problem using Cinema 4D 10/11 add-on for ArchiCAD 12

[Mario Sacco]

When I send my volumes from Archicad to cinema, everything is ok. When I come back to Archicad I see in my volume all the triangulate sides like in the picture. It is the same in cinema 10 and 11. It didn't happen in archicad 11 and old add on.

Everything in cinema is set correctly (smooth etc.). I repeat: the same operation works properly in archicad 11 and old addon hidding the sides properly.

Mario

[Mario Sacco]

So you have the splinein Archicad?

[stefan]

mariosmic wrote:
So you have the splinein Archicad?

No. The spline is created entirely in Cinema4D, but is not visible in ArchiCAD and not restored in Cinema4D when re-editing the object.

I am inspired by Rhino and Grasshopper, where you can freely mix between regular geometry and geometry generated in the Grasshopper plugin. But this is far away from the integration between C4D and ArchiCAD. I was hoping to use C4D for more parametric (yet still graphical) creation, but the integration is seriously lacking now.

[Miquel Garcia]

No, there are more people using that:

I have the same problem with triangles in facettes. The new plugin has changed a lot, as you can see importing the same simple object in ArchiCAD with both plugins, the old one and the new one. With the plugin for AC11, if you export a cube and then you open the 3D script of the GDL object, you can see 8 points, 12 edges and 6 facettes. Opening the 3D script of the same cube exported to ArchiCAD with the AC12 plugin you will see 8 points, 18 edges and 12 facettes.

So is not a smooth problem: the AC12 plugin always triangulates facettes.

I have found another problem with materials: with the AC11 plugin, if you send to AC an object with several materials you can define an AC material for each one and change it in ArchiCAD. With the new plugin it seems that the materials are internally defined and you cannot change it in AC.

My workaround is to define objects using the AC11-C4D connection but I'm using the objects in AC12.

I have no experience importing and exporting splines, so I can't say nothing about Stefan's problem.

[Mario Sacco]

"Miquel Garcia" wrote:
No, there are more people using that:
quote]
I'm happy to see there are other people using the addon. One of the real advantages to use this plug in is the smooth control of the solids: with a good smooth you can have objects cleaned that you can you use in elevetions, sections and 3d line views. With the last addon version you can't do it. I hope we'll have early an answer from graphisoft.
Attached is one of my work. It is made separatly solid in Cinema4d and then boolean operations in Archicad. Everything using the plug in in Archicad 11.
Mario

[Miquel Garcia]

mariosmic wrote:
Attached is one of my work. It is made separatly solid in Cinema4d and then boolean operations in Archicad. Everything using the plug in in Archicad 11.
Mario

Good job, congratulations.

However, I would like to be able to build these shapes directly in ArchiCAD. Cinema4D is very good and I'm very happy with the possibility to well translate models between both softwares, but this is because AC lacks of a freeform modeller.

There are other threads in this forum discussing this matter with different positions. Somebody says that these shapes are only the 1% or 2% of the current job that architects are doing. It doesn't matter! I have a motorbike and I'm using it only 2% of my time, but I have it when I need it. And I know how to drive it. Is not necessary for me to learn different rules when I drive in a highway (less than 1%) rather than in the city streets!

[owen]

mariosmic wrote:
I'm happy to see there are other people using the addon. One of the real advantages to use this plug in is the smooth control of the solids: with a good smooth you can have objects cleaned that you can you use in elevetions, sections and 3d line views. With the last addon version you can't do it. I hope we'll have early an answer from graphisoft.
Attached is one of my work. It is made separatly solid in Cinema4d and then boolean operations in Archicad. Everything using the plug in in Archicad 11.
Mario

Nice work!

This triangulation really is a big problem. Software is not supposed to go backwards when a new version is released!

It seems Maxon made some major changes to the API which have probably lead to this 'devolution' of the plugin. They are also the cause of the current lack of a Material Exchange plugin for AC12 and C4D R11

I have let Bernd from Maxon know about this thread .. although I imagine both Graphisoft and Maxon are aware of it.

[owen]

stefan wrote:
..Maybe just copying the objects into another C4D file will be better... But then I don't see the point of the bi-directional connectivity anymore.

I assume the plugin is not fully functional anymore.

This is what i generally do - save the Cinema file somewhere so i can copy things back into the Cinema re-edit session if i need to edit the object again. You are right though .. we really should not need to. This behaviour (not saving splines) sounds like a bug to me.

Although I would much rather Graphisoft improve ArchiCADs native modelling tools i hope they are not abandoning this plugin ... I am actually starting to come around to the idea of leveraging Cinema to improve ArchiCAD modeling via some form of direct hotlinking. I don't really know how it would work but take a look at Revit's new massing tool as a basic example. Imagine you could create forms in Cinema, reference the Cinema file into ArchiCAD and somehow tie ArchiCAD elements to this form? Of course it will probably be easier for Graphisoft to create massing tools directly in AC than figure out how this referencing would work.

Another thought on the triangulation issue. What we need is some means of controling when ArchiCAD assigns visible v invisible edges to the resulting GDL object. I imagine this would be controlled at the Cinema end when sending back to ArchiCAD, and the basic controls would be something like those in Sketch & Toon where you can use different criteria such as relative angle between adjacent polygons to determin wether to draw an edge line or not (e.g surfaces who are within say 10deg of each other have an invisible junction). The translator would use these settings to determine what Status Code to set for the Edges in the GDL script.

The triangulation of in-plane surfaces also seems to be a bug to me .. a square should remain a square, not two triangles!

[Mario Sacco]

I'm not interested to export the model in cinema 4d to do renders. I'm interested in the addon that create gdl object from Maxon. It was really great in archicad 11 old version. You could do great thinks. Now you can't do nothing; There are too many bugs. Errors in triangulation and for example, in the simple object attached, in archicad 11 with old add on it works great, in the last one version it doesn't export in gdl nothing and gives many errors.
Please attach your works and your interest to solve the problems.
The chair attached is modelled with mesh in archicad 11 and then improved in cinema; imported in Archicad it is very nice for me (old addon obviously).

Ciao
Mario

[owen]

mariosmic wrote:
I'm not interested to export the model in cinema 4d to do renders. I'm interested in the addon that create gdl object from Maxon.

I know .. re-reading my post i didn't talk about exporting to C4D for rendering. When i talk about control over displaying edges i mean for GDL object creation - so we can control when edges are displayed or not - very important for using the imported objects for display in ArchiCAD IMO ... if it looks like a pile of crap because there are lines everywhere then what are you going to use it for. Explode it and clean it up in your drawings?

mariosmic wrote:
Errors in triangulation and for example...

Yes .. i agreed this was a problem.

As for my solutions .. i don't have any, there are no settings to experiment with - these issues are obviously bugs in the new plugin. The only people who can fix them are GS / Maxon. Until then we can only put up with it or talk about the problems and what we want the plugin to do or not to do

here is an example of why i want to be able to control where ArchiCAD generates lines in the resulting object (..and yes i could do this in AC with SEO).


cheers,

os

[owen]

and the garbage you get in the floor plan