topic Re: SEO Slab Doesn't act on wall in Modeling

SEO Slab Doesn't act on wall

Brad Elliott — Wed, 24 May 2023 06:36:11 GMT

Can anyone explain this behavior? I understand that somehow legacy changes the surfaces to their defaults but I don’t understand how it is affecting the Solid Element Operations. You can see that the outer skin is getting acted on but nothing else. My other projects aren’t showing this behavior. I need my SEO’s to work in non legacy settings. Otherwise I’m going to be spending a ton of time changing materials again. This is AC19.

Re: SEO Slab Doesn't act on wall

Brad Elliott — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 16:59:02 GMT

And with Legacy Options on

Re: SEO Slab Doesn't act on wall

Barry Kelly — Sat, 12 Nov 2016 04:28:37 GMT

Slabs and wall have what they call 'Priority Based Connections'.
This means that the higher strength Building Materials will automatically override the weaker ones.
An automatic SEO if you like.
That is why the SEO will not work as the connection has already been made and the bits cut away can't make any further cuts in SEO because they are not there.

So you have 2 options.
Play around with the strengths of your building materials.
Or place the slab and the wall in different layers and set the intersection priority number (found in the layer settings dialogue) to be different for each layer.
Then the PBC will not occur and you can do your SEO as ther is nothing being cut away automatically.
If they have to be in the same layer then you can set the intersection priority number to zero.
Of course this will affect how other elements interact with elements in these layers.

Remember also to set the priority number in the layer combinations as well otherwise you will find they reset every time you change to a new combination.
You can of course have different settings in each combinations so maybe in some they do connect automatically and in other combinations they don't.

The best way is to sort out your building material strengths which may mean you have to duplicate some building materials but have them at different strengths for different uses.

Barry.

Re: SEO Slab Doesn't act on wall

DGSketcher — Sat, 12 Nov 2016 11:25:49 GMT

Without organising your material strengths PBCs can be a nightmare. I am starting to group my materials under basic elements e.g. floors, walls, roofs. As Barry has suggested you may end up with duplicate materials, but you are more likely to be able to correct a bad junction without blindly screwing up the rest of the model. As an example you may want the roof insulation to cut the top of a wall but if you used the same insulation in a floor or partition it would also pass through the wall which may not be what you want displayed.

Re: SEO Slab Doesn't act on wall

Brad Elliott — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 15:56:49 GMT

Thanks Guys.
Sheesh, this is what happens when it gets too complicated. I went through a lot of effort setting up my materials to all work with my default composites when they first came out and haven't had to think about them much since. I had to create a new floor for some specialty framing and selected the wrong Building Material. And Building Materials was the first thing I checked but my expectations overrode what I was actually seeing.
This reinforces something I've been saying for a couple of versions now. We need some way to create a composites spreadsheet showing the used composites and their building materials so we can do an overview to help us find and sort these issues. It would also create a great base sheet for the assembly details.

Re: SEO Slab Doesn't act on wall

Richard Morrison — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 16:06:06 GMT

Brad wrote:
We need some way to create a composites spreadsheet showing the used composites and their building materials so we can do an overview to help us find and sort these issues. It would also create a great base sheet for the assembly details.

I believe we already have a way. This should be very easy to do with interactive schedules. What, exactly, would you like this to look like?

Re: SEO Slab Doesn't act on wall

Brad Elliott — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 16:33:30 GMT

Richard,
I actually conflated a couple different issues.
First, I would like to be able to select two or three different composites and when opening the building materials window have each one show up with a different color. That way I could quickly sort the hierarchy and easily tell what material or relationship is causing me trouble.
Second I would like to have a way to select the composites that I am using and have the fill imagery from the composite structures window show with the corresponding material. I have attached a quick and dirty image.

Re: SEO Slab Doesn't act on wall

Richard Morrison — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 16:54:51 GMT

Brad,
I'm not totally clear on what you'd like to see, but I wonder if you are aware that you can select a couple of different composite items on your plan, and then open the the Building Materials dialog box. The materials in the selected items will be highlighted and by clicking the top icon in the first column, they will all be sorted to the top. This puts all of the relevant priorities into proximity, and the priorities can be easily adjusted from there.

Re: SEO Slab Doesn't act on wall

Brad Elliott — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 17:14:20 GMT

Didn't know about the icon. That helps a lot.
Now if only the different composites were in different colors I would be set. That is because of what started this thread and that is I have multiples of wall framing and it's hard to remember/tell which one goes with which wall and that's usually what I am trying to fix.

Re: SEO Slab Doesn't act on wall

Richard Morrison — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 17:34:14 GMT

Well, a couple of things. First, for a pretty quick way to figure out which framing material is being used in a particular composite, you can alt-click (or whatever the "eyedropper" key is on the Mac) on the element before you open the composite dialog, and then the dialog will come up with that composite already selected.

Second, you can use colors in the material fill backgrounds, and see it on the plan or section directly. See http://blog.graphisoftus.com/archicad-user/adding-legibility-to-details#. This would only take a couple of minutes to add to your existing materials.

Re: SEO Slab Doesn't act on wall

Brad Elliott — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 18:01:08 GMT

I've known about the alt click as well as right clicking on a wall to pull up the composite in the contextual menu and use it frequently. I would love being able to get Building materials in the contextual menu as well.
I need to look more into the colors. I use them to sort my materials 2x4, 2x6 etc but haven't for the sub items because it can get busy fast. I may need to dig deeper into the color palate or create my own to get a subtler visual change.
I still think there has to be a better way than opening and closing multiple windows just to correct a priority issue. Maybe if I slow down this winter I'll work on mocking up a window. I think there should be a way to flow from Surface to Composite to Material in a less convoluted fashion.

Re: SEO Slab Doesn't act on wall

Richard Morrison — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 18:09:26 GMT

Brad wrote:
I use them to sort my materials 2x4, 2x6 etc but haven't for the sub items because it can get busy fast.

This may be a source of your material proliferation. In my opinion, there shouldn't be a separate material for each dimension. These should just be a generic material only: "framing lumber," say, or maybe "vertical framing lumber." I've seen others conflate the material dimensions (which should show up only in the composite) with the building materials, and it leads to an unwieldy mess.

Re: SEO Slab Doesn't act on wall

Brad Elliott — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 18:43:39 GMT

Be it layers, materials, fills, etc I am always trying to pare down to the minimum. However based on experience and contractor feedback I have a darker fill for 2x6 walls. This is more accurate and visible than noting each wall and makes it immediately clear to everyone on the job. We have an automated way to create clarity for construction and I try to take advantage of it.
The proliferation really comes from what material cuts what and needing to get it to visually work. i.e.. concrete cuts wood except for the few times it doesn't.

Re: SEO Slab Doesn't act on wall

Erwin Edel — Wed, 16 Nov 2016 14:19:50 GMT

Not sure if it has been mentioned, but layer intersection group numbers can help to stop different elements interacting that do not need to interact at all.

We use a different intersection group number from the standard group 1 for a few layers in our template:
SEO operators (these elements are not visible in the model ussually)
Mocked up window parts (not saved objects, but like a column acting like a bit of frame)
Interior finishing
Exterior finishing
'help' lines/elements (typically invisble layer)

Within their own groups PBC will work, but they will not connect to the other group. hotlinked modules break this priority though!!, with these everything defaults to the intersection group of the layer that the module is placed on. So if you are publishing out modules, you need to separate out the different intersection groups for proper behaviour.

Re: SEO Slab Doesn't act on wall

Erwin Edel — Wed, 16 Nov 2016 14:30:11 GMT

Regarding wood and concrete (and insulation) materials and such, our template (which is based on the Dutch standard template) uses a sort of load-bearing and non-loadbearing or structurual/non-structural setup for most materials that can be used in both ways.

So, for example, we have insulation for structural wood-frame wall elements with a high priority, as they are part of the structural core. We also have a high priority plywood for these elements as they have a structural function.

We also have a fairly low priority insulation for light separation walls with a low priority plywood.

This allows for light separation walls to connect to the structural wood-frame walls the proper way.

If you are making slight variations of materials to clarify your drawings (and why not, it seems like a good idea!), just duplicate the proper materials and increment the priority by 1. This generally works well for us.

For concrete we have a fairly high priority material for prefab structural beams/collumns so they get priority over the concrete used in slabs. We also have fairly low priority concrete for the stuff that gets poured on site.

Our template has just over 100 materials, which might seem like a lot, but it has quite a few 'subgroups', so you get to 100 fast. I'd say it is rather slim on materials.

We do try to not cram in every single colour finish option in the template materials though, rather create those per project as needed and tag them with a project ID to find them fast.