topic Re: Complex Profile Outline Disappears in Modeling

Complex Profile Outline Disappears

Anonymous — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 21:56:47 GMT

I edited the foundation wall complex profile in the complex profile manager. Afterwards, the outline of the foundation wall disappeared in my building sections - just the fill remains. What did I do wrong to make the outline disappear?

Re: Complex Profile Outline Disappears

Link — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:29:37 GMT

My first guess is that you have exactly the same wall duplicated in the same location.

Are you 100% there's only one wall there? As a test, maybe delete it in that section and then rebuild from model, if necessary. You can always undo it, if there was indeed only one.
Cheers,
Link.

Re: Complex Profile Outline Disappears

Anonymous — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:50:14 GMT

I tried deleting it --- there's just one wall there. I don't have a good grasp of the custom profile manager, I'm guessing I made a mistake in editing the profile. It seems like you can't just go in and make a bunch of changes - what are the rules when it comes to modifying complex profiles?

Re: Complex Profile Outline Disappears

Link — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 23:24:58 GMT

There's essentially two ways to edit a complex profile IME:

1. Edit the original profile: Even if you have a profile selected you can choose to edit the original profile by selecting it from the Choose Profile flyout in the Profile Manager, or via Design> Complex Profiles> Capture Profile of Selection. Once you're done editing it you can choose to Store the Profile (overriding the original) and/or Apply it back to the Selection (although this is unecessary because the selected wall will automatically update to reflect the change in it's profile once you leave the Profile Editor window).

2. Edit the Profile of the Selection: By Capturing the Element's Profile, you can edit a profile that will appeared titled as 'Custom'. Once you're done editing it you can either just Store it as a new profile and/or apply it back to the selection.

The usability error IMHO is that if we select a specific profile in the Profile Manager, then use the Apply to Selection button, the wall lists the profile as 'Custom Profile', whereas it should list it specifically as the applied profile.

Cheers,
Link.

Re: Complex Profile Outline Disappears

Anonymous — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 09:17:56 GMT

Link wrote:
My first guess is that you have exactly the same wall duplicated in the same location.

Are you 100% there's only one wall there? As a test, maybe delete it in that section and then rebuild from model, if necessary. You can always undo it, if there was indeed only one.
Cheers,
Link.

To jump in here - If you rebuild from the model the undo que is lost.

Re: Complex Profile Outline Disappears

David Maudlin — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 13:15:57 GMT

When I want to check to see if I have 2 walls in the same location, I go to the 2D Window (Plan) and drag the wall, to see if another wall appears in the original location. Then I can simply Undo to move the wall back if there is no duplicate.

HTH

David

Re: Complex Profile Outline Disappears

TomWaltz — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 13:47:48 GMT

To me, it sounds like in the Profile Editor you accidentally copy/pasted your outline fill on top of itself. I'd check there to see if you can delete one.

Re: Complex Profile Outline Disappears

Anonymous — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:54:54 GMT

TomWaltz wrote:
To me, it sounds like in the Profile Editor you accidentally copy/pasted your outline fill on top of itself. I'd check there to see if you can delete one.

I checked the custom profile and it is just 2 fills (footing & foundation wall), so no doubles.

In the custom profile manager, I hit edit custom profile for the problem-wall. If I click on the fill of one part of the wall and drag it, I can see that the outline of the fill is continuous, except at the edges that hit the other fill. Along these edges, the fill outline doesn't appear. Is this related?

Also, when I open the Wall Selection Settings Window for the wall, I notice that there is a cut-fill background pen, set to white. Is it possible that this fill background is sitting on-top of the outline of the fill?

Currently, when I edit a custom profile, I go into Custom Profile Manager, select the profile, and click edit profile. Then I stretch the profile around to get the profile I want, move the hot-spots to the new corner locations, and move the wall opening reference lines and stretch reference lines. Then I hit store profile and rebuild the section from the model. That's when the outline of the wall disappears.

One odd thing is that if I take a foundation wall with a key between the footing and the foundation wall and I stretch the key, point by point, so that there is no longer any key (stacking all of the earlier points on top of each other, so that the line segments disappear), when I store the profile and rebuild the section from the model, ArchiCAD crashes!

But, back to the earlier issue; I've also tried to modify another wall that is working properly and the outline of the wall also disappears in section, after I modify it (same problem). I'm not sure at what point in the modification I'm making the mistake (even when I'm not stacking points/line segments as mentioned above).

I must be misunderstanding something about how one builds and modifies custom profiles???

Re: Complex Profile Outline Disappears

Anonymous — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:41:09 GMT

To try to find the cause of the problem, I made one change at a time in the custom profile manager.

I added a ledge, I moved the stretch control lines, I stretched the outline of the foundation wall so that there was no longer a key in the foundation wall.
Everything was fine (no loss of outline or crashing), until. . . .

I moved a point in the outline of the footing to start to remove the key in the footing (by straightening-out the outline where it jogged-in at the key). The first point I moved was just a shift, and that was okay. But --- the second point I moved, I placed directly on the outline of the foundation wall above.

When I rebuild from model at this point, ArchiCAD crashes!!!!

?????? HELP ??????

Re: Complex Profile Outline Disappears

Anonymous — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:46:36 GMT

Here's a screen-shot - you can see the key has been removed from the foundation wall, and is starting to be removed from the footing. The 'W'-shape is the key in the footing, being removed by stretching the points/lines in the custom profile manager. The center-point of the 'W' is almost touching the bottom edge of the foundation-wall above, but not quite touching. When I move a point of the 'W' directly on the bottom edge of the foundation wall above, ArchiCAD crashes in re-build.

thanks to all for your help

Re: Complex Profile Outline Disappears

Anonymous — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 19:14:21 GMT

okay, so I think I figured it out . . . . if there's a tiny tiny gap between the two fills, then the fill outline doesn't go to white.

Is that how it should work - you leave a little gap between fills in complex profiles?

Re: Complex Profile Outline Disappears

Link — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 22:54:35 GMT

Jacob wrote:
okay, so I think I figured it out . . . . if there's a tiny tiny gap between the two fills, then the fill outline doesn't go to white.

Is that how it should work - you leave a little gap between fills in complex profiles?

That was going to be my next suggestion actually. Typically in the Profile Editor, overlapping fills join to make one fill, even in the case of fills copied and pasted on top of each other.

However there are some odd cases such as this one and the one here, where the complex profile is not drawn correctly and it freaks out the section view of it. I would think this is a bug.

Anyway, looks like you've found the solution now.

Sorry troakie if you lost any information. My mistake - I should have tested that first, or suggested a cut instead of a delete.

Cheers,
Link.

Re: Complex Profile Outline Disappears

Anonymous — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 23:26:26 GMT

Link,

thanks for your help!

Re: Complex Profile Outline Disappears

Karl Ottenstein — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 00:40:39 GMT

Jacob wrote:
Is that how it should work - you leave a little gap between fills in complex profiles?

No. Only leave a gap if there is supposed to be a physical air space in the extrusion. Leaving 'tiny' gaps results in increased polygons, slowing down the model, and inaccurate component schedules.

To prevent fills from merging, and to maintain fill linework, you must use different fill names. If you want the same fill appearance, as in a footing and stem wall, you need to duplicate one of the fills and give it a new name. Having a unique name is enough to cause the fills to not merge and the lines between them to show...and all without any additional 3D polygon creation. 😉

Cheers,
Karl

Re: Complex Profile Outline Disappears

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 16:33:23 GMT

Sorry troakie if you lost any information. My mistake - I should have tested that first, or suggested a cut instead of a delete.

Cheers,
Link.

Not a problem - was just pointing this out for others benefit, it's very easy to inadvertently lose work with this 'feature'!