topic Re: Poly count: 49,636 in Modeling

Poly count: 49,636

Anonymous — Tue, 23 May 2023 16:07:23 GMT

Hello,

I've created a railway track, using custom profiles (beams) but now my ArchiCAD file seems to be very slow. I find that I have to open things gradually in layers in the 3D window just to view them. As you can see from the attachment, the beams are taking up most of the count as I have also inserted sleepers to make the rail track more realistic.

The 'Objects' are 4 Cadimage railings which are around 7metres long... perhaps I should replace them with ArchiCAD parts instead?

The plans open just fine, sections are slow and the 'wait time' in 3D goes up to 166 minutes. I try to stop the 3D process but ArchiCAD crashed.

Is this poly count way to large? How can I 'fix' the problem?

Thank You

Re: Poly count: 49,636

Ralph Wessel — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 20:49:12 GMT

NStocks wrote:
I've created a railway track, using custom profiles (beams) but now my ArchiCAD file seems to be very slow. I find that I have to open things gradually in layers in the 3D window just to view them. As you can see from the attachment, the beams are taking up most of the count as I have also inserted sleepers to make the rail track more realistic.

Try creating the rails using profiled objects created with OBJECTiVE. The objects are generally lightweight in 3D, and you can control the faceting of curved sections to minimise the polygon count (use the Faceting setting).

Re: Poly count: 49,636

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 21:00:27 GMT

Ralph wrote:
NStocks wrote:
I've created a railway track, using custom profiles (beams) but now my ArchiCAD file seems to be very slow. I find that I have to open things gradually in layers in the 3D window just to view them. As you can see from the attachment, the beams are taking up most of the count as I have also inserted sleepers to make the rail track more realistic.
Try creating the rails using profiled objects created with OBJECTiVE. The objects are generally lightweight in 3D, and you can control the faceting of curved sections to minimise the polygon count (use the Faceting setting).

Funnily enough I use objective in the first place, but I wasn't able to do something with it. Can't remember what it was, maybe bend in on plan or make all the rail track join together. The latter sounds more like my issues, so naturally for this reason I chose the beam and complex profile route as they join together perfectly..

Attached is the floor plan. The black lines are actually the sleepers (there are literally hundreds!)

If there is a (quick) solution to allow me to join objective piece in the same fashion of beams, could I keep the existing dimensions and direction of the track as the sleepers have taken me literally hours to complete.

Thank You

Re: Poly count: 49,636

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 21:41:26 GMT

Just tried it with objective and it was indeed the fact that I couldn't 'join' the pieces together like I could with beams. Also the curves are harder to align correctly. The magic wand doesn't work with objective does it ? Or is there another way i.e using the polyline as the main frame outline, then 'place' the Objective profile on that?

Re: Poly count: 49,636

Ralph Wessel — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 09:30:33 GMT

NStocks wrote:
Just tried it with objective and it was indeed the fact that I couldn't 'join' the pieces together like I could with beams. Also the curves are harder to align correctly. The magic wand doesn't work with objective does it ? Or is there another way i.e using the polyline as the main frame outline, then 'place' the Objective profile on that?

No, you can't 'magic wand' OBJECTiVE parts to polyline (but it's on the wish list ).

Refer to the attached image for a process to map the profile to a polyline:

1. Draw the required profile and make a new profiled object with OBJECTiVE > Component > New Profile. Set the profile anchor somewhere along the centreline, e.g. centre-bottom.

2. Draw a polyline along the centre of the required path, e.g. with ArchiCAD's polyline tool

3. Then start placing the profile with the OBJECTiVE tool. Set the Geometry Method to Rotated Diagonal and draw from the start to end of each arc in the polyline.

4. You should then have a series of straight segments along the polyline.

5. Then use OBJECTiVE > Tools > Bend to bend the segments to the curve.

6. The finished result in 2D

7. The result in 3D, showing where 2 segments join. You will see a line where the segments meet, but I expect you'd see a line there on real tracks too.

Re: Poly count: 49,636

David Maudlin — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 12:45:12 GMT

NStocks wrote:
I've created a railway track, using custom profiles (beams) but now my ArchiCAD file seems to be very slow.
...
Is this poly count way to large? How can I 'fix' the problem?

Another approach is to simplify the Custom Profile: eliminate curves and faces, consider how detailed/realistic the profile needs to be given the viewing distances. If some pieces are seen close up, then make only those more detailed. Apply this approach to both the rails and sleepers.

David

Re: Poly count: 49,636

Anonymous — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 17:40:17 GMT

David wrote:
NStocks wrote:
I've created a railway track, using custom profiles (beams) but now my ArchiCAD file seems to be very slow.
...
Is this poly count way to large? How can I 'fix' the problem?
Another approach is to simplify the Custom Profile: eliminate curves and faces, consider how detailed/realistic the profile needs to be given the viewing distances. If some pieces are seen close up, then make only those more detailed. Apply this approach to both the rails and sleepers.

David

How do I apply that to custom profile beams and standard beams? I've checked the settings but didn't find anything. Also using the poly-count Level of Details did nothing for me...

It crashed again today because it wouldn't load the elements in 3D/. As a 'guide' what is the general amount of polygons in one project (i.e have you experienced as high as what is now 56,000 ?)

If this doesn't work I will refer Ralph's post on using OBJECTiVE.

Thank You

Re: Poly count: 49,636

Link — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 05:23:39 GMT

As a 'guide' what is the general amount of polygons in one project (i.e have you experienced as high as what is now 56,000 ?)

I just did a check on one of our commercial projects and it came in at nearly half a million polygons. And that's with door knobs turned off, but I know they go much higher.

Cheers,
Link.

Re: Poly count: 49,636

Barry Kelly — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 06:39:03 GMT

Link wrote:
As a 'guide' what is the general amount of polygons in one project (i.e have you experienced as high as what is now 56,000 ?)
I just did a check on one of our commercial projects and it came in at nearly half a million polygons. And that's with door knobs turned off, but I know they go much higher.

Cheers,
Link.

It's not how many polygons you have but what you can do with them that counts.

Barry.

Re: Poly count: 49,636

David Maudlin — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 12:54:57 GMT

NStocks wrote:
How do I apply that to custom profile beams and standard beams?

Taking Ralph's illustration # 1 as an example, each curve will generate 9 facets, so that profile would generate about 75 polygons. Chamfers could replace the curves, reducing the polygon count to about 20. You could select one piece of rail and get a polygon count to see how many polygons your custom profiles are generating. Standard beams (rectangles) are as simple already.

David

Re: Poly count: 49,636

Fran_ois Chatelain — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 14:00:14 GMT

Hi NStocks,
AC 14 is working sweet here with 2.3mil polys.
Maybe there's a limitation in the student version?

Cheers
Francois

Re: Poly count: 49,636

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 17:16:43 GMT

François wrote:
Hi NStocks,
AC 14 is working sweet here with 2.3mil polys.
Maybe there's a limitation in the student version?

Cheers
Francois

Wow, my 49K seems tiny compared to this! I don't really know why Graphisoft would limit the poly count, but it's so slow.... I've replaced Cadimage rails with standard ArchiCAD railing which has reduced the count by 10K!

I'm now looking at replacing the rails...

Re: Poly count: 49,636

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 17:25:33 GMT

David wrote:
NStocks wrote:
How do I apply that to custom profile beams and standard beams?
Taking Ralph's illustration # 1 as an example, each curve will generate 9 facets, so that profile would generate about 75 polygons. Chamfers could replace the curves, reducing the polygon count to about 20. You could select one piece of rail and get a polygon count to see how many polygons your custom profiles are generating. Standard beams (rectangles) are as simple already.

David

Turns out that each beam has approx. 760 polygons... there are 10 main beams which form the track. Then there are several hundred sleepers, which are simple default beams (they are 20 polygons). The total poly count of all beams is 40k.

Re: Poly count: 49,636

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 17:56:36 GMT

I'm not having a great outcome with OBJECTiVE profiles, they won't bend in the correct shape and they don't join well (pieces protruding on each corner)

How would I change the complex profile complexity? As mentioned earlier, I can apparently eliminate curves and faces and reduce the detail but I don't see these options...

Re: Poly count: 49,636

Laszlo Nagy — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 19:37:32 GMT

I am thinking that maybe something else is wrong here.
Polycount is pretty low.
GS has put out a white paper about AC performance and in that it mentions that when polycount hits the millions is when things can start to slow down.

So I believe something else must be wrong in here. Maybe there was some operation within or involving those elements that takes much time to perform.

Or maybe calculating the intersection between those Beams takes a lot of time. If you make the Sleepers out of Walls, put them on a different Layer and set a different Layer Intersection Group Number for them, does that change anything?

If you copy-paste these railings into a brand new file started with New &Reset, is it still slow?

Re: Poly count: 49,636

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 20:15:32 GMT

Sure, I've just checked the poly count in the white paper and 49K is nothing really...

I've copied the rails and sleepers into a new file (also reset) and it open is 3D very fast, less than 30 seconds I'd say. Should I copy the whole project in the same manner? Would that essentially resolve my issues or just copy them over?

Something I hope ArchiCAD 15 brings is a faster opening of plans. They are so slow compared to other programs but I can understand why... Still seems like there is no major speed improvement from ArchiCAD 13

Thank You

Re: Poly count: 49,636

Laszlo Nagy — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 20:25:21 GMT

Then you should do the forward merge: copy paste all your project data into that brand new project file.
See if that solve it.
That would mean something file specific caused the problem.

Re: Poly count: 49,636

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 20:38:38 GMT

I spoke to soon...

Copied all the project to the newly created file and when I view all elements in 3D it goes back to being very slow (and ultimately crash)

I copied all beams to one project: Worked fine (file 1)
I copied all walls, slabs to another project: Worked fine (file 2)
I copied all roofs to the same project as walls slabs: Worked fine (file 2)
I copied all beams from the newly created file (project 1) to the file will all roof, slab and walls: Not working correctly. (file 2)

What can I do now?

Re: Poly count: 49,636

Laszlo Nagy — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 20:44:20 GMT

I suspect intersection issues between Walls and Beams.

If you copy only Walls and Beams into the same file, does the problem persist? If yes, then there is something between Walls and Beams.
Then try that different Layer, different Layer Intersection Group Number thing I suggested.

Re: Poly count: 49,636

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 20:54:00 GMT

Walls and beams work fine (there are only 8 walls, the other buildings are slabs.

With regards to the other suggestion: As the sleepers and tracks are working fine I do not need to replace them with walls now do I? (the sleepers took me around 3 hours!)

Do I change the layer thing on the problematic file? (original file)

UPDATE: I've changed the layer intersection and it hasn't changed it unfortunately. Looks like I will be re-drawing all the context buildings around the railway