ArchiCAD-placed Dimensions?

[Anonymous]

Here's a fun one: On Friday, we plotted and sent out our permit set for an elaborate house project, and all the dimensions I had placed were fine, exactly as we wanted. I was the person in charge of all the dimensioning, and no changes had been made to the model or the dimensions for ~4 days prior to Friday. I am attaching a screenshot with what the dimension plan looked like then. The dimension lines are blue.

Then, on Wednesday morning, I find that there are many new, bizarre dimensions (new dimensions attached to previously existing strings, and entirely new dimension strings), the most obvious ones are placed at 45 degrees and dimensioning the centerlines of doors, etc on opposite sides of the project. (Another picture coming of what's there now) Nobody placed these dimensions, they just appeared.

In our post-submittal bliss between Friday and Wednesday, no one on the team (it is a teamworked project) made any kind of global changes, and I'm sure nobody even opened up a dimension plan view. What's going on?

In addition, some of the dimensions have gone from reading, for example, 2'-0" to showing 1'-11 7/8" or 2'-0 1/8". No plan or modeling changes.

I'm looking for suggestions to restore the dimensions back to how they were, without the weird new ones and without the 1/8" fractions. My dimension tolerance was set to 1/4" for the view, too.... Maybe one of you "5-house" gurus can help? Let me know if you need more information or more pictures; I have more. It's kinda cool, like my AC10 has become HAL9000 and is dimensioning how it feels is best!

Fortunately the dimensions plotted properly for the permit set, but we have bid sets coming up soon, and we'll need these dimensions fixed. If it's user error, fine. If it's an ArchiCAD foible, dandy. Just what's the best way to go about fixing this?

Thanks!

Keith

[vfrontiers]

Keith,

From experience... Dimensioning to objects (including doors and windows) can be suspect when SCRIPTED hotspots are used. There seems to be some internal tracking of these hotspots and when that object is modified the the tracking changes [opinions of mine, not technically verified]...

So... It is possible that if you switched DOOR MARKERS at some time, the hotspot tracking got messed up and the dimensions could be anywhere. Further, if the hotspot tracking goes for the ENTIRE PLAN, a hotspot in door 1 may end up in a chair in the living room. This concept can only be verified by the programmers, from which I've never received a response.

It is also conceiveable that the PLP might not have rec'd everyone's changes just prior to plotting then after rec'd them.

It is also possible that dimension preferences were changed sometime in between.. This would have had to have been done by the TEAM LEADER and associated to the view [grasping at straws].

Also... are there MODULES within this file? Are the walls themselves modules? This has presented problems with dimensions for me in the past as well.

Duane

[Anonymous]

No modules, not a send/receive thing, not dimension preferences (though I'll post more on that later), don't think it's the door markers....ARG.

The programmers' advice was to re-share the project, I guess because they think it's a little corrupted hard disk space on our server. I doubt it, but I'm trying it anyway.

So far the coolest screwed up dimension I've come across has been a few dimensions on the upper level that reference a hotspot of an opening on the level below. Hadn't seen that before.

All of this is as cool as the guy that's having some of his dimensions display upside-down within a string of right-side-up dimensions. That one is awesome.

GraphiSoft, what's going on?

[Anonymous]

Alright everybody, READY FOR SOME MORE????

This time I caught the dimensions red-handed! On Friday, May 25, following the programmers' advice, I reshared the project file. The project team began working in the reshared file on Tuesday, May 29 (a USA holiday was on Monday the 28th).

That same day, the 29th, I personally went through every level and every dimension and deleted every messed up dimension out there, and I left only the dimensions that were fine. I added only two or three dimension strings at the time as an experiment to see if anything weird would happen to them. No one noticed any messed up dimensions since then, until today!

Today, as a Team Member, I went through the project and re-sized a few doors we have in the project that are antiques to reflect their true dimensions in the door schedule. Then, I went through the dimensions because I had discovered how to get the existing dimensions to display trailing zeros (like how the project & view preferences were and are currently set). I came across a NEW, ARCHICAD-PLACED dimension!

The new dimension is the 0" dimension underneath the 189-A door marker and is referencing the center of door 192-A. This is the fun part! The first picture is from a late copy of our original, super-messed up file with the dimensions going everywhere (the blue lines). Please note that the 0" dimension does not appear in this file. The date of the file is 5-22-2007.

The second picture is from a late backup copy (dated 5-30-2007) of the re-shared project file created (by the re-sharing) on 5-25-2007. By this time I had deleted every messed up dimension in the file (the CL centerline tags still remain). The 0" dimension still has not appeared.

The third picture is from today, June 11. I had almost finished going through all of the undeleted dimensions and making them display trailing zeros when I discovered the new 0" dimension. As you can see by comparing the three pictures, the 0" dimension is a new dimension not placed by any team member. Also, it is not an existing dimension that was accidentally moved. Furthermore, door 192-A was not changed, at all, since before these problems began. Something is causing ArchiCAD to create these dimensions and decide how to place them, however oddly, on the drawing. It seems to happen when we adjust openings, but the openings that are adjusted don't seem to be affected; the problems occur somewhere else on the drawing.

[Anonymous]

This is the second picture of the reshared project file with all of the weird dimensions deleted.

[Anonymous]

The third picture of today's plp file showing the newly created 0" dimension under the 189-A door tag.

[Djordje]

AAAARGH!

THE BLACK IS BACK!!!!!

Please do your eyes a favour and kill that background ...

[Anonymous]

You'll live.

Any useful thoughts or ideas on the problem?

[Djordje]

I can't think ... the black shock ...

[Steve Jepson]

Zolli wrote:
...I can see that over 500 people have viewed this thread, and only 3 comments. PLEASE share your ideas or say if this has happened to you! ....Please help!

Zolli

There are many possibilities. Also, we can not tell much by the images, we need the file.

Was there an ArchiCAD Solo Project Backup File?

[Anonymous]

I have a hypothesis that hopefully an archicad-programmer-level guru can better analyze.

I believe that there is some kind of communication that exists between the door/window/opening schedules and the database where all the spatial information for dimensions is stored. When something is changed, the spatial information gets scrambled and starts a process that causes the database's order to degenerate. That's how the problem is 90% centered around doors and windows, but still involves some dimensions that are not associated with openings. I.e.: the problem "spreads." And because this problem always seems to catch us by surprise each morning, I also believe it is triggered by the Send/Receive Changes function or perhaps the Sign Out function. It doesn't happen bit by bit, one dimension at a time, (although it starts out with only one or two errors), but hits us as one big barrage of errors, and appears when we first sign in to the project in the morning.

I'm writing this because it happened. Yet again. On our submittal deadline. Is it possible that my hypothesis describes the cause of these dimension problems?

Zolli