Coordinate List?

[Anonymous]

Is there any way to generate a txt. file consisting of a list of coordinates of any element? I want to produce a list of construction staking coordinate info. I have searched through the entire calculate menu to find some way to generate some x,y,z info of a hotspot,column,elevation dimension anything! No luck! I would be willing to pay for some help generating an object or GDL script to do this. Any help much appreciated!

[Anonymous]

I'll explain my goal a little better. I have access to a motorized total station which i'm shure many of you are familar with. I have the proper software and cable to attach it to a PC and download and convert the info into a text coordinate file. Me and a partner sucessfully shot property lines and a topo grid at a site yesterday. We were pretty pleased considering neither of us are surveyors or CE's. I also managed to import the file into architerra. I am very excited about being able to get this valuable information into AC without waiting for a surveyor. The next logical step is to be able to send specific coordinates as a text file back to the conversion software into the total station and out to the field! I was hoping to find, create or buy an object that could act like the elevation markers with gravity. I would snap it to important points on the model and use the calculate lists or schedules which I believe can already save as txt. files. One idea was to use the column tool to create a small "stake" like element. I think you can use the bottom elevation of a column as a parameter in a list. I havent found any way to list the x,y in relation to the user placed origin though. I am also not shure if the column tool works with gravity. I am getting the feeling that some GDL is on my horizion!

[Karl Ottenstein]

This should let you get what you want, Mark. If not, it lets me share yet another strange feature of ArchiCAD. 😉

The Special Menu has an option to save the contents of the 3D window as vertices, edges, and other primitives. You are only interested in vertices: the x, y and z coordinates of the corners of polygons.

In the screenshot, I've drawn a slab and a column in metric ... because ArchiCAD operates internally in metric and the output is in metric ... so this was the easiest way for me to verify the numbers were right. You'll have to convert to FFI of course.

Choose Save GDL from the Special Menu and GDL 3D as the type.

Open the file and delete (or have software ignore) all lines other than the VERT lines. (My column was .1m wide, 3m high, and sitting on top of a .5m high slab at a corner located at (2m, 0m). The slab is 2m x 3m x .5m All comes through nicely - even tabbed!)

If you only want the x, y, z coordinates of certain locations, select just those 'marker' objects before generating the 3D ... and only their coordinates will be output. If your marker is a cube shape with 8 vertices like the illustration, then if you always place the smallest x,y,z coordinate on your intended point, it would be easy to have a tiny program eliminate all of the other points, too. Maybe a 3D hotspot would generate a single VERT ... I didn't spend any more time exploring.

Interesting, huh?

Karl

[Anonymous]

I think you are on to something! I still have not been able to get to the special menu. I will try again ( should be easy ) at the office tommorow. I hope I can produce a streamlined method of doing this. I would have never came up with that on my own. Mabey we can come up with something usefull to others. Thanks!

[Karl Ottenstein]

Part 2.

OK. I couldn't resist the challenge. Someone else may have a better solution.

I wanted to make a 'marker object' that you could plop down at points that you wanted output. For 2D, I just used a circle with crosshairs and a hotspot in the middle. The 3D became tricky. The easiest thing for output is for the 3D script to have nothing but a VERT 0, 0, 0 in it ... and then the output file would only have the desired coordinates. But, this is invisible in the 3D window and wouldn't allow you to visually drag the marker up and down to snap it to vertical height. So... I went for just a 3D line to allow 3D editing.

To output your coordinates, use Find and Select to select all of these marker elements, then go to 3D and save as in the tip below. The first coordinate of every pair is the coordinate that you want. The second (top point of the line) can be discarded.

2D script:
---------------------
HOTSPOT2 0, 0

CIRCLE2 0, 0, A/2

! Crosshairs
LINE2 -A/2, 0, A/2, 0
LINE2 0, -A/2, 0, A/2


3D script:
----------------------
LIN_ 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1


Karl

[Petros Ioannou]

There is also an xyz locator object which can be downloaded from http://www.archiradar.com/eng/objects/al2d02.htm

HTH
Petros

[Anonymous]

Thanks Again Karl, I don't understand exactly what to do with what you sent me. Any chance you could explain how to put the object to use? I know verry little about GDL. I downloaded the free object from archiradar. It works great. I am trying to generate a list using them.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Petros wrote:
There is also an xyz locator object which can be downloaded from http://www.archiradar.com/eng/objects/al2d02.htm

I believe that that only produces a visual label (using the SYMB_POS_X, Y and Z globals) ... but Mark is looking for a text file with many coordinates listed I think.

Good thought!

Karl

P.S. Potentially one could create a combination of GDL objects that use the SYMB_POS values, OPEN, OUTPUT, and CLOSE and some other globals to write a custom text file (and turn the writing on and off)... but to do it cleanly requires a special on/off switch object and a MASTER_GDL script to start a clean file. (I think.)

[Petros Ioannou]

You are right Karl. First thing that crossed my mind was if it would be possible to extract this visual data from the locator to a list but no luck...
Petros

[Anonymous]

I think the object is only metric! Darn