Objects shifting location on their own?

[Dave Seabury]

When scripting objects I have a file that i use that we will call "Office Standards" I work out all the bugs and then the object gets used in other
files. In this case it is an interior door. The object works perfectly in the
"Office Standards" file, but when placed in an active project the door is
shifted out of plane with the wall. I though I had for gotten to delete a transformation in the script, but couldn't find any. Attached are screen
shots of the 2D Full View screen, the upper shot is from Office Standards
(all looks as it should) the second is from the active file. You will notice
that the door is in the same location with reference to the origin, but the
wall (blue shaded area) has shifted. I think this is the issue but have no idea how to chase it down. Any insights?

Thanks,

David

[Karl Ottenstein]

The only obvious thing I can think of quickly without asking for more details is if the wall is a complex profiled wall and either (a) the opening reference line is not in the right place, or (b) the wall thickness varies from sill to header and your anchor for the door (sill or head) is at a different thickness location than your cut plane...

Karl

[Dave Seabury]

Karl,

Hello again and thanks for the quick reply.

Rather embarassing, but I failed to notice that the door was being
placed with a value entered for the wall reveal. Reset to zero and
all is well again as far as the plan view goes.

After cutting a section, I see that my door will not read the value
for WALL_THICKNESS correctly for composite walls, works fine on
non composite's though.

Any insight as to what might cause this?

Thanks agian for your help.

David

[Karl Ottenstein]

Huh. WALL_THICKNESS should not work for Complex Profile walls (no uniform thickness), but should work for Composites. Hopefully someone else has the answer for you...

Cheers,
Karl

[Dave Seabury]

Karl,

Strange thing is the walls do have a uniform thickness, standard framing
no base trim or siding. My window scripts use WALL_THICKNESS and
have no problems (see attached). In plan, the 2d script is pulling the wall
thickness in both composites and non, just not in section. May be I spend
this snowy Sunday reviewing the script again.

Thanks for your comments on the subject.

David

[Dave Seabury]

Karl,

You were spot on. In my profile i had lifted the sheet rock 5/8" at the
base. The project that i am currently working on will not have a topping
slab for radiant heat, as all the previous projects have had. I noticed
that when i placed the door in a previous file (door elevated 2 1/4" for the
slab) it worked fine. When placed in the current file with no elevation,
it read the WALL_THICKNESS as the wall less sheetrock. To solve the
problem, i added a white fill to the profile and it works as expected.

I am assuming that the door script reads wall thickness at the origin, is
there any way to script of different height for this?

Thanks again for your insight, problem solved!

David

[Karl Ottenstein]

Glad you solved it. I consider the behavior that you've seen a bug and have had it bouncing around the system for several years now, waiting for someone from GS to believe me.

When you place a door or window, you have two anchor points for insertion as shown in the attached. The "Anchor Point" is the 2-D insertion and has no real meaning in how the object behaves - same as picking a hotspot for an object for placement.

The "Anchor" - sill or header - effects the appearance of the object in section/3D as it determines the wall thickness used by the window/door by "reading" the wall thickness at that vertical position.

So, adding base trim, or holding up the gyp, etc. - anything that makes the base of a wall not the same as the main face, results in the door trim either pushed into the wall surface, or floating off of it if the anchor is the sill and the sill is located in the effected areas (as it would be for a door).

Graphisoft's "solution" is to use the door Header in this situation as the anchor. Well, that only works if the header happens to be align with the main surface of the wall.

The purpose (supposedly) of the opening reference lines that we place in the Profile Manager is to specify where we want windows/doors oriented. These lines are ignored (1) in the situation above, and (2) with respect to the thickness of the wall - that is, only the reference line on the insertion side is recognized - the line on the opposite side is ignored.

This mostly annoying situation can generally be worked around for conventional construction such as your walls by switching from header to sill/etc.

But, I recently worked with a client doing custom log homes and found that there is no reasonable solution for profiled log walls! If you model a stack of logs of different diameters to get a more natural look to sections, you find that inserting a window or a door is impossible: if the sill and header happen to be where the logs meet and the wall is thinnest, the trim is inset deep into the walls. Wall opening reference lines provide no mechanism for defining the desired thickness of the wall so that proper depth bucks will be generated with trim at the desired location relative to the log faces.

(The only workaround would be what you did: magic wand a white fills to fake a flat surface to the outside/inside of the log wall - at a high polygon count cost - and assign that mass a 100% invisible material for rendering purposes.)

Has been a real sore point for me for years, so sorry for venting!

Cheers,
Karl