Modeling
About Archicad's design tools, element connections, modeling concepts, etc.
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Intersections and Building Material Priorities

Has anyone ever managed to work out the witchcraft involved with getting the correct representation or material intersections in plan for wall composites? I’ve been trying to crack it since Archicad 17 and the only real way I have found it to create a separate building material for ever single different wall skin of each different wall type to get clean and correct intersection representation. Any tips on how you guys have worked around it would be gratefully received. (Still have fingers crossed for on the fly composite skin editing 😉 )

Lee Hankins
ArchiCAD 4.5 - Archicad 27UKI Apple Silicon 27.1.1
macOS Sonoma (14.2)
12 REPLIES 12

Yes, only way to make it work was with solid element operation. Display order doesn't work. 

I just feel that the material strength should have worked.

 

Thanks

Automatic intersection only work between specific element types as shown below.

It doesn't mention meshes because they don't automatically intersect with anything.

BarryKelly_0-1669022453227.png

 

Barry.

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Such a method (combination of top-down and bottom-up, or better yet, general and particular) is possible. For general intersection rules one uses the material priorities. For particular situations that do not display correctly by default, one can use SEO with construction elements themselves. If this still does not bring the desired result, one can use the morph tool, go to a 2D view (ussually section) and draw a polyline that represents the cutting profile. Then go to 3d, extrude or sweep the profile into a polysurface and use it to cut the desired elements. Combination of these three should cover all cases.

 

Regarding material properties, Im pasting a good approach by Erwin Edel from this thread:

 

"For most building materials we have a variant that has a higer priority and a lower priority.

 

Especially with structural materials like concrete, bricks, steel etc we have a 'finish' version with a lower priority and a structural/load bearing version with a high priority.

 

For things like insulation or finishing board material we have a 'normal' version with a high priority and 'light separation' version with low priority.

 

Roughly outlined:

100s: terrain materials

200s: light separation finishes

300s: standard finishes

400s: foils, membranes etc

500+600s: exterior finishes (bricks, wood paneling etc) and interior non-load bearing materials

700s: both load bearing elements and insulation (insulation often needs priority over load bearing materials)

800-900s: high priority loadbearing materials that always need to be a hard barrier

999: SEO"