Opinions: When it's as good as it gets is it good enough?

[Anonymous]

While 3D renderings are great for conveying designs and ideas the goal is the construction documents. At what point are commercially available objects not suitable for use in your projects because their 2D representation and section detail is not good enough and at what point are they acceptable when the need touch up in elevations and sections.

The objects below are part of a larger collection that are based upon available manufactured parts and are very easy to use yet are highly customizable. Due to various limitations they aren't perfect but would you consider them acceptable for use in CD's.

1. if they are freely available from a manufacturer

or

2. if the manufacturer charged a nominal fee.

either way the manufacturers part numbers and contact info would be called for schedules.


Thanks for your critiques and opinions.

[Anonymous]

3D image

[David Larrew]

Nice work...

I used to work for a developer that mainly did high-end residential. I built many custom GDL objects, as well as custom Profiles to build finish/trim components from the manufacturer's catalogs and specs.

One issue that we had was the 3D model poly-count. The more accurate and detailed the element, the worse it got. The designers wanted all the detail but complained about the navigation sluggishness. We settled on a reasonable level of detail and let the note/call-out/spec handle the specifics.

Be sure that you script-in a flexible "level of detail" that can be controlled easily and/or automatically by view type/distance.

[Anonymous]

Can't you do something with the GLOB_CONTEXT command. For instance Show only parts in high resolution in the elevation and low resolution in 3D.

Now in AC13 you can use the libraryglobal to show an object differently in different views. So in one 3D view (for navigation) you set the resolution to 8 and in another 3D view (for rendeting) you set the resolution to 36

[David Larrew]

Master wrote:
Can't you do something with the GLOB_CONTEXT command. For instance Show only parts in high resolution in the elevation and low resolution in 3D.

Now in AC13 you can use the libraryglobal to show an object differently in different views. So in one 3D view (for navigation) you set the resolution to 8 and in another 3D view (for rendeting) you set the resolution to 36

Yes, that was what I was referring to with...
"...script-in a flexible "level of detail" that can be controlled easily and/or automatically by view type/distance."

That was what I ended up doing for my old employer's GDL parts (I couldn't do much for the Profiles though).

[Anonymous]

Thanks David, Master Script,

The main goal is all around ease of use so the detail level is automatic. The detail level used to be user controlled with sensitivity to camera distance and position but I found that was one of the reasons they took too so long to build and were shaky in navigation. Now they build extremely fast. For the most part the progress window and spinning ball don't even have a chance to display/start. They were created in pre OpenGL days and not as versatile as they are now yet were considerably slower. I ended up eliminating external macros and changed from extensive use to very limited use of the parameter buffer and that made a huge difference also.

For the most part I am assuming most who use them will just select the stock options offered by the manufacturer and not customize them aside from an occasional custom height. and normal cutting details. (i.e trim the base or top by an inch or two with X° angle) and if used in conjunction with the stair object that would be automatic too.

I am only using AC 9 with the 9 & 12 GDL manuals. I thought the 13 would be with the developer tools but I haven't found it. I was going to incorporate some of the newer features but have not found a way to identify the version of AC. Do I just use the GDL version and if so where do I find the version releases of that and can I do a => to have them use the new features when available but not break it when a newer version is released?

The other area I have found to speed things up was with the status values and was using GLOB_SCALE using the status values to speed/clean up the elevations at smaller scale.

I have tried using context with no luck yet because of the inconsistencies in the status values and not paying attention. What really gets me is the inability to select a block of script and do a find and replace on just the selected part. It has been a while but I am sure you could do that with previous versions. The resolution of different parts are interdependent on each other so It too would only be for the 2D. RESOL changes numerous times from top to bottom and sometimes more than once within a single routine depending on whats going on so I am not sure if their would be any benefit to anyone.

Another question one of you may be able to answer is how do I get the print command to print in US standard as opposed to converting to metric?

Thanks again

[Barry Kelly]

Jeffrey wrote:

I am only using AC 9 with the 9 & 12 GDL manuals. I thought the 13 would be with the developer tools but I haven't found it. I was going to incorporate some of the newer features but have not found a way to identify the version of AC. Do I just use the GDL version and if so where do I find the version releases of that and can I do a => to have them use the new features when available but not break it when a newer version is released?

13 is GDL version 1.604

You can use "IF REQ("GDL_version")>=1.5 THEN !!VER10" but you can't be sure that is will work for all future versions.
You should be pretty safe unless you are playing with WALL_SKINS_PARAMS which has changed in just about every version of Archicad so far.

Jeffrey wrote:

Another question one of you may be able to answer is how do I get the print command to print in US standard as opposed to converting to metric?

You will need to format the value for what you want to print with the STR("%0.16ffi",value) and then print that.

Barry.

[Anonymous]

Hi,

From AC 13, One can use the ac_programVersion integer parameter to call the AC version.

Cheers,

[Anonymous]

Thanks Barry, Endre,

I thought the PRINT command read from the system prefs. No such luck I guess.

Thanks again