topic Re: Contour lines and the magic wand in Modeling

Contour lines and the magic wand

Anonymous — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 01:53:34 GMT

How do i change the heights of the contour lines?

I drew splines as cut lines, then clicked the magic wand on them but i cant find anything where it specifies the height.

The training guide says "change the heights of the contour lines"....not much help there

Re: Contour lines and the magic wand

Anonymous — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 02:54:53 GMT

Select a contour line (also know as ridge lines)
by clicking on the line not a node, activate the
Mesh tool, click on the line and a pet pallet comes up
where you select the elevation button (the one with
the letter Z at the top of a vertical line), a dialogue box
then appears where you assign a mesh point height value
and check the button that says "Apply to all".
Peter Devlin

Re: Contour lines and the magic wand

Anonymous — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 03:07:35 GMT

When i click on the line, the edit box pops up, but it doesnt have the z option you mentioned. Maybe i created the contour wrong. Heres how i got to the point im at...........

1. i drew a square mesh and assigned a 50' depth
2. i drew a spline from 1 edge to another edge of the mesh
3. i applied the magic wand to the spline

Is that the way a contour line is created?

When i click on the line, the original spline nodes appear, and if i click it again, several more appear.

Thanks

Re: Contour lines and the magic wand

Anonymous — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 03:32:55 GMT

Yes that is the way to create contour lines.
You can create contour lines by magic wanding
grouped lines, polylines, splines, etc.

What should be done after the magic wand tracing operation
is to select the drafting elements and delete them
or assign them to a hidden layer.

Now you can select the mesh contour lines.
Peter Devlin

Re: Contour lines and the magic wand

Anonymous — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 03:48:12 GMT

I cant seem to find a point on the line that activates the box you speak of. All im getting is the one that has mirror, copy, add node, move node, etc.

All i get while hovering over the line is a check mark on the nodes, and the delta symbol inbetween nodes. Both bring up the same box.

Re: Contour lines and the magic wand

Anonymous — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 04:05:25 GMT

When you say delta symbol do you mean the mercedes cursor form ?

The pet pallet I am referring to has only five items and the elevate button
is on the first line next to the insert node button.

Peter Devlin

Re: Contour lines and the magic wand

Anonymous — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 04:11:38 GMT

Yes, the mercedes symbol.

After clicking on the line in about 20 different places, i finally got the pallete your talking about, but i must have entered invalid info in because my pc locked up when i tried to go to the 3d window.

After restarting ive clicked on the line about 100 times in different places and cant get that pallete to show up any more.

Re: Contour lines and the magic wand

Anonymous — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 04:21:59 GMT

When you say "cant get that pallet to show up any more"
do you mean that you can not get any pet pallet to show,
or do you mean you get the larger pet pallet that you get
when you click on the edge of a mesh,
or are you referring to the dialogue box with the elevation numeric field ?
Peter Devlin

Re: Contour lines and the magic wand

Anonymous — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 04:26:43 GMT

The pallete im getting has the following options

-add new node to spline
-drag
-rotate
-mirror
-multiply

The pallete that has the z option is very elusive and has only appeared once in about 300 clicks

Re: Contour lines and the magic wand

Anonymous — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 04:50:34 GMT

If i click on the edge of the main square mesh, the correct pallete shows up everytime. It just wont show no matter where i click on a spline

Re: Contour lines and the magic wand

Anonymous — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 04:51:40 GMT

"-add new node to spline" should not be there because meshes
do not have splines. All contour lines are composed of straight segments.
You must mean the symbol for add new node,
or you are talking about the text of a help tag in which case you
have selected a spline which should have been deleted or hidden.
Make sure you don't have any splines left in the mesh area.
Try selecting the contour but not activating the mesh tool and see
if you can get the elevate button to show.
Peter Devlin

Re: Contour lines and the magic wand

Anonymous — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 05:20:53 GMT

I guess i dont know what is what. I draw a spline, apply the magic wand, and im left with 2 entities on the same layer, im assuming the one with less nodes is the original spline and the one with 3x as many nodes is the aledged contour line. Regardless of which one i have highlighted i still get the same pallete options.

I also noticed the wand has 2 modes, 1 with a black dot, and one with a white dot. Whats up with that? And when i do the wand, should i be directly on the spline, or inbetween 2 of them?

Re: Contour lines and the magic wand

Anonymous — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 05:42:05 GMT

You must get rid of those splines. They are interfering with your ability
to edit the mesh. If you don't want to change their layer
and don't want to delete them then select all of them by going to
Edit->Find and Select choose spline as the element type and hit select
and then drag all the splines out of the area of the mesh a known distance.

The Magic wand has three cursor forms, the dark dot on a stick,
the white flag on a stick, and the sparkler on a stick.

The dark dot means your are touching a node or hotspot.
The white flag means you are touching an edge similar to the mercedes.
The sparkler means your are not touching any thing but may be inside
a closed polygon that the wand can detect the edges of.

For the present purpose you should move the wand over the spline
until the white flag appears then click.
Peter Devlin

Re: Contour lines and the magic wand

Anonymous — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 13:52:32 GMT

I started this morning with a fresh mind. Thought maybe i had the wrong tool active when wanding so i activated the mesh tool, wanded the splines, and still got the same result.

Theres nothing i would love more than to delete the un needed lines but since they are on the same layer, i dont know which is which.

If you want to try to talk me through this on the phone send me a pm and ill give you my number

Thanks for all your effort

Re: Contour lines and the magic wand

Anonymous — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 14:17:59 GMT

OK, im getting closer. I finally have solid meshes, but they are in the form of 'steps' instead of sloping to each other

And the ones that are below the main square are hidden (the main square mesh was not subtracted)

Re: Contour lines and the magic wand

Djordje — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 15:03:56 GMT

thebatmovile wrote:
OK, im getting closer. I finally have solid meshes, but they are in the form of 'steps' instead of sloping to each other

This is because you created new meshes with each magic wand click, instead of the points - and contours - on an existing one.

1. Do the mesh outline
2. make sure the countours are overlaid
3. Set magic wand to the outline tracing that you need - probably not linear elements?
4. WITH THE MESH TOOL ACTIVE AND THE MESH SELECTED magic wand click WITH MERCEDES CURSOR on each of the contours
5. If you can't find the Mercedes cursor, that means that your contours have too many nodes, which is not good
6. WITH THE CHEKMARK CURSOR, input the elevation of each contour, check the "apply to all nodes" box
7. It should be OK

Before plowing on, search for terrain modeling and meshes ... this procedure has been explained at least 50 times already, with screen shots, etc ...

Re: Contour lines and the magic wand

Anonymous — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 15:07:52 GMT

I think you are just missing one step, but I'll start from the beginning.
first draw your mesh, nothing else there, then draw your lines, splines...etc. to represent your contours. Now go select the mesh and activate the mesh tool, fastest way is to right-click on the edge of the mesh and use the select & activate tool option. Use the magic wand on the contours you have drawn WHILE THE MESH IS SELECTED, as each one is created you will be able to enter the height. It sounds to me like you were using the magic wand without the mesh being selected so AC didn't know you were trying to modify it. Remember that we if your contours go all the way out to the edges, the changing the heights using the select all option does not affect the two points on the mesh perimeter, but make sure you don't select all when adjusting the perimeter nodes, or the entire edge of your mesh will adjust to that height. Also, if you are using curves or spines for your contours, you may need to adjust the magic wand settings to get things right.

Re: Contour lines and the magic wand

Anonymous — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 15:46:19 GMT

OK, between Djordje and Scott R's instructions i think i have it figured out. Now to get some practice.

Thanks everyone!!!

Re: Contour lines and the magic wand

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 18:26:13 GMT

Do somebody mind if I ask a question about The Magic Wand?

This is a followup to the discussion on http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=13978

Anyway, I used the instructions you gave "thebatmovile", but when i want to heighten just some parts of a mesh, all of the points gets heighten.

It's the points which I illustrated with a red circle that I DON'T want to heighten. Am I attacking the problem the wrong way? Or can't I do this way with the meshtool?
________
LAMBORGHINI ESTOQUE HISTORY

Re: Contour lines and the magic wand

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 20:31:22 GMT

I think the point that some may be missing here, is that there should only be one mesh, not a separate mesh for each contour.

Create a single mesh over the entire area concerned, select that mesh and magic wand the contour lines / splines. Then, when all contours are visble as ridges on your mesh (albeit still on the same plane) with mesh selected (and mesh tool active), click on a contour and select the "elevate mesh point" from pet palette, put in your elevation figure, and check the "apply to all" button, then OK. This will raise the contour to the height you want.

Hope this helps to clarify things.