Spontaneous Linked Markers in Migrated Projects

[James Murray]

When you open a AC27 or 28 project in AC29, all the section and elevation source markers get copied in place as linked markers to themselves. These markers are not apparent, since they perfectly overlap with their linked originals. If you're not aware that this has happened, this gives a very confusing experience when you edit or move the markers.

I hope this is obvious. If it is not, I encourage you to use Archicad for work and let that inform your decisions.

This post https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Documentation/Renovation-Status-for-Markers/ta-p/668959 says that this only happens when you open a project and the Existing renovation status is hidden. This is false, it happens despite the Existing reno status being shown.

I assume (hope? no, doubt) that this is a bug. Please fix it.

It looks like the 15 year wait for reno status for markers was truly because this wish was incredibly demanding, and this hack result was the cost.

I am amazed at how little is delivered with each new version, and how hard it seems to be.

Please imagine non-experts and non-community members dealing with these effects.

[JaredBanks]

James, 

It's actually worse than you describe. When migrating any pre-Archicad 29 file, every elevation, section, interior elevation, and detail marker gets set to Existing and then Linked Markers are created for BOTH Demolition and New Renovation Statuses. 

So every Archicad file ends up with 3x the number of elevation/section/interior elevation/detail markers. And since there's no way to select all linked markers in find and select (or the new sub-par AI assistant), deleting these markers needs to be done manually.

I also noticed that while the elevation/section/detail markers are identical to the original markers, the interior elevation markers are not. They default to something that looks like garbage (brown triangles in my template).

The average user will not notice this issue until things aren't looking right and they don't understand why, which means this is a major bug that needs to be fixed.

While GS is hopefully working on fixing this in the next update, a low-pain solution is to switch the Renovation Filter to Show Demo Only and then either turn off non-marker layers, select all, and delete OR activate the elevation tool, select all, delete, then repeat for sections/int elev/details. And then repeat with the Show New Only (both filters that you hopefully have or should create in your files).

[Erwin Edel]

In a world of constant changes we can at least rely on the new ArchiCAD release to have major bugs every year! 😄

[JaredBanks]

I just wrote a blog post and recorded a video on this issue—showing both the problem and a few solutions.

https://shoegnome.com/2025/10/23/unnecessary-linked-markers-in-projects-migrated-to-archicad-29/

[James Murray]

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@JaredBanks wrote:

I also noticed that while the elevation/section/detail markers are identical to the original markers, the interior elevation markers are not. They default to something that looks like garbage (brown triangles in my template).

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What they did: Sections and elevations get RS Existing. A linked marker for each is created with RS New and Demo.

What they should have done: Make all S/Es Existing, then stop. In practice Existing almost always shows. Cases like New Only, Demo Only, New and Demo but no Existing (why?) are edge cases and not really output situations.

What they did: IEs get RS Existing. IEs can’t have linked markers (why?). We simply must have a marker for every RS. A Demo Only (e.g.) filter will get linked elevation markers, one for each side of the original IE. Obviously, no group markers because these aren’t IEs. Also: IE groups that look inward (and therefore use Single IE markers) get to keep their markers because Elevation elements can apparently use Single IE subtype markers in a pinch. Outward-looking groups, the much more common case, get converted to exploded “Individual IE Marker”s. That looks SHARP, totally preserving the quality of the output:

These linked elevation markers are pinned to that Demo Only filter; they don’t show any other place. A New Only filter gets the same treatment. If you have other filters which don’t show Existing (unlikely, see above), you get additional linked elevation markers, pinned to each of those filters.

What they should have done: Make all IEs Existing, full stop, like the S/Es.

What else they should have done: Take this opportunity to recognize that IEs have always been half-baked, and bring them into consistency with sections and elevations.

What else they should have done: Recognize that cluttering the project with dozens of probably unneeded (because Existing usually shows) linked markers will be seen by the user as a PROBLEM, and the instinct of the user will be to try to Find & Select by marker status, which is not a thing, so make that a thing, hashtag finally.

[JaredBanks]

I just came here to write something similar! Duplicates are created because we have Renovation Filters that hide Existing Elements (everyone should have Renovation filters that show only New, only Existing, and only Demo). Rather than just hiding the Markers (logical behavior), the developers at GRAPHISOFT decided the correct behavior was to create duplicate Linked Markers so that those Renovation Filters that hide Existing Elements still show markers (illogical behavior for anyone who actually uses the software).

All GRAPHISOFT needed to do was ask users what the behavior should have been and we could have saved them development time on a stupid solution.