Modeling
About Archicad's design tools, element connections, modeling concepts, etc.

Falls and grades in meshes

Matthew Johnson
Advocate
Looking for help to crowd source a solution to a tool limitation in ArchiCAD.

What ArchiCAD does: Meshes and spot level dimensions work really well together to automatically update changes in the mesh surface. i.e. lift a point and the surrounding spot level dimensions will update accordingly.

What I want ArchiCAD to do: An automated fall indication marker that can be associated with a mesh and automatically tell me which direction the mesh now falls in and what the incline is.

Use: detail design of slab profiles with falls to drainage (carpark decks, bathrooms, food processing areas, etc.) so that I can see the impact of lifting or lowering a point on the mesh with regard to cross falls, grades and depth. Currently I have to manually calculate all of the fall lines every time I change a point height.

Problem: A GDL object cannot extract a height reference from another object and a level dimension cannot be scripted.
Matthew Johnson - POWE Architects
AC4.5 --> AC27 & Revit 2019 --> 2023
Asus Zenbook Pro 16x i9-13900H w/ Nvidia RTX 4070 4K dual, Windows 11 64bit
I'd rather be sailing.
5 REPLIES 5
Laszlo Nagy
Community Admin
Community Admin
That sounds to me like something that can be solved only with an Add-On written using ARCHICAD's API.
Loving Archicad since 1995 - Find Archicad Tips at x.com/laszlonagy
AMD Ryzen9 5900X CPU, 64 GB RAM 3600 MHz, Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB, 500 GB NVMe SSD
2x28" (2560x1440), Windows 10 PRO ENG, Ac20-Ac27
Matthew Johnson
Advocate
Laszlo,

After 12 years of using API Add-ons to ArchiCAD we have spent the past 18 months rebuilding our procedures to using clean out-of-the-box. We have had too many problems over the years caused by API conflicts and crashes.

After I posted this originally we have developed a GDL object that achieves some of the functionality that I wanted but without the automation that multi-point gravity could provide it does rely on manual input.
Matthew Johnson - POWE Architects
AC4.5 --> AC27 & Revit 2019 --> 2023
Asus Zenbook Pro 16x i9-13900H w/ Nvidia RTX 4070 4K dual, Windows 11 64bit
I'd rather be sailing.
Hmooslechner
Rockstar
Should be posted in wishlist...

In my opinion, it wuld be great if it were possible to get visual feedback also in 2D - levels about the hight if meshes - maybe with displaying different colours.

let me suggest:

Bright worm - higher surfaces , dark cold colours for deeper surfaces.

It would not be nescessary to make the Colours depending on a specified higt - it would be enough to take the whole colour - spectrum between hightest and deepest point. So anyone could see the falling or rising surfaces direct.
AC5.5-AC27EduAut, PC-Win10, MacbookAirM1, MacbookM1Max, Win-I7+Nvidia
Matthew Johnson
Advocate
Hmooslechner,

A wishlist of better feedback for the mesh tool has been on the table for some time but the tool has not changed since 2004.

Visual feedback in the form of height differentiation (i.e. contour lines denoting height) is OK but our more pressing need is for the ability to study the nature of points in a mesh; that is which way does the fall run, how steep is it, how do all the falls in a mesh work together to effect water runoff/wheelchair access...
Matthew Johnson - POWE Architects
AC4.5 --> AC27 & Revit 2019 --> 2023
Asus Zenbook Pro 16x i9-13900H w/ Nvidia RTX 4070 4K dual, Windows 11 64bit
I'd rather be sailing.

This is vital!

 

#19year-old-tool-needs-revising!