topic Re: Design Options made almost everything pink/magenta in Modeling

Design Options made almost everything pink/magenta

MrSoleil — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 09:57:02 GMT

Created two design options, saved the second one under a separate folder to keep it and accepted the first one. Some of the elements now are magenta and it's not the graphic override or anything like that. Weirdly enough, other elements weren't affected. It seems to have affected only some stories. Can anyone guess what this is?

Re: Design Options made almost everything pink/magenta

James B — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 16:55:48 GMT

This may be because the stair is "invalid", because of a top link that the stair can't match - so it can turn pink in those situations.

https://help.graphisoft.com/AC/28/INT/index.htm#t=_AC28_Help%2F140_UserInterfaceDialogBoxes%2F140_UserInterfaceDialogBoxes-13.htm

Re: Design Options made almost everything pink/magenta

MrSoleil — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 17:34:51 GMT

No stair involved here. Just profiled columns and beams/walls.

Re: Design Options made almost everything pink/magenta

James B — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 18:29:39 GMT

Then it could be because those elements have a missing design option if yes then they’ll also turn pink due to this WE checkbox and control. To let you know something is invalid.

Re: Design Options made almost everything pink/magenta

Jan Millan — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 20:30:06 GMT

I saw a similar case recently where this situation occurred after using “Accept and Merge” in a Teamwork file.

The way Design Options work, when you "Accept & Merge" one design option, Archicad automatically deletes elements from the unaccepted options within the same Option Set. However, if some of those elements are not reserved at the time of the merge (in a Teamwork file), they may not be properly deleted. Instead, they remain in the project as "orphaned" because the user did not have the element reserved and therefore did not have permission to delete it. These elements can then be designated as "invalid elements" which would explain why they appear magenta. This color is a visual indicator from the Work Environment that typically signals something is missing or corrupted.

To confirm if your issue is related to invalid elements, I recommend going into the Work Environment settings and navigating to User Preference Schemes > On-Screen Options. Temporarily uncheck "Use uniform color to highlight invalid elements." If the magenta color disappears when you return to the model, that would support the theory above.

If they are indeed invalid elements and you don’t need them; You can reserve all and then select and delete them manually. If there are too many to select manually, you can use Find & Select. There is an option under ID and Categories > Design Option Missing that may help you select all of them at once.

Re: Design Options made almost everything pink/magenta

MrSoleil — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 11:47:48 GMT

Thank you,

They were the elements that are needed, exactly the option I wanted to keep in the file as default.

Your diagnosis was correct, thank you! Will keep that in mind for the future workflow and advice about it to the team.

Thank you again!

Re: Design Options made almost everything pink/magenta

Jan Millan — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 16:58:07 GMT

I haven’t attempted to recreate your situation on my end. But I can offer a possible path forward based on what I’d personally try in this situation.

Select one of the invalid elements you want to keep.
Open its settings and navigate to the "Classification and Properties" tab. Under the Design Options section, check if you can assign it to the Main Model or to a valid Design Option. If that field is editable, changing the assignment might resolve the issue.
If it's already showing as part of the Main Model (or if the field is locked):
Try creating a temporary Design Option Set and a new Design Option within it. Once created, assign the invalid elements to this new Design Option. In theory, this should pull them out of the "orphaned" state caused by the accept & merge that was performed without having the elements reserved.
After reassignment:
Reserve all elements, and then use Accept and Merge on the temporary Design Option to bring those elements back into the Main Model in their normal state.

Let me know how it goes if you try this, or if you discover another solution, as it may help others running into the same issue in the future.

Re: Design Options made almost everything pink/magenta

Patrick M — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 20:06:43 GMT

I was just going to post that this should be addressed, adn figure maybe I don't ALWAYS need to start a new post.
...
it is a bit of a pitfall using design options in teamwork projects.
you need to reserve all. There is no notification that you are about to merge and don't have things reserved. And if you happen to have the foresight to reserve all, there is no notification that you DIDNT reserve all because others in the project have things reserved.
...
this comes up in every project using design options. There is always something that got missed in the accept and merge. Typically it's a reservation issue; but it seems to happen sometimes with locked elements or locked layers.
I totally understand WHY it is happening. I don't understand WHY Archicad seems completely void of any fail safes to prevent it from happening.

There are quite a few cases where Archicad should just give us warnings... pasting stuff from a file, how about a "you are about to create xyz attributes, do you wish to proceed?" going to accept and merge to main model, how about a "you do not have all elements in the selected design option reserved, do you wish to proceed?" or delete and replace attributes... similar warning?

Re: Design Options made almost everything pink/magenta

Lingwisyer — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 01:21:04 GMT

There is a serious lack of Not Reserved notifications, in cases of interconnected systems like this, and for pop-out dialogues that allow you to make modifications, then tell you "sorry, you have not reserved this, please close this dialogue to reserve it, and unfortunately we do not give refunds on your time spent making modifications"...

Re: Design Options made almost everything pink/magenta

Laszlo Nagy — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 06:37:41 GMT

Guys, make wishes for these new features:

https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Wishlist/idb-p/wishlist

Re: Design Options made almost everything pink/magenta

Lingwisyer — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 08:46:22 GMT

Teamwork wish:https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Wishlist/Teamwork-Reservation-of-Interconnected-Elements/idi-p/705511#M4294

Exclude Attributes wish: https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Wishlist/Attribute-Palette-Exclude-Associated/idi-p/703747