topic Re: Remove ghost elements from my model in Modeling

Remove ghost elements from my model

Adel2 — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 22:29:19 GMT

I changed the story height on one of my stories to a fairly low value. I then got some errors that some elements didn't have a height anymore (or something like that). Now it seems like some of these elements show up in my beam-schedules. But they have no length and can't be selected in 2D or 3D (I have tried selecting both from the schedule and with find and select). It's no layer or renovation status issue. I think it's related to the story change, but might be something else as well.

Anyone with an idea of how these can be deleted? I don't need the elements, but I don't want them to show up in my schedule (and rather not use workarounds to get them not to show up there).

This is what it looks like in the schedule:

Operating system used: Windows

Re: Remove ghost elements from my model

Laszlo Nagy — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 23:39:20 GMT

I would try making all Layers visible and displaying everything in 3D. Then, I would select the Beam tool, select all Beams, then use the "Show Selection" context menu command to show only Beams in 3D.

In the Work Environment Dialog (On-Screen Options page) there is a checkbox that lets you display invalid elements with a specified color. The default color is a magenta-like color. Hopefully, you will see those invalid Beams highlightred with meganta so you can find them and delete them.

Re: Remove ghost elements from my model

Adel2 — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 07:39:39 GMT

Thanks for the reply. I made some more investigating and don't think it's related to the change in story height. I can't select the elements in 3D. I believe it's something in the schedule itself because the elements are related.

This is how the schedule rules are defined:

In the schedule, if I change the building material of a object that exists with a length a object with no length will automatically change it's building material as well. But they have different IDs.

For example, if I change the material on this beam:

This one will change automatically:

An easy fix would be to only show elements with a beam length greater then 0. But that doesn't seem possible from what I can see.

Re: Remove ghost elements from my model

Barry Kelly — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 08:26:15 GMT

Can you show your criteria?

I am wondering if you are scheduling both beam and beam segments.

Barry.

Re: Remove ghost elements from my model

Erwin Edel — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 09:00:38 GMT

I suspect the same. We have a pretty convoluted quantity take off schedule for this reason. Excluding a lot of 'sub-elements' for beams, columns, rails, stairs etc

Re: Remove ghost elements from my model

Adel2 — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 07:52:00 GMT

Thanks for your reply — it helped me track down the error after some further investigation. The beam definition was correct, but when I added a layers definition, the strange elements appeared. I had forgotten to add brackets around the layer criteria, like this:

Now it works