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

Solid element operations... Plan view

Anonymous
Not applicable
If i have wood decking (made from beam tool) and I use an operator to cut a diagonal edge across the whole lot of these decking pieces, the deck has a nice clean edge in the 3d perspective view. However, in plan view the decking pieces (beams) do not appear to be cut by the operator.

How to I get the plan view to take the subtraction? I am using ArchiCAD 16 by the way.
10 REPLIES 10
Barry Kelly
Moderator
SEOs have no effect in plan view so you will need to cover with a white fill and/or lines.
Or convert your decking to a Morph then you will get a true top view projection in plan of what you see in 3D.

Barry.
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Anonymous
Not applicable
Why on earth would the SEOs not affect the element in all views? That is by design?

is it just in plan that the SEO doesn't work? Because it works in elevation and section...

that's just dumb...
Barry Kelly
Moderator
I don't think it is 'by design' it is more just a limitation of the way Archicad elements were created.
SEOs didn't exist until version 8 but by then of course we already had the wall tool, beam tool, slab tool, roof tool, etc.
The way it worked (and still does for the old tools) is the 2D view you see in plan is not a top view projection of the 3D model.
It is all just a symbolic view of the element to the extents that you place it in plan.

Gradually though new tools have been created shell and morph) and the roof tool has been updated to a multi-plane roof tool.
These new tools do show a true 3D top view in the plan so any connections or SEOs using these tools will show correctly in plan.

Eventually the same might happen for the other tools but I think a lot would have to change in the way the program is written.

If you are a relatively new user to Archicad it probably doesn't make a lot of sense but effectively we are using the same base program from 25-30 years ago (which sounds bad I know but I'm sure it has changed an awful lot in those years).
This allows us to be compatible with old jobs - not so much from 30 years ago but I can easily open a file from 10 years ago and still use it.

I am sure Graphisoft could come up with a completely new program if they had the resources but then we would possibly lose the compatibility with what we have now.
Things are changing slowly and I'm sure they will continue to do so in the future.

Barry.
One of the forum moderators.
Versions 6.5 to 27
Dell XPS- i7-6700 @ 3.4Ghz, 16GB ram, GeForce GTX 960 (2GB), Windows 10
Lenovo Thinkpad - i7-1270P 2.20 GHz, 32GB RAM, Nvidia T550, Windows 11
Anonymous
Not applicable
I'm guessing it's just not that easy, or it would have been done by now. It would depend on element types, geometry, floor plan cut planes, SEO type (upwards extrusion, downwards extrusion). As Barry pointed out it does work on Morphs (and roof planes too I think?) which is a step in the right direction. Work-arounds are still required for other elements.

(beaten to it by Barry again )
splinter
Contributor
Hello community,

Is there any updates or any new workaround for this problem?

This thread is 7 years old but I didn't find any other topic explaining how to get solid element operations to show up in plan view. Is this still impossible? As ArchiCAD doesn't have native shaft elements, I'm trying to use slab elements as shafts and use them to cut proper floor slabs. But I have realized that this is a totally useless method as the solid element operations doesn't show up in floor plan. Thus not shown in DWG's we export to other consultants.

I'd appreciate pointers of how to approach this problem...
Architect | Computational Designer
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Lingwisyer
Guru
splinter wrote:
As ArchiCAD doesn't have native shaft elements, I'm trying to use slab elements as shafts and use them to cut proper floor slabs.

Use the Opening Tool in AC23+?

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Barry Kelly
Moderator
No, SEO still does not show on the floor plan for most elements.

What version of Archicad are you using?
Since version 23, there is a new 'Opening' tool.
It will cut openings in slabs, walls, beams & meshes.
A single opening can be linked to multiple elements.
There is also an option to 'Create opening from building elements' - so you can model a shaft with a slab (or any other element) and then convert it to an opening - similar to SEO but not quite the same.

These opening do show in plan and you can even manipulate a 2D opening symbol.


Barry.
One of the forum moderators.
Versions 6.5 to 27
Dell XPS- i7-6700 @ 3.4Ghz, 16GB ram, GeForce GTX 960 (2GB), Windows 10
Lenovo Thinkpad - i7-1270P 2.20 GHz, 32GB RAM, Nvidia T550, Windows 11
Barry Kelly
Moderator
Lingwisyer wrote:
Use the Opening Tool in AC23+?

Ling gets to the point much quicker than I do.

Barry.
One of the forum moderators.
Versions 6.5 to 27
Dell XPS- i7-6700 @ 3.4Ghz, 16GB ram, GeForce GTX 960 (2GB), Windows 10
Lenovo Thinkpad - i7-1270P 2.20 GHz, 32GB RAM, Nvidia T550, Windows 11
Lingwisyer
Guru
Barry wrote:
Lingwisyer wrote:
Use the Opening Tool in AC23+?

Ling gets to the point much quicker than I do.

Barry.

Skipped the question, straight to a pointer. I had forgotten about the 'Create opening from building elements' function. Saw it at the tool release, then proceeded to forget about it...



Ling.

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Self-taught, bend it till it breaksCreating a Thread
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