ArchiTerra 2.0

[Jacek]

I am trying to create a site plan with ArchiTerra 2.0 newly released, and am runnning into problems with the way the tools are working as described in the manual versus the way they work for me, or don't work would be more apt to say.
Has anyone had any experience with this API?
Tried the website and there are no links to tips/FAQ's or updates.
Jacek

[Jacek]

Fabrizio,
thank you for such a rapid response to my questions. I have started building the site again last night, following your advice very carefuly. It is a very large site and I should have it done today. I assume that once I have all the polylines (contours) drawn, selected one by one and assigned them an elevation value using the ArchiTerra Contour Lines Tool, then I would like to build the terrain.
The manual is very sketchy about this next step.
I assume that I will select ALL polylines and then klik on the Contour Lines Tool to get the Settings. Set the elevation range for my site ie.; Start Level (can this be more than zero, or a negative elevation?), and Final Level ( in my case 160.00' top of the site) and the Equidistance -this I understand as the secondary contour lines between the ones defined allready by the polylines, am I correct?

Will that get me to the final site model?
Is there another procedure to generate the model?
Can one add on to the generated model more contour lines; either below or above the original elevation contours?

Thank you for walking me thru this process. I have done it a couple of times before with poor results and would like to be able to 'get it right.'

Jacek
aka Giacinto

[Fabrizio Diodati]

Dear friends,

I already privately answered to Jacek (because he directly send me an e-mail too).
I kinldy suggest everybody to choose if you want to receive technical assistance on this forum or privately by me otherwise it will be a real nightmare (at least for me!) to reply twice to each question.
Let me suggest this simple rule (of course, I'm talking about Cigraph products): if you ask for suggestion/help here I will answer here, if you directly send me an e-mail I will reply to your e-mail address.

In order to reply also here to the kind Jacek question, please read below my answer:


Dear Jacek,

please let me better clarify the role played by the contour lines in the ArchiTerra environment.

1. You can use the contour lines to describe the terrain morphology. In this case you have to do what you did: draw a polyline and transform it into a ArchiTerra contour line (points and constraints)

2. You can "calculate" the contour line in order to better highlight the terrain morphology. In this case you have to select the terrain and then click on the contour line icon: here you can define start, end levels and equidistance. But those last are a "consequence" of the terrain morphology not a tool to modify the terrain!

You will never get this last dialog (elevation range and equidistance) by selecting contour lines! The level must be defined when you transform the AC polyline into contour line not after.

This is the suggest work flow:

1. draw the contour line by using the ArchiCAD polyline tool
2. select the polylines one by one (or select the polylines that have the same level) and transform them into ArchiTerra contour lines: and when the dialog window appears, type here the contour line level (also negative values!)
3. define the terrain perimeter by using the Outline tool
4. build the terrain

That's all!

Friendly
Fabrizio

[Jacek]

Fabrizio,
Thank you again, another step forward.!
I have succesfuly built the site.
Working on the road now. The manual says to "draw and group together a series of lines, arcs and splines.."
That, as you wrote earlier, will not work, one must select a single line only, makes for a slow and very protracted process.
Particularly on a larger, more complex site. Klick on the OK button, not the Buldozer button on the left, that takes several times longer to generate the road section.
-Make that several, several times longer...

Once again thanks for your instructions, without which I would not be able to get on as far as I did.

I am approaching some intersections -roads and plateaux, are there any secrets there?

OK, I have just discovered that selecting a polyline that exceeds a certain length, in my case ±300' produced no results, when the line was shortened to 266' -it worked!?
Same with selecting more than three short lines and trying to build a section of road with them -no luck. Tried with two short ones and it did!

Will keep you updated on my further experiences.

Persevering,
Jacek
( Hyacinth, Jacinth, Giacinto, Jacinto..)

P.S. Here is another one; when selecting lines close to the edge of the site thehelp window pops up instructing that the selected tools/elements won't work. Workaround is to select one line at the time and the site, then it works...

[Fabrizio Diodati]

No.
You misurderstood my words (probably my English is getting worst!).
I admitted that the manual is wrong because it says you can use splines too!
To build a road you can use an ArchiCAD Polyline or a set of connected/grouped lines and arcs!

It should be a nightmare to build a road segment per segment!!!

At this point I suppose the better solution should be that you sent me your PLN file (with the roads middlelines already inserted) and I will convert them into Road: this only to better understand what is wrong...

Friendly

[Jacek]

Fabrizio wrote:
No.
..
At this point I suppose the better solution should be that you sent me your PLN file (with the roads middlelines already inserted) and I will convert them into Road: this only to better understand what is wrong...

Friendly

Fabrizio,
I will see if it will be possible to send you the file, at this stage the model is a +42MB file. Becouse of that, I think it works so sloooow, it stretching the limits of my newly upgraded computer!
I was able to finish all of the roads last night, they do not all show on the model, some of them (most, actually) are burried under the terrain -need some 'tweaking'
Thanks for staying with me on this,
Jacek

[Fabrizio Diodati]

Dear Jacek,

42Mb file? Does it includes also your project (I mean the building created by using ArchiCAD) or only the terrain?
If it contains only the terrain you are really doing something of wrong and I need to see the file in order to help you.
If you delete from the file everything that doesn't regard the terrain and you save it as PLN file maybe it will be less big (try to compress it).

"I was able to finish all of the roads last night, they do not all show on the model, some of them (most, actually) are burried under the terrain -need some 'tweaking' "

Are you sure that you already elaborated these roads (by clicking on the escavator button)?

Let me know,
friendly
Fabrizio

[Jacek]

Fabrizio,
In response:

42Mb file? Does it includes also your project (I mean the building created by using ArchiCAD) or only the terrain?
If it contains only the terrain you are really doing something of wrong and I need to see the file in order to help you.

-Well as far as I can tell, the file contains the minimal 2-D information imported ( from DXF file, contours only and roads) the original DXF file is 20MB (!) -as received.

"I was able to finish all of the roads last night, they do not all show on the model, some of them (most, actually) are burried under the terrain -need some 'tweaking' "

Are you sure that you already elaborated these roads (by clicking on the escavator button)?

-Ha! So that what the excavator button does... I assumed that it was an alternative method of generating the road once the 'lines, arcs and polylines are selected, grouped and the terrain selected'. I I guess I need to go back and grade them! OK.


Let me know,
friendly
Fabrizio

-I have sent you the file privetely earlier, you probably have it allready. I sent the original file and a tiff file of the generated model, so that you can see what I was able to 'sweat out' I have trimmed the site to the most relevant area around the building area.
-I know that it is still a huge file/site, but I need to show the ridge beyond and above the building pad and ±30-40' below it. that leaves me with about 260' of elevation and a fairly wide area of coverage.

-And now back to the road plowing...
Jacek

[Fabrizio Diodati]

Dear Jacek,

I'm really sorry but I'm not in the office so I will cehck your file on next Monday morning.
So you started from DXF file: are you sure it contains only 2D info?
Because if it contains 3D polylines (that contains the Z level of the contour lines) ArchiCAD discharges this info converting them into 2D polylines but ArchiTerra can read this info so all the process to build the terrain could be speed up!

If the contour lines are DXF polylines probably they contain a lot of nodes (thousands!!!), once again, better import them (only them by selecting the proper layes!) by using ArchiTerra because, in this case you can enable the filter function to decrease the number of imported points!

I know you are in a big hurry... unfortunatelly I'm on holiday till next Monday and I'm connecting to internet with my laptop and my mobile so I cannot receive so big file.

I will try to help you as I can but, unfortunately, I have the feeling you choose the wrong way to build this terrain or, better, you are not using ArchiTerra in the best way.
I will try to write down a work flow chart to better explain you how you can get the best in a less time with the minimum effort... I hope it will hep you!

Friendly

[Jacek]

"Fabrizio Diodati" wrote:
Dear Jacek,

I'm really sorry but I'm not in the office so I will cehck your file on next Monday morning.
So you started from DXF file: are you sure it contains only 2D info?
Because if it contains 3D polylines (that contains the Z level of the contour lines)

Fabrizio,You are right!
I was able to reduce the original file down to size, at which point ArchiTerra was able to import and convert the data into points!
I tried that several times earlier and the file was allways too large.
I have replied to you privatelyhalf hour ago, so I will post a copy of my earlier letter here:

Fabrizio,
I was able to create the Site model by importing the DXF file into ArchiTerra!
I have attached two renderings of the new model (JPEG Files 1 & 2) and a copy of the 'older' file generated by manually drawing contours and converting them into a terrain. The manual file is so much larger than the other two?

Anyway, I will continue with these files and see how the roads will work with them, perhaps the 2-D information that was part of the tracing process added so much to the file size, and the manual process increases size as well?
Thank you for all your help.
Jacek


I am posting a view of a model sent to you below.
Once again thank you for all your help.
Ciao,
Jacek

[Fabrizio Diodati]

Dear Jacek,

let me try to better explain because I suggest to import DXF data by using ArchiTerra instead of using ArchiCAD.

The most of time (so often we could say ALWAYS!) the DXF files contains 3D polylines that describes the contour lines of the terrain.
These polylines are 3D entities that means they contain all the info regarding the level of the contour line
Unfortunately, the most of time, these polylines are made by thousands of little segments: this is often due to the fact that these drawings are the result of bitmap vectorialization/conversion.
This so-high-curve-segmentation isn’t useful at all: these segments are often shorter then 1 cm (now I’m talking of real length!) and, at least topographically speaking (we are talking about terrain not about building!) you don’t need so many data to describe the terrain model.

For these two above arguments I suggest to import DXF file by using ArchiTerra because, as I wrote you before:
1. ArchiTerra will import the contour lines z level too (it preserves all the 3D data)
2. it provides the user with the filter function that enable him to simplify these polyline (for example, by settings the filter to 1 meter often you can halve the number of 3D polyline points without any sensible difference in the 3D morphology)

Of course, what is really IMPORTANT is the layer handling:
Pay attention, that ArchiTerra will import/convert all the data on the selected layers so it’s very important (let me say crucial!) that you import the data only from those layers which includes relevant data (points and contour lines), and, as you surely realized, this can be obtained by using the proper ArchiTerra Import dialog window.

Another suggestion is to discharge the conversion of the polyline segments too and import only the points coordinates (that means you have to enable only the first check-box, near the layer names, in the ArchiTerra DXF import dialog window). Once again, usually these polylines contains so much nodes (and usually equally distributed along them) that you won’t need also the constraint between these points: this will speed up the import process and will simplify the data (so the ArchiCAD elaboration will be also speed up).

So, unfortunately, you made a mistake from the beginning because you got a so heavy document and you did it MANUALLY!
But don’t worry, next time you will remember this advise and you will simplify your job.

BTW, I got your DXF but you forgot to communicate me its unit!
Please, send me an e-mail to communicate me the correspondence between 1 DXF unit and its real size.