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3d manipulation of vertical plane (wall or slab)

Anonymous
Not applicable
First, my apologies for what I think is an easy procedure, but I cannot quite determine how to accomplish this.

I am attempting to manipulate a vertical plane (wall or slab), which should be incredibly easy to do. I have attached a screen shot to help with the defining my goal.

Looking at the vertical plane on the right of the image, I have manually (with very small slabs), created an "imaginary" grid. I have also placed thin horizontal "tubing" to help explain my goal. These tubes are only for referencing only and would not be in the final creation.

I would like to manipulate this vertical plane. My hope is that I can easily place an imaginary grid on it (spacing of grid lines at my option), then "click" on one of the "nodes" (points of intersecting grid lines), and "pull" that selected node out to the end of one of the tubes. (again, the tubes are for reference in the discussion, but would really just be a graphic imaginary line, or an x,y,z axis input to establish the end)

Ultimately, I would want to be able to digitally copy and paste each 3d piece of the final wall, for fabrication purposes.

Thank you any and all for your help!
6 REPLIES 6
Barry Kelly
Moderator
A wall is a wall and you really won't be able to edit much except for change its length, height and thickness, or possibly add or subtract extra geometry with Solid Element Operations.

But if you convert the wall into a morph (select and right mouse click), you can then do much more when editing.
You will need to draw the grid on the surface again by adding edges (lines) to the morph.
Then you can select the individual square surfaces and push/pull them.

This will get you started if you don't know much about morphs.

https://helpcenter.graphisoft.com/user-guide/76636/

And there is a bunch of movies in the Archicad YouTube channel




Play the movie and then click the YouTube link to see all of the other movies, or better still click the playlist icon in the top left.

dewarchicad wrote:
Ultimately, I would want to be able to digitally copy and paste each 3d piece of the final wall, for fabrication purposes.

I am not quite sure by what you mean by this.
If it is a single morph you will not be able to copy each segment unless you split it into pieces.
Or model it with individual cubes (walls, slabs, or morphs) in the first place.

Barry.
One of the forum moderators.
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Anonymous
Not applicable
Thank you Barry for your insights and time on this, much appreciated. I believe though, after using ArchiCad for a few decades, and watching the videos (both previously and the ones you directed me to), and attempting to emulate, I'm not convinced I should stay with it. I may be wrong, but it seems laboriously complicated if I wish to produce a series of planes (see new attachment) for a panel system I wish to; 1) produce in Cad, 2) show my clients on the computer, and then 3) "handoff" the pieces of the design to a fabricator.

It's a bit disconcerting that I see architect's designs from all over the world, producing incredible geometric forms, and I cannot seem to produce an extremely basic 3d panel shape. They must be using other software or 3rd. party "add-ons" ......

But enough of my rant ..... in any event, thank you again !
Lingwisyer
Guru
Can you even do this in Revit without a 3rd party plugin / program? I would have thought that you would have to use Grasshopper or Rhino for this... If you are wanting more dynamic forms, use the Grasshopper-ArchiCAD connection.



Ling.

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Anonymous
Not applicable
Thank you Ling, I wasn't aware of "Grasshopper", I'll look into it.

Thanks again !
Barry Kelly
Moderator
Archicad has never been a very good free-form modeller.
The best we have is shells and morphs.

In your first scenario with the wall, it is not about manipulating a single wall because that is impossible.
You either need to break in down into individual cubes or convert it to a morph which can remain as one element but split into different surface planes for manipulation.

Your second image, while it may be possible to create in Archicad with roofs, is probably much easier created and controlled with Grasshopper/Rhino, which is much better at this free-form design.
Even the 'wall' would be possible to create with Grasshopper/Rhino and may allow for easier manipulation.
I have never used grasshopper so have no idea what is really involved with it.

Barry.
One of the forum moderators.
Versions 6.5 to 27
i7-10700 @ 2.9Ghz, 32GB ram, GeForce RTX 2060 (6GB), Windows 10
Lenovo Thinkpad - i7-1270P 2.20 GHz, 32GB RAM, Nvidia T550, Windows 11
Anonymous
Not applicable
Thank you Barry, not familiar with Grasshopper or Rhino, but I will definately be looking into it.

Thank you again !