Wish upon an Object from BIMcomponents.com

[Levente Filetoth]

Dear Archi-Talkers,

I guess I am preaching to the choir when saying that GDL is one of the core assets of ArchiCAD. To provide support for great GDL content to get created we launched BIMcomponents.com with ArchiCAD 16. In order to give some boost to the interest for the topic we decided to help deliver some long wished GDL objects that no-one has created as of yet.

Here we call upon a little contest: share your wish for an object that you cannot find in the standard ArchiCAD library and we will see to it that some of them get programmed and shared with all of you through the BIMcomponents.com portal.

The rules are very simple, just make a post with a concise description of what you think could be solved with the help of GDL and your award is that if your idea turns out to be interesting enough it will be programed by a professional GDL developer.

Please give us your ideas and let's see if we can create some extra value to the ArchiCAD community with the help of GDL.

Disclaimer: This promotional activity's goal is to find objects that are over the line of standard object development project, hence will never make it to the standard ArchiCAD library. Please use this thread to provide your input to this specific topic and please avoid raising issues related to the development of the standard ArchiCAD object libraries and/or to the development of the GDL technology in general. Thank you for your understanding.

[JaredBanks]

Good requests from the LinkedIn forum:


Please--some decent living room furniture. A sectional couch that doesn't look like it should be in a dentist's waiting room. A decent Banguet. A Rumford fireplace and chimney that is parametric so you can change chimney height without distorting fireplace size.

[Anonymous]

One shape that has been hard to make has been spiraling ramps of all sorts. Especially with curved inclining walls. Seen a couple of posts trying to model parking structures (with walls) that are funnel shaped with an asymmetrical end.

[Anonymous]

This one is dead simple but useful like the mouse wheel is useful.

It's basically a free floating dimension line that acts like a regular line and it's dimension properties are independent of the model view, working units, or anything else meaning it can display imp or metric and won't switch.

It should have all the regular parameters like changing the arrow head, color, or line weight.

If it could be 3D, that would be awesome.

But it has to be an object unto it self so it's not subject to rules or parameters meant for things like lines and dimensions.




The reason why I bring this up is I use this technique already but it's clumsy and finicky. I create a line the length I need it and attach a dimension to it. The way it is now some caveats are I have to grab both the dimension and the line to duplicate them and the line has to stay on it's original angle because the dimension doesn't rotate with the line.

In the attached picture you'll see I have lines that are the exact length that I need and a dimension attached to the line to display the length. I can use those lines to make sure my objects are where they need to be. Not only by creating hotspots but more importantly by creating a visual record I intentionally put that measured distance there. That's something merely dimensioning something and then hiding the dimensions on a hidden layer can't do as sometimes objects get deleted or moved and the dimension is broken or readjusted. And if it's not visible, such as a hidden layer, breaking dimension doesn't throw up an error, it's easy to loose track of what has and hasn't been done. The way I do it the line stays there no matter what. And if things are changing that has been useful for me to see it. Plus I monitor my progress by changing line colors and noting the date off to the side so I can tell when something was done or changed.

I don't know if anyone else does this, even partially, but a free floating permanent dimension object that displays it's length no matter what angle would be extremely useful (to me at least, but I think others would find it very useful as well).


I just wanted to note in the picture, the two lines by the walls is how I use what I've been describing. The lines apart from the wall are examples of metric and imp at the same time and I pulled the dimension away from the line to show its just that, a line and a dimension.

[Anonymous]

@zeropointreference

how about this one: https://bimcomponents.com/GSM/Details/6833

[JaredBanks]

Another request from LinkedIn: Kohler products. I completely agree. If you do residential in the USA (probably elsewhere as well?), you're going to have a few Kohler products in your design. It'd be great to have their sinks, toilets, and especially baths. The ArchiCAD library bath objects don't cut it for drop-in bath tubs, whether simple or fancy.

[Anonymous]

That's great, very useful!

This is paying off already!

[Paul Adams]

I would like to see a set of basic mechanical service items including: gas meter, electric meter, electrical panel with mast, etc. This equipment appears on every building so it wouldn't just be for my convenience.

I would also like to see some basic commercial kitchen items like a triple bowl sink, commercial range, wok, fryer, range hood with fire suppression. Again, these appear in a lot of situations, so many people could make use of the parts.

[JaredBanks]

scheduleable electrical equipment like that would be awesome. +1!

[Stress Co_]

I could use a "landscape boulder" object.
I'm guessing it would be easy to create with the Morph tool...
But I'm not up to speed

[JaredBanks]

I bet a landscape boulder would be really easy. If you started with a sphere object with say 12 or 20 facets, then morphed it, did a little push and pull, then softened some edges...

I have also had some success with creating them out of meshes. But then morphing that would take it to the next level, too.

Great idea.