my system the file opens in the 3D view. If yours opens in the floor plan view please change to the 3D view. On my system, when viewing the slab in 3D it shows the surface colour for only a portion of the top and the rest of it shows as transparent. Just for fun I did a proper rendering of the slab in Archicad and the rendered view showed properly. This issue started to show in another project I was doing and I thought maybe the issue was one of size as that project had a very large size (over 200MB file size) so I copied the slab and placed it in its own project. Got the same result so file/project size was not the issue. I noticed that the skin/texture for the top surface of the slab overlapped into the opening in the center. It should be noted that the polygon shape in the center was created as a single entity using the polygon drawing tool available in the "slab" placement option. I had tried any and all options regarding the 3D engines (both internal and openGL) but nothing seemed to solve the issue. It should be noted the when using the internal 3D engine the area that was transparent when using openGL showed the proper texture/skin but it was translucent and not solid. Since there was this area of overlap I decided to see if moving the point where the 2 semi-circles met mad a difference. What I found was that moving the point toward the outside of the slab did nothing but moving it inward toward the center of the slab cause it to display correctly. In the design where the 2 semi-circles meet the edges are tangent to each other and don't cross one another except for the tangent point. And while the polygon was made as a single entity my gut feel is that the software seems to think that the 2 semi-circles don't touch and that is causing the issue but as a single entity they must. I would appreciate it if someone could look into this for me and let me know if there is a fix. I am supposed to show this project to someone for review late Monday afternoon and I am sure I can explain the issue to their satisfaction it is always better if things are correct and show properly. Please let me know if anything can be done to help.

Please note that I made a mistake in stating originally that my video card was a GTX660 when it actually is a GTX670. I would have attached an Archicad file that shows the issue but I could not compress the file to less than 812KB which is higher than the max limit for a compressed file. What I have attached is a jpg file that shows the issue in the 3D viewer.

Thanks in advance to all that can help.

Re: GTX 660

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Nov 2013 18:25:23 GMT

DrWho,
to attach your .pln create an account on Dropbox.com for free and send in the file .pln!
Then pick the button Share Link and paste it in the post.

Re: GTX 660

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Nov 2013 20:10:53 GMT

Hello Andro55:

As you suggested go to the link,

https://www.dropbox.com/s/l27h36tm0krv826/3D%20issue.pln

to download the .pln file that shows the issue I am having.

Regards.

Re: GTX 660

Laszlo Nagy — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 00:54:43 GMT

The geometry you have created in incorrect.
In 3D, look closer where you have the two half circular edges next to each other. You will see a concrete texture outside their boundaries.
This is because their geometries overlap.
I edited the one on the right: reduced its radius very slightly and the 3D display was correct immediately.

By the way, I checked the geometry a bit more and it is slightly inaccurately drawn. If you look at it on the Floor Pan: out of the double half-circles, the ones on the left and the ones in the bottom are not accurately created: their center point is not exactly on the side edge of the rectangular cutout. If you draw a line of the side edges of the rectangular cutout and zoom in very very closely you can see they are off a tiny bit.

Re: GTX 660

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 10:53:01 GMT

There are some geometry errors . Look at my picture.

Re: GTX 660

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 18:57:52 GMT

Thank you Laszlonagy and Andro55. Both of you indicated that the geometry was in error which I thought was true before this started as I had seen the exact same thing when using other CAD software. As a matter of fact I did a geometry check and fixed what appeared wrong. So I checked again in the areas indicated and here is what I found. Initially I only found two wrong dimensions for the two bottom arcs. At that time I was taking measurements with the units set to "Feet and Fractional Inches". The two arc on the left hand side of the opening measured exactly the same. But since Andro55 indicated that those arcs were not the same I changed the working units to "millimeters" and voila the radius of the two arcs were different (in this case only 1 mm. But that just brings up other issues. When I created the inside polygon I did it in a single operation inwhich the endpoint of one segment was the beginning of the next segment until the polygon was closed. Also all dimensions for each segment were inputted (actual values) using my keyboard. The working units at that time was Feet and Fractional Inches. Also points were selected based on the "look" of the cursor. From this I can see that there is an issue with the conversion function between millimeters and Feet and Fractional Inches. Especially so when Feet and Fractional Inches is used when creating items. It would seem to be a "Rounding" error in the math due to not enough decimal places in the dimensions. I don't know how many decimal places AC uses but most CAD programs that I have used in the past hold at least 12 decimal places for calculations but typically show only 6 maximum in dimensions. I also don't know if AC uses single precision or double precision math. As I indicated I selected the start of the next segment at the end of the previous segment using the state of the cursor which should mean that the end of the previous segment and the start of the current segment should be exactly the same point which should result in both segments connecting at the same point and should never overlap each other at the meeting point.

In my school project I must use the Feet and Fractional Inches work units, not millimeters, as it fits local industry standards. I guess my final thought is, am I going to run into this issue in the future?

Re: GTX 660

Eduardo Rolon — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 20:07:13 GMT

For what is worth you can work using "Feet + Decimal Inches" which is what I usually do when I am modelling a project at the start of the project. Dimensions are obviously set in "Feet + Fractional Inches".
Also changing from one method to the other is relative painless so you can switch back and forth easily.

Re: GTX 660

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 20:40:12 GMT

After doing some more dimensional checking I found out that one point in the entity I created was out of position by 0.25mm (center between 2 points. Thus I selected the point and moved it 0.25mm in the correct direction. Now when I measured the distance between the point in the center and the 2 outside points I don't get the exact same result. Due the AC's limitation of 1 decimal place when the working units are "millimeters" one dimension rounded up (xxxx.3) while the other rounded down (xxxx.2). While I have no problem conceeding that 0.1mm is insignificant when compared to the size of the building (over 180 meters) but it is significant from a design point as illustrated by my overlapping arcs issue regarding the surface of an entity.

I did further checking regarding the working units and I noticed the if Decimal Inches is selected it is possible to select up to 3 decimal points (0.001"). Yet when Millimeters is selected only 1 decimal point is available (0.0039"). I would like to state that for consistency my opinion is that the resolution of both working units should be the same or as close as possible. After doing all of this checking my thought is that AC actually keeps all of the math data in one working unit (say millimeters) and then just converts that data into the other working units available when needed.

Finally, it would seem that this accuracy issue has more to do with the graphical presentation of the building opposed to building the actual structure. As in my case a contractor could still build that portion of building (slab) even though there were some small errors but showing it to a potential developer would show lack of capability so graphical presentation is just as important as construction needs.

regards.

Re: GTX 660

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 20:59:15 GMT

Hello ejrolon:

I realize those options are available and while jumping between the working units available is relatively easy it shouldn't be necessary. I have work in the past and currently with 3D MCAD software from various vendors and the working units don't matter with respect to accuracy.
That is 1/64" = 0.015625" = 0.396875mm
In AC 1/64" = 0.016" = 0.4mm

In this example it might not seem like a big issue but as you add on more and more the discrepancy will grow when converting back and forth.

Regards

Re: GTX 660

Laszlo Nagy — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 03:29:08 GMT

DrWho,
Can you reproduce this?
I mean, can you try to recreate the problematic polygonal geometry and get the error again?
From the file you attached to the thread it seems to me that the geometry was actually not correctly created as we have indicated. This may be due to incorrect creation of the geometry.
So the question is: if you correctly create it as it whould be created, then do you still get the error?

By the way, as far as I know ArchiCAD stores numbers in floating point format which is a lot more than 12 digits.

Re: GTX 660

Anonymous — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 04:16:21 GMT

Hello Laszlo:

I will create the entity again in a new design using the same methods that I used originally. I will also outline the exact steps that I will take. I will post it when I get it done.

After doing some more thinking on this issue I figured out that the slab and associated cutouts were created in AC16 before AC17 was available. Would there be any chance that going from AC16 to AC17 might have caused the problem?

Re: GTX 660

Anonymous — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 21:08:00 GMT

Hello Laszlo:

well I did my recreation using the same method I used the first time and the issue did NOT happen. The surface showed properly. I believe the process steps I used were correct and it seems so when creating the article in AC17. As I said before the original was made in AC16 and it might be possible the issue happened when going from AC16 to AC17 but I wouldn't think so. Anyway I can now make the changes I need to fix up my model and appreciation for all of the help.

Regards