topic Re: Community Feedback: Graphic Overrides in Modeling

Community Feedback: Graphic Overrides

Ferenc Traser — Mon, 24 Oct 2022 08:10:51 GMT

Hi Everyone,

Our Product Managers are looking into possible improvements regarding Graphic Overrides. To help them here are a few questions. Any valuable insight is greatly appreciated.

What is one thing that you would definitely improve on the way Graphical Overrides currently work?
How many Graphic Override rules and combinations do you have in a typical project?
If you have many rules and combinations, how do you structure them? For example do you put numbering at the beginning of their names or add rules or combinations as separators?
How often do you need to manage rules or combinations? For example is there a BIM Manager who sets them up at the beginning of the project or do you need to edit them constantly?
If you need to edit them constantly, what are the typical reasons?

Thank you!

Re: Community Feedback: Graphic Overrides

DGSketcher — Mon, 24 Oct 2022 08:36:28 GMT

@Ferenc Traser

What is one thing that you would definitely improve on the way Graphical Overrides currently work? - Expand criteria to match Schedules e.g. include Parameters so we can highlight objects with a parameter value etc.
How many Graphic Override rules and combinations do you have in a typical project? - About 50 rules & 20 Combos. Some for presentation, others just for auditing checks.
If you have many rules and combinations, how do you structure them? For example do you put numbering at the beginning of their names or add rules or combinations as separators? - I assign a prefix e.g. rules are "ABC-...", Combos are "GO-ABC-...". Folders would be a handy addition.
How often do you need to manage rules or combinations? For example is there a BIM Manager who sets them up at the beginning of the project or do you need to edit them constantly? - Self managed. Updated as necessary to suit project requirements and checks.
If you need to edit them constantly, what are the typical reasons? - Project scale & complexity

Re: Community Feedback: Graphic Overrides

Barry Kelly — Mon, 24 Oct 2022 08:54:49 GMT

What is one thing that you would definitely improve on the way Graphical Overrides currently work? - Expand criteria to match Schedules e.g. include Parameters so we can highlight objects with a parameter value etc.

The ability to override individual parts of an element or object.

i.e. override just one material (surface) and not the entire element.

How many Graphic Override rules and combinations do you have in a typical project? - About 50 rules & 20 Combos. Some for presentation, others just for auditing checks.

Probably only around half a dozen regularly used.

But I have set up many more for Quality Control to check if things are done correctly - this is a bit of an experimentation at the moment - not really used.

If you have many rules and combinations, how do you structure them? For example do you put numbering at the beginning of their names or add rules or combinations as separators? - I assign a prefix e.g. rules are "ABC-...", Combos are "GO-ABC-...". Folders would be a handy addition.

Currently assigning a prefix to keep those not used out of the way.

With no folder structure, this is all we can do.

How often do you need to manage rules or combinations? For example is there a BIM Manager who sets them up at the beginning of the project or do you need to edit them constantly? - Self managed. Updated as necessary to suit project requirements and checks.

BIM manager (me) has set up in template, and views set to use applicable GO.

A better method if importing/exporting and updating rules and updating GO would be appreciated. There is no way to update (override) at the moment from one file to another.

It is a case of import, duplicate, replace.

If you need to edit them constantly, what are the typical reasons? - Project scale & complexity

We don't usually need to modify them.

Barry.

Re: Community Feedback: Graphic Overrides

Lee Hankins — Mon, 24 Oct 2022 12:51:08 GMT

Hi @Ferenc_Traser

What is one thing that you would definitely improve on the way Graphical Overrides currently work?

The ability to be able to override sub-elements. An example would be the glass in a door or window to differentiate obscure glazing in a schedule or on elevations.

How many Graphic Override rules and combinations do you have in a typical project?

22 Graphic override combinations that are used in all our commercial schemes. Almost 100 different rules that are pretty much all used.

If you have many rules and combinations, how do you structure them? For example do you put numbering at the beginning of their names or add rules or combinations as separators?

I don't structure them at the moment. Graphic override combination has a prefix number. It would be great to be able to structure them in folders.

How often do you need to manage rules or combinations? For example is there a BIM Manager who sets them up at the beginning of the project or do you need to edit them constantly?

All the time. I am the BIM manager and I am constantly tweaking them to make them work better or suit different situations. Our office template contains all rules. They are difficult to manage though as exporting the rules from a master template to replace in live files is not possible. the rules are only exported as part of a combination and if they already exist (because they have been tweaked) the new adopted rules are not imported.

If you need to edit them constantly, what are the typical reasons?

Where a project has a slight variation or a better method has been found of achieving the same process.

Re: Community Feedback: Graphic Overrides

runxel — Mon, 24 Oct 2022 20:48:28 GMT

What is one thing that you would definitely improve on the way Graphical Overrides currently work?

They need to work on subparts. This belongs to the broader topic of a revamping of the reno filter.

We NEED to override only subparts, and GDL objects should no longer be second class citizen. We need to override based on GDL parameters, we need to override parts of an object, like just the frame of a window or a tread.

Also there MUST be parity with the other places where you can select by filters: The interface of Find&Select, Interactive Schedule, and GO should be unified.

How many Graphic Override rules and combinations do you have in a typical project?

Around 50–80 rules and 30 combinations.

If you have many rules and combinations, how do you structure them? For example do you put numbering at the beginning of their names or add rules or combinations as separators?

Big thing that needs to improve, and I hope we see folders there sooner than later, too.

Personally I use an text abbreviation in front and then the pipe char like "GFX | ..."

The list, especially of rules, get's clogged very easily and makes it difficult to traverse.

How often do you need to manage rules or combinations? For example is there a BIM Manager who sets them up at the beginning of the project or do you need to edit them constantly?
If you need to edit them constantly, what are the typical reasons?

Once the template was done the biggest part was set. There is continuous improvement of course as always. 😉

Also since every project is different there are always 1–5 one-offs specially created for the project and its needs, which also evolves from the early design stages to the later phases.

Re: Community Feedback: Graphic Overrides

martinij — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 07:58:11 GMT

It wold be nice with a little refresh of the GO system. It's a really useful tool!

In every project we have between 50 and 100 rules and around 10 to 20 combinations. They are sorted by using keywords in the same way @Barry Kelly show in his example. Most is set up in our office template that is based on the Norwegian teamplate. But every project change the rules in some degree. Sometimes because they need a different ecstatic but mostly because the values the GO rules use are different than what the template assume they should be. Mostly it's the architects them selvs that change the rules, but when they are complex the experts need to step in to help.

Example:

The fire resistance parameter value can be written "EI60" or "EI 60" or even have exstentions with different letters added in the end as well. So the rules need to be changed to accommodate what's in the specific project. And there is often some uncommon value that is not added in the template so that has to be added as a new rule.

In the example of fire resistance there could be nice to have control of which color each value has but in many other situations there is not important what color it is, only that its different per value. Being able to make a rule that gives each unique value a colour/lineweight/etc would in many cases reduce the amount of rules drastically. This would be a nice cleanup in cases where you don't need control over wich color is used. I think that would be ok in most control situations. Just think of rules that control classifications or things like that have a large amount of different values.

There is also the issue of learning from each project. So after a big project is ended we go through the rules that have been developed and se if there is some that can be added to our template. It would be avsone if we cloud have a library in the BIMcloud or something like that so you can "shop" the rules you would like. That should also be extended to most attributts and things.

Re: Community Feedback: Graphic Overrides

Mathias Jonathan — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 16:44:18 GMT

What is one thing that you would definitely improve on the way Graphical Overrides currently work?

Like previsously said:

Matching schedule ( improve quality data)
Overide individual parts

I would add:

Automaticaly create different colors for different data (like the Autocolor in BimcollabZoom : https://helpcenter.bimcollab.com/portal/en/KB/articles/classify-components-with-auto-color)

For example, I want to be able to color with different colors all the different flat of a particular building. I don't want to create a rule for each zone number.

If I want to color each classification on my project and be able to create a schedule displaying the same colors.

How many Graphic Override rules and combinations do you have in a typical project?
About 10 for graphical improvement (Zone colors, Walls in black..., White 3D but not the windows...)
About 10 for identification in plan
About 20 for Archicad audit (good classification, good layer, story...)

If you have many rules and combinations, how do you structure them? For example do you put numbering at the beginning of their names or add rules or combinations as separators?

I use numbering at the Begining, and rules with a name like "-----------------------" as separators

How often do you need to manage rules or combinations? For example is there a BIM Manager who sets them up at the beginning of the project or do you need to edit them constantly?

I set them up at the beginning but I have to edit them constantly.

If you need to edit them constantly, what are the typical reasons?

For example, to use the audit Graphic Override that check if the elements are on the right layer, I have to change manually the layer to check:

First story in red
Checking if every object on the first story are red
modifying the Graphic override to check the second stroy
Checking the second story...

The same process for classification, load bearing, interior/exterior...

Re: Community Feedback: Graphic Overrides

Karl Ottenstein — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 16:54:53 GMT

The order of rules in a combination needs to be changed to have some logical sense. See:

https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Design-forum/Archicad-26-Graphic-Override-Problem/m-p/359830#M162614

If the rules in a combination are to be interpreted in order, top-down, as the Help says... then that should be it. Period. If a rule matches something, and a subsequent rule also matches... then the subsequent (linear / top-down interpretation) rule should take effect - rather than the first rule 'sticking' permanently regardless of what follows as stated in the Help.

Re: Community Feedback: Graphic Overrides

DGSketcher — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 15:06:57 GMT

Absolutely. Baffled from day one with this. The logic should run down stream. It shouldn't matter if on line 3 I turn my walls red, and on line 4 turn them blue, that is a user problem. As an example I assign sweeping values to pens and fills for a neutral base plan and then add additional rules to highlight relevant feature e.g. fire rated walls and user data faults e.g. dimensions on the wrong layer. It is just so wrong adding a new rule to the Combo and then having to drag it to the top of the list because the rule will be applied last!

Re: Community Feedback: Graphic Overrides

gavinNZz — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 20:14:02 GMT

What is one thing that you would definitely improve on the way Graphical Overrides currently work? GO should provide the ability to toggle visibility of an object. i.e. make it disappear entirely. This would turbocharge GO into a much more powerful tool that would allow the visibility of elements to be based on properties as opposed to just using layers. The renovation filter already does this in its own way so surely extending this to GO is not a leap too far?

Also further to this and an expansion on the renovation filter there should be a function that allows us to save multiple states of the same element. e.g. a wall in one state is 2m high while the same wall in another state is 3m high. Same element just 2 different states.

How many Graphic Override rules and combinations do you have in a typical project? 10-15

If you have many rules and combinations, how do you structure them? For example do you put numbering at the beginning of their names or add rules or combinations as separators? Just add folders to manage as you have with other attributes

How often do you need to manage rules or combinations? For example is there a BIM Manager who sets them up at the beginning of the project or do you need to edit them constantly? usually already set up in template to align with standard plan output
If you need to edit them constantly, what are the typical reasons? N/A

Re: Community Feedback: Graphic Overrides

Dendarii — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 06:00:57 GMT

Hi, some upgrades to GO's that would be great:

- Distinguish between 'Cut' and 'Uncut' line types (and add 'skin separator' lines option).

- Allow graphic override of individually selected elements (or group of selected elements).

- Add ability to 'Hide' element/s.

- Add ability to override individual lines (cut and uncut).

Thanks!

Re: Community Feedback: Graphic Overrides

abdelaziz — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 22:21:23 GMT

Hello

What is one thing that you would definitely improve on the way Graphical Overrides currently work?

1- Detect rules that are not used in graphic override combinations

2- Detect combinations of graphic overrides not used in views

3- Retrieve the selection criteria set saved from the "search to select" menu in the GO selection criteria and "in the nomenclature selection criteria" , we save criteria that is only used for a "find and selection" menu 🤔

4- please add additional option that allow to retrieve ZONE category colors in SURFACE Color 😭

5- in the case where I mask a 3d contour, it is impossible to redisplay it by another rule 😭, it would be nice to have a solution to this behavior

6- it would be nice to be able to use the GO on a worksheet generated by the Archicad model, any limit exists to be moved 😅

How many Graphic Override rules and combinations do you have in a typical project?

a hundred rules and around fifty combinations

If you have many rules and combinations, how do you structure them? For example do you put numbering at the beginning of their names or add rules or combinations as separators?

structure by type of deliverable yes a use number + name deliverable

How often do you need to manage rules or combinations? For example is there a BIM Manager who sets them up at the beginning of the project or do you need to edit them constantly?

as the project is constantly evolving from phase to phase and the client requirements are variable so we need to edit them constantly

If you need to edit them constantly, what are the typical reasons?

we work with several design offices with specific graphic requirements on different projects, and sometimes the graphic requirement comes from the project owner architect

Re: Community Feedback: Graphic Overrides

hevi — Sat, 29 Oct 2022 13:10:20 GMT

Graphic Overrides is intuitive as a concept and outstandingly potent as a feature. It is used to aid modelling, to analyse the design, to audit the model and to delivering information. It is obviously limiting to think of it as simply a way to override a certain view and base the development on how we currently use it. It need to be considered a integral part of the interface and developed to support not yet implemented workflows.

Anyways. I find that the current implementation presupposes a rather rigid workflow and becomes unwieldly as soon as one wants to make changes or use it in a more flexible way. There are especially two basic propositions of which the current implementation seem ignorant:

An identical graphic style is often used for multiple rules.

Currently graphic style is jointly defined with criteria to create a style which means that there is a one-to-one style-rule relationship. So if the same style is to be used for multiple rules it has to be defined multiple times. Apart from the obvious inefficiency it also makes overviewing hard and increases the risk for inconsistency especially when changes is done to the style.

Instead styles should be defined independently and just referenced in the rule, enabling a one-to-many style-rules relationship.

An identical sub-set of rules are often used for multiple combinations.

Combinations is what ultimately determines the view specific graphical reproduction of the model. Multiple views often has the same graphic base but with variations "on top" depending on different situations. For example QA processes which have a base 2D/3D representation of the model to which different aspects are highlighted across different views.

Currently combinations are nothing more then a list of rules. This means that if a set of rules is to be used for multiple combinations then the rules has to be added to each combination’s list and if any change is done for the base view it has to be done for each combination.

Instead a combination should be able to inherit the rules from another combination.

In addition to the efficiency gain this would also lend it self to organisation and open up to a interesting new approach where a tree structure is used as a interface for controlling which rules are applied. This would be useful when working actively in the modell.

Additional basic functionality:

A UI which gives a better overview and allows for efficient management.
- Ability to apply changes without closing the dialog.
- A pane for rules allowing drag and drop.
- Indication of relationship between styles-rules-combinations.
- Filter rules used in any combination and combinations assigned to any view.
- Add multiple rules to multiple combinations at once.
Criteria
- Harmonise across the application and make criteria sets globally available.
- Ability to list and select elements affected by rules.
- A constant effort to increase criteria domain - all element parts and data should be available.
Styles
- Override every category of graphical elements so for lines cut, contour, in front of projection plane, behind projection plane, hidden, symbol, etc.
- Override surface with zone category color.
- Override pen width.
- Typographic overrides.
- Scale dependent variants of rules. Additional variants could be a way to integrate/replace the functionality of pen sets.

Advanced functionality

Ability to have variable styles based on property value. Currently we can select elements and apply a constant style. A powerful function would be to select elements and then apply a style that varies based on a given parameter. So criteria would be used to select elements and then a relevant property would be selected based on which a part of the style would be varied. This would in many cases remove the need for creating multiple rules and it would also give easy and quick access to new insights when analysing the design.

Re: Community Feedback: Graphic Overrides

hevi — Sat, 29 Oct 2022 13:00:20 GMT

@gavinNZz wrote:
What is one thing that you would definitely improve on the way Graphical Overrides currently work? GO should provide the ability to toggle visibility of an object. i.e. make it disappear entirely. This would turbocharge GO into a much more powerful tool that would allow the visibility of elements to be based on properties as opposed to just using layers. The renovation filter already does this in its own way so surely extending this to GO is not a leap too far?

We desperately need better control of element visibility but I think that there is a risk to make things even messier if it is integrated in GO. Isn't there a distinction to be made between what we want in a view and how we want to view it? Perhaps a invisible style that keeps the element in the view but hides any graphical representation of it?

Re: Community Feedback: Graphic Overrides

DGSketcher — Sat, 29 Oct 2022 13:56:07 GMT

@hevi You may be interested in the visibility aspect I have posted in the other GS feedback thread... https://community.Graphisoft.com/t5/Design-forum/Component-Level-Design-Workflows-Conversation-amp-feedback/m-p/360413#M162722

Re: Community Feedback: Graphic Overrides

abdelaziz — Sat, 29 Oct 2022 18:44:52 GMT

here is an illustration that might suit your vision 😉

Re: Community Feedback: Graphic Overrides

scottjm — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 02:54:36 GMT

What is one thing that you would definitely improve on the way Graphical Overrides currently work?
- Folders for Rules and Graphical Overrides Combos
- Being able to read all the data in the model like the criteria available in schedules (GLD Params, all object properties etc)
- Completely hide an element
- Combo and Rule inherited hierarchy
- Override Cut Pens or Uncut lines independently
- Adjust Fill or Surface transparency but retain the original colour. eg to be able to 'Fade Out' elements in 2D and 3D.
- Set an element as transparent in a Section / Elevation without having to active Transparent Model display for the whole section/elevation.
- Override a specific element / component / attribute. Eg:
  - Override only Outside Wall Face
  - Override only material 'Glass' or everything except material 'Glass'
- Have labels able to read the overridden attribute that is being displayed. eg:
  - A wall has the Outside Wall Face overriden to PF01 - Dulux White on White, placing an associated label is able read that new surface name, not still read the old surface name.
- A mapping table ability, eg if you had a list of Properties, being able to list out a specific material override for each option, instead of having to make lots and lots of rules. Especially if you had a 100 or so different things you wanted to map this clutters up the rules very quickly! Would be especially useful for zones and setting up a list of mapping colours for the different space types.
How many Graphic Override rules and combinations do you have in a typical project?
- 40-50 Combos
- ~100 Rules
- If folders were provided we would have significantly more default GO's in our template.
If you have many rules and combinations, how do you structure them? For example do you put numbering at the beginning of their names or add rules or combinations as separators?
- Numbering to visual order, but this is very clumsy.
How often do you need to manage rules or combinations? For example is there a BIM Manager who sets them up at the beginning of the project or do you need to edit them constantly?
- BIM Manager does the bulk of the work setting up the template GO's these then only need limited adjusted by user on the project
- Users will also make additional GO's and rules to suit the project requirements, once they are setup and working they usually require limited modifications.
If you need to edit them constantly, what are the typical reasons?
- Frequent editing only required when troubleshooting their display.

Re: Community Feedback: Graphic Overrides

maro — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 08:42:15 GMT

Hi Ferenc,

Please, extend GO on Textures setting in Rules
1 - ON all textures (like it works now)
2 - OFF textures for selected Rules
3 - Grayscale texture for selected Rules
For example: ON for New Status like is asigned for Surface, OFF for Demolished Status - without Textures, and for Exist status please add ability switch to grayscale Textures

Thanks

Marek

Re: Community Feedback: Graphic Overrides

Camu — Fri, 04 Nov 2022 07:10:51 GMT

It would be really nice to be able to make graphic substitutions in the composite walls on the layer you want and not all the layers (material)

Re: Community Feedback: Graphic Overrides

Tibo_L-EDU — Wed, 14 Dec 2022 12:34:41 GMT

Rather than answer those specific questions, as I believe most things have been said, I'd like to add some other stuff:

1.
It would be useful to be able to have multiple GO's applied at once, that way you could set the line thickness of elements in one GO, and based on other criteria have a second GO apply color to a subsection of those elements. That way you don't have to manage multiple GO's that do the same thing just because the color is different.

2.
Following on that, what I described in '1.' is for the moment only really useful with line color and thickness, the same could be extended to fill_type -> foreground_pen -> background_pen
And maybe some others too

This is a very important one I think: the ability to add user defined properties to all element types: not just wall, slabs, roofs... but also things like dimensions. This would allow the properties to be used as a tag system that can be used in GO's to filter down elements which should have different looks in different views, but should be in one layer (because a layer should just be for making things visible/invisible, right now I split a single layer up in as much as 4 sub-layers in order to be able to get my GO's working as I want*).

4.
This one is more of a general design philosophy one that, if done well, fixes points 1-3:
take a whole lot of inspiration from CSS.
C-cascading -> points 1,2

SS-style sheet -> just GO in general
it's from web dev: things like variables are inherent to the system/ environment of CSS, if some of those could be brought into the GO system, it would fix point 3, and bring a ton of other QOL features into the GO system.

* As my account name implies, I'm still learning and I just found out about 'layer name contains…' which can help a lot with this. That said, using layers is really not an optimal way of organising all of your GO's