topic Need urgent help; Changing Working Units in Modeling

Need urgent help; Changing Working Units

Anonymous — Fri, 26 May 2023 10:51:49 GMT

I did a very stupid thing. I'm halfway through my project, and only now I realised that I used default working units - milimeters - and actually need centimeters (after system reinstall).
I have many stories, so I can not just change working units because when I do so, everything will resize.

Is there a way to change the working units without actually resizing the model?

To make it simple;
I wanted to have a 400cm high column, but got 400mm high column. If I just change the working unit to centimeters the column will resize to 40cm. So I want to change the working units, to centimeter but so that 400(mm) stays 400(cm).

Please tell me if there is a way!
If yes, please say how it can be done. If not, a week of work is useless.

Thank you.

Re: Need urgent help; Changing Working Units

Link — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 01:21:04 GMT

Actually the model is not resizing at all. 400mm is 40cm. ArchiCAD is just telling you what you've modeled in the working units you've selected.

You actually do want it to resize though and while you can resize in the x and y direction, there's no way to quickly resize in the z direction (height).

So what you have is a model that is 1/10th it's real size. You can resize the model, but you'll have to do it in two steps:

1. The x and y direction, which is quite easy:

Put an 'All Floors' marquee (the thick one) around your entire model, making sure all layers are on and everything is unlocked. Then use the resize command (Ctrl/Cmd+K) and check all the options. Uncheck 'Define Graphically' and set the percentage to 1000%.

2. The Z direction, which means you'll have to select everything and add a zero to the height of each element. To make this slightly easier you can select a lot of similar items at once and change the height of each group in turn. You'll also need to make sure your story heights are appropriately sized.

So it's not the easiest process, and ArchiCAD should really have a 'resize in all directions' command, but at least it beats starting again.

Good luck.

Cheers,
Link.

Re: Need urgent help; Changing Working Units

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 01:32:02 GMT

Yes, this I knew myself.
I have so many objects, especially different elevated slabs. This would make too much mess if I started to change them manually.
I can't believe that there is no way to resize in all directions.

Thank you anyway.

PS When I think about it, probably there is a code somewhere in *.pln file which determines the working unit...If it could only be changed...

Re: Need urgent help; Changing Working Units

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 14:56:39 GMT

estugarda wrote:
When I think about it, probably there is a code somewhere in *.pln file which determines the working unit...If it could only be changed...

I don't believe so. ArchiCAD has always (at least since version 3) worked in floating point math not integer based units, and the models are made to (virtual) real world dimensions. As I understand it there is an internal assumption of one meter as the standard unit of measure, but I expect that this is deeply woven into the program and is not simply a "working unit" that could be altered in one place.

On the other hand it does seem that X, Y and Z resizing would be a nice feature if easily implemented. I'm not sure if it would work consistently with library parts though since there are some complexities in the way they operate in the Z direction. Of course, now that I think about it, I can't recall how parametrically constrained parts respond to a resize in plan either.