Modeling
About Archicad's design tools, element connections, modeling concepts, etc.

MORPH: Tube extrude along a 3d path - profile centre?

Anonymous
Not applicable
Hi,

If I want to use the Tube Extrude tool along a 3d path I leftclick on a profile and this point becomes the centre of extrusion. It is not too precise (i.e. if I want to select exactly a centre of a cicrcle). Is it possible to have more control over it?
24 REPLIES 24
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
I've found getting Morph hotspots to show in 3D and be usable a little tricky.

For example, if you are extruding a circle, made with the Morph tool in 3D... if you shift-click the circle to select the Morph, no hotspots show up for me on Mac when moving my mouse around the surface.

But, if I move (not click) my mouse over the edge of the circle/profile so that I see the Mercedes cursor .. then a hotstpot shows up at the center and and division marks along the edge. I can then snap (checkmark) click on the center and extrude from the exact center with the tube pet palette option.

You can also draw as many temporary guidelines in 3D as you might need to find a point - for example, create two guidelines that allow you to snap on their intersection. (Create Guideline Segment command ... probably assigned to a shortcut key - mine is shift-`)

Karl
AC 28 USA and earlier   •   macOS Sequoia 15.2, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
One of the forum moderators
Anonymous
Not applicable
Tube tool is a bit strange, as a whole morph. I don't want to complain too much, but it do less than 3d apps could do years ago.

To pick a precise point you need to activate the tube tool and pick again a point on a starting surface (like 0 extrusion).

But a real shame is that it cannot just extrude along the 3d path - why?
Anonymous
Not applicable
Morph tube is very powerful. In the youtube channel there are some videos that explain how to do.

For example, this is a very simple profile extrude to a 3d path. Is very, very easy.



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grubar wrote:
Hi,

If I want to use the Tube Extrude tool along a 3d path I leftclick on a profile and this point becomes the centre of extrusion. It is not too precise (i.e. if I want to select exactly a centre of a cicrcle). Is it possible to have more control over it?
Anonymous
Not applicable
Thank you all for your kind replies.

@Karl

Hi Karl, it’s me Bartek from Artlantis Forum (i.e. we were trying to figure out Maxwell Render Core licensing about a month ago). I agree with you: Morph surface behaves similar to slabs in 3d (it has only external boundaries and hotspots, no virtual ones: center, mid points etc). The way to get around it is to draw additional point (in 2d) before extrusion.
I have to say that I love this Morph Tool. ArchiCAD 16 is a big step forward.

Cheers

Bartek
Anonymous
Not applicable
Come on in theory it is powerfull but in practical use ? Just try to draw a railing - first you have to draw a 3D polyline, than draw again a 3D tube along this polyline (and 3D window is so lame in archicad) - even worse when you need to hide or cut bits of model (3D cutaway nightmare). Is it really that nice? Who needs this bulge function - just give us the most simple 3d modeling options like extrude along path, rail, split etc.

And the best one - can't edit morphs or even copy them in section/elevation - why?
Anonymous
Not applicable
stayrudee wrote:
Come on in theory it is powerfull but in practical use ? Just try to draw a railing - first you have to draw a 3D polyline, than draw again a 3D tube along this polyline (and 3D window is so lame in archicad) - even worse when you need to hide or cut bits of model (3D cutaway nightmare). Is it really that nice? Who needs this bulge function - just give us the most simple 3d modeling options like extrude along path, rail, split etc.

And the best one - can't edit morphs or even copy them in section/elevation - why?
When you practice a bit you realize the powerful of the morph tool. I have made some practices,
archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=40191 and I think that morph its very easy to use and very intuitive. If you have some skill with other programs like C4D you find some tool very similar of course limited but I think that its a very good start point.
Morph has some tricky specially with the tube tool! Of course you can extrude along a 3d path (as the example a post before) and you can split too with the "axe".
With archisuite you can copy morph in section and elevation, and with the cheap "simple add ons" too.
I have made some videos and when I receive my Archicad I will post some of then explain how to do some objects with morph tool...
Anonymous
Not applicable
Ok so what I am missing with that extrude along 3D path. I draw a 3D path with the morph tool, than draw a profile and what next?

Copy in section with add-ons - still no sense for me, or maybe they want us to buy them.

One more horrible thing is the drawing in 3D with no possibility to lock to xyz axis - generally archicad 3d environment is so obsolete. Take any competitor and see what they got.

My point is that much better is to model in sketchup, import and convert to morph than do modelling in archicad as the 3D windows is clumsy and slow. Every archicad user needs to know tons of work-arounds to do simple stuff. This nice piece of software is suffering from bad UI design, its like it is developed by people that are not working on it.

Please hire a interface designer - make v17 a modern tool. It's not far away - just get some architects to help you.
Anonymous
Not applicable
stayrudee wrote:
Please hire a interface designer - make v17 a modern tool. It's not far away - just get some architects to help you.
+1
Barry Kelly
Moderator
stayrudee wrote:
One more horrible thing is the drawing in 3D with no possibility to lock to xyz axis ...
Do you have your editing plane turned on?
It can be set at any position either horizontal, vertical or at any specified angle.
Then your editing is constrained to this plane.
Barry.
One of the forum moderators.
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