2 Questions About Editing Grouped Elements

[Anonymous]

I have two related questions. First, is it possible to edit grouped elements on more than one story at a time? I'm trying to multiply and offset a four story structure multiple times and I don't want to multply the grouped elements on the first story and then multiply the grouped elements on the second story and align them with the first story and so on. I also need to know if there is a way to multiply elements along an irregularly curved line. I'm working on a site plan project and I'd like to be able to multiply houses along a curved road line so that they'll be perpendicular to the road I'm sorry if these are dumb, obvious or ridiculous questions, but I'm very new to Archicad and I'm having trouble finding anything relevant in the program's help window. Thanks in advance.

[Link]

Hey Nathanael,

The best way, I can see, to achieve what you want to do is to place a thick marquee around your building and drag multiple copies (Apple+D, then Apple+Option).

The second one is a little tougher. You can draw a spline and set your snap points to 'Divisions' or 'Distance' to get the required spacing along the road. Do this with the little flyout menu in your Control Box, which is down on the bottom right of the screen, by default. Then you can drag multiple copies again. You'll have to manually rotate each one though. There are other options, like modules & library parts, but this should be a good start for you.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Link.

[Karl Ottenstein]

You can edit elements on multiple stories only in the 3D window. When you say "grouped" elements, I'm not sure what you mean. If you mean that stretching one element will cause another element to stretch because it is in a group, then no. If you mean that you have identical elements stacked on top of each other (not objects, but tool elements - walls, slabs, etc) ... then you can stretch them in 2D using the bold (fat) marquee and the stretch command. The thin marquee and the stretch command stretches elements only on the current story. The thick marquee and stretch command stretches visible and unlocked elements on all stories.

If the geometry of each story is the same - sounds like it since you are multiplying - then hotlinked modules is a more appropriate way to go so that you only have to edit one story and the others will automatically update.

Alignment to multiple stories in any case is simple. If you just copy elements from one story and paste on another...and then click outside the marquee without having dragged it ... things are precisely aligned.

To multiply objects along a curve and keep them tangent to the curve, take a look at http://www.arexline.com where Oleg has the rxDUPLICATOR add-on.

For the site plan / multiply, you don't really want to multiply the entire building, whether as modules or not ... but just want to create a GDL object version of just the exterior elements that matter. Turn just those things on, view in 3D from the top, save as GDL object, then use rxDUPLICATOR to muliply that object along your paths.

Karl

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the help. Unfortunately I'm using a Mac and the rxDuplicator add-on seems to be windows only, so I guess I'll have to rotate each building individually.