cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
EN
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Custom Distorsion - Fill Patterns

Here is something that is bugging me for years and I never got to raise this question due to automation of my brain. Well...today something broke and I am raising the hand.
When choosing custom distorsion for fills, the arms are defaulting to the real dimension of 3' 3/8" (or 1 meter for the sane part of the world). Why is that a thing?
Since all parameters of any fill are in archicad, could this tool just grab the "PATTERN UNIT" as the measurable distance and display 1, and let me scale much more easy to what I need from there?
Why do I have to do crazy math (aka how many patterns I have in 3' 3/8" and how many I have to achieve...) or simply (more often then none) winging it and fiddle with the damn thing until I get a visual match?
Is that hard to implement?
I found no discussion on this, which tells me that something may be wrong with me or the way I do things. Can you customize that and I am all out of touch (getting older takes me there...)?

 

Screenshot 2026-07-15 at 12.30.20 PM.png

 

Operating system used: Mac Intel-based Tahoe 26.5.2

AC 7-26 (current 27)
iMac 3.6 Ghz 10Core Intel Core i9 / 12b GB / AMD Radeon Pro 5700 XT 16 GB / Ventura 13.4
https://globularcreative.wixsite.com/home
2 Replies 2
AllanP
Expert

When you code an object in GDL, the base unit is in meters.

When you code an addon, the base unit is meters.

The unit is a meter for the program.

Lazy programming has not added the pattern size to the custom distortion because;

you can change from pattern "A" to pattern "B" that may have different pattern sizes, and then that would change the distortion handles, 

so they just stick to percentage distortion based on the unit size of the program.

its very logical for people who work in metric.

It is annoying, but it is logical for a lazy programmer to choose percentage over constant variables(and just ignore the problems that imperial units bring).

 

I don't know if this helps.

P.S.

 

 

if you change the working units to metric(meters) 

So to scale the fill to;

50% when using imperial, type "0.5" for the length/distance,

200% when using imperial, type "2" for the length/distance, etc...

then change back to imperial, it makes it easier

https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Project-data-BIM/Metric-Imperial/td-p/228025

 

 

I have been using ArchiCAD continually since ArchiCAD 4.5
Member of Architalk since 2003, but missed the migration from Architalk to Graphisoft Communities. Melbourne, Australia

Allan, thank you for your reply.
You pointed out some interesting things and I have to apologize if I seem to be contradicting you or be negative in any way. Just facts.
No coding is unit dependent. A unit of 1 is 1 regardless of what you are defining it as, so the base of 1m could be just their reference in the studio, giving that in Hungary they use metric, but the software is also sold in countries with imperial units for quite hefty prices I may say... For the price I expect to have some ears pointed out towards this "player base" not to be expected to live with it.
I will leave the laziness of the coder to others. My theories point more towards corporate...

Even if that would be the case, there is nothing logical to it. It is true that is easy to do math in base of 10, but still math for conversion regardless.
Don't want to toot my own horn here, but if the brackets would be 1 unit (pattern) then conversions would be faster mentally and universal. That was my point. If the user is changing patterns, then it is the user's responsibility to reset and resize per use. I fail to see how that is more intricate than today's procedure.

I don't even know why I'm raising the question when everyone seems to be used with a status quo like living with herpes... 
At least I said my peace.

AC 7-26 (current 27)
iMac 3.6 Ghz 10Core Intel Core i9 / 12b GB / AMD Radeon Pro 5700 XT 16 GB / Ventura 13.4
https://globularcreative.wixsite.com/home

Still looking?

Browse more topics

Back to forum

See latest solutions

Accepted solutions

Start a new discussion!