topic Custom Distorsion - Fill Patterns in Documentation

Custom Distorsion - Fill Patterns

Lucian Laculeanu — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 11:26:40 GMT

Here is something that is bugging me for years and I never got to raise this question due to automation of my brain. Well...today something broke and I am raising the hand.
When choosing custom distorsion for fills, the arms are defaulting to the real dimension of 3' 3/8" (or 1 meter for the sane part of the world). Why is that a thing?
Since all parameters of any fill are in archicad, could this tool just grab the "PATTERN UNIT" as the measurable distance and display 1, and let me scale much more easy to what I need from there?
Why do I have to do crazy math (aka how many patterns I have in 3' 3/8" and how many I have to achieve...) or simply (more often then none) winging it and fiddle with the damn thing until I get a visual match?
Is that hard to implement?
I found no discussion on this, which tells me that something may be wrong with me or the way I do things. Can you customize that and I am all out of touch (getting older takes me there...)?

Operating system used: Mac Intel-based Tahoe 26.5.2

Re: Custom Distorsion - Fill Patterns

AllanP — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 00:48:34 GMT

When you code an object in GDL, the base unit is in meters.

When you code an addon, the base unit is meters.

The unit is a meter for the program.

Lazy programming has not added the pattern size to the custom distortion because;

you can change from pattern "A" to pattern "B" that may have different pattern sizes, and then that would change the distortion handles,

so they just stick to percentage distortion based on the unit size of the program.

its very logical for people who work in metric.

It is annoying, but it is logical for a lazy programmer to choose percentage over constant variables(and just ignore the problems that imperial units bring).

I don't know if this helps.

P.S.

if you change the working units to metric(meters)

So to scale the fill to;

50% when using imperial, type "0.5" for the length/distance,

200% when using imperial, type "2" for the length/distance, etc...

then change back to imperial, it makes it easier

https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Project-data-BIM/Metric-Imperial/td-p/228025

Re: Custom Distorsion - Fill Patterns

Lucian Laculeanu — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:12:13 GMT

Allan, thank you for your reply.
You pointed out some interesting things and I have to apologize if I seem to be contradicting you or be negative in any way. Just facts.
No coding is unit dependent. A unit of 1 is 1 regardless of what you are defining it as, so the base of 1m could be just their reference in the studio, giving that in Hungary they use metric, but the software is also sold in countries with imperial units for quite hefty prices I may say... For the price I expect to have some ears pointed out towards this "player base" not to be expected to live with it.
I will leave the laziness of the coder to others. My theories point more towards corporate...

Even if that would be the case, there is nothing logical to it. It is true that is easy to do math in base of 10, but still math for conversion regardless.
Don't want to toot my own horn here, but if the brackets would be 1 unit (pattern) then conversions would be faster mentally and universal. That was my point. If the user is changing patterns, then it is the user's responsibility to reset and resize per use. I fail to see how that is more intricate than today's procedure.

I don't even know why I'm raising the question when everyone seems to be used with a status quo like living with herpes...
At least I said my peace.

Re: Custom Distorsion - Fill Patterns

Lingwisyer — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 02:40:07 GMT

Never thought about it previously since I work in metric, but thinking about it, it is odd that the handles are a static size based on metric rather than unitless and independant of your zoom factor and scale. It is not like the handles actually reference the size of the fill...

Re: Custom Distorsion - Fill Patterns

AllanP — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 03:36:24 GMT

Programs like Autocad and Microstation are unit-less,

But

Archciad stores its data in metric, some people say mm, but the API documentation always uses meters as the length unit,

and Revit stores its data in decimal feet.

but your real problem is really annoying...

Thought experiment;

I place fill with;

pattern "A" pattern size 3inch by 3inch,

and I want to stretch it to 2inch by 4inch,

I then change the fill to;

pattern "B" pattern size 2inch by 4inch,

Do I want the patten to then match the original stretch, or do i want it to be a percentage stretch?

Should Archicad add a "Stretch pattern by unit size" option?

what other options would you want for adjusting fill pattern size?

is that already in the wish list, or in the development roadmap?