Drag & Drop GDL + Status Value question

[Anonymous]

Excerpt from GDL TECH STANDARDS:
"...7.2 Drag and Drop technique
This ArchiCAD feature allows you to easily define complex 2D and 3D shapes in GDL by drawing them on the plan and dragging them into the 2D or the 3D script of an object...Note: Curved polygons (slabs, fills, etc.) will be saved with curved edges (with status codes) in the 2D script while in 3D script curves are replaced with straight segments..."

I've been playing with this drag and drop technique and find it very useful for generating intial scripts for profiles. I'm curious why it defines curve status codes differently for 2D vs. 3D shapes. I would prefer that it always do "curved edges with status codes." Any ideas why they are defined differently???

Anyway, I've noticed that it always uses 4000 staus codes and when it does, ArchiCAD always defines the "angle" with some distant length value. I don't understand how this value is determined and I don't understand why it is indicated in feet and inches...Any ideas???

Lastly, I think it would be simpler and easier if these status codes always used 3000 values - please see the attachment.

thanks,
Dan K

[Anonymous]

Dan,
In AC 3D shapes have always been defined with strait segments
even ones defined with additional status codes.
I have not studied other 3D programs to know if it is presently possible
to have true curves in 3D in any program. Perhaps someone on the
forum would know if other 3D cad programs can show true arcs in
a 3D model.

It was hard to see some of the numbers in your image of the 3D code
but if you do the arithmetic on the feet and inches in the line containing
the 4000 status code and then divide that number by 3.08284 (metric
conversion of feet to meters) you get -90.
I am guessing here but since AC internally converts feet and inches to meters with no units explicitly specified,
-90 is an angle because of the place it is in in the script parameters. Why the auto scripting does it this way and
why it tends to use 4000 rather than 3000 I don't know.
It must be due to some optimization issue.
Peter Devlin

[Anonymous]

Peter wrote:
Dan,
In AC 3D shapes have always been defined with strait segments
even ones defined with additional status codes.
I have not studied other 3D programs to know if it is presently possible
to have true curves in 3D in any program. Perhaps someone on the
forum would know if other 3D cad programs can show true arcs in
a 3D model.

Peter,
I'm not really interested in "true" curves as much as I am in simplifiying the 2d and 3d scripts via using 3000 status values. I like the fact that I can adjust the facets on the entities by setting my resol higher - that's a heck of a lot easier than adding more nodes to the poly/prism statments.

Peter wrote:
...but if you do the arithmetic on the feet and inches in the line containing
the 4000 status code and then divide that number by 3.08284 (metric
conversion of feet to meters) you get -90...

Wow! that's clever - I would have never figured that out - I guess that's just another one of those undocumented quirks.

thanks,
Dan K