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Rotating Complex Profiles

Anonymous
Not applicable
I'm trying to use complex profiles to manage a large amount of repeated objects in a project. It's nice to be able to change the profile, and have all of the objects update.

HOWEVER, I am having a hard time with the limited flexibility of the walls when using complex profiles.

What I need to do is to be able to rotate the wall like you would an object. The ability to "slant" a wall is disabled when I give it a complex profile.

I know I can just convert the wall into a morph or object and rotate it freely, but then I lose the ability to have it's shape auto-update when the complex profile is edited, which is critical for this project.

I tried using the beam tool instead of a wall, and got closer with it by sloping the beam, but the ends are angled in such a way that the object is "skewed", and not rotated (see top-left object in attached pic). I need the ends to be "squared-off" as if the object was rotated in 3D space, and not just stretched.

I also tried the column tool, and using the "slant" parameter, but ran into the same stretch/skew vs rotate issue as I did with the sloped beam (see right object in attached pic)

Attached is a screenshot of the objects I have tried - the top left is the sloped beam, the bottom left is the wall, and the right is the slanted column.

The only way I can think of to achieve what I am looking for is to be able to create a object using GDL that has a complex profile parameter, and rotation parameters that I can set. This way, I can have many objects all from the same library object that can all use different complex profiles. That way, when I change the profile shape, all the objects using that profile will be auto-updated regardless of their orientation in 3D space.

Can GDL objects be created that use complex profiles? If so, can someone point me in the right direction?

Really, this would be solved if we could freely rotate our walls, or if the beam tool had a "edge angle condition" parameter that could be set to square, like the roof tool does.

Thanks in advance for your help!

btw, I'm using ArchiCAD 17 on a Windows 7 64-bit system

profile objects.jpg
3 REPLIES 3
Anonymous
Not applicable
No ideas anyone? Is there anyone here who can help me??
Anonymous
Not applicable
My two cents... use the beam and cut the ends using another complex profile to get the effect you are looking for at the end.

Sorry, that's all I can think of.
Laszlo Nagy
Community Admin
Community Admin
If you are using Complex Profiles, you will have to create a Profile for each different shape, even if they are only the same shape rotated at different angles. Sorry, there is no such parametric behavior in the Profile Manager.
Your other choice is create the profile in GDL. Then in GDL you will be able to create a parameter based on which the profile is rotated.
But this requires some GDL knowledge.

Another difference between these two options is that if you do it with Complex Profiles, Walls and Beams using those profiles will be automatically and correctly joined by ArchiCAD. With GDL there will be no such intelligence when two or more such elements join, for example in an L-joint or T-joint.
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