Magic Wand not working

[Anonymous]

In the past I have been able to reduce the number of nodes on a polyline imported from autocad to use as ridgeline in the mseh tool. In the magic wnad setting box under the Tools menu I have set the radio button to segment length of 5' and have tried both tracing methods because I am not sure which method to choose. In the past on previous versions of ArchiCad this worked quite well. I cannot seem to get it to work in ArchiCad 9.0 or ArchiCad 8.1. Is it a bug or am I doing somethin wrong?
David Rulon
MS Window XP Professional Version 2002 Service Pack 2
1.00 GB of Ram

[Anonymous]

David,
I just tested the magic wand tool in AC 8.1 on a spline with the
line tool selected and it worked like it used to.
When I set the tracing method to best match I get arc segments.
When I set the tracing method to linear segments I get line segments
that are no smaller than set in the line length field in the left panel.
Peter Devlin

[Anonymous]

Peter,
Thanks for your suggestion, it worked. I was able to get it to work in AC8.1. I had to convert the polylines that came in from AutoCad to a spline using the magic wand and then I created the ridges on the mesh with the magic wand and that is when it reduced the number of nodes to one every 5'. I am wondering why I cannot do this in AC9.0. Am I missing something? Also it would be nice if I could avoid the in between step of creating the splines and go directly from the polyline coming in from AutoCad and use the magic wand to create the ridgeline of the mesh with the segment lengths set to a certain length. Does anyone know if this is possible? It would also be great if I could set the height of that ridgeline at the same time as when I create it instead of having to do a second step. Maybe that is wishing for to much.
David

[Anonymous]

David,
I just did exactly what I described doing in AC 8.1 in AC 9
and the magic wand tool behaved exactly the same.

I am puzzled by your statement that you had to convert the
AutoCad lines into splines. Are the AutoCad lines lines ?
If they are straight line segments then I don't understand why
you have to convert them. I have gotten AutoCad terrain maps
and used the AutoCad lines to create ridge line in an Archicad mesh.
The only problem being that the chain of lines are broken by
the elevation text so one has to connect the lines at these points.

As far as I know, there is no way to create a ridge line and assign it
a height in one step.
Peter Devlin

[Anonymous]

David,
I did some testing and I now understand why you have to convert
the AutoCad line segments into splines.
The magic wand tool apparently ignores
settings in the left panel such as line length setting
when it is tracing straight line segments with straight line segments.
It just imitates the original chain of lines.
If this true then it is unfortunate and deserves a statement in the wish list.
I can't think of any reason why Graphisoft would think that this overriding
of user defined settings could be a feature.
Do you remember whether this was true
of the magic wand tool in versions prior to AC 8.1 ?
Thank you,
Peter Devlin

[Anonymous]

Peter,
Thanks for your information. I think you are right. One question about the terrain tool, do the terrain ridge lines act like line segments when using the magic wand ie it only repeats the locations of nodes that Autocad lines or polylines have and will not reduce the number of nodes. I am not sure if my question is clear.
David

[Anonymous]

David,
I have never tried to magic wand mesh ridges once created in the mesh.
It sounds like you are thinking of redefining all ready existing mesh ridges
using the magic wand tool. My first guess is that nothing will happen
if you select the mesh, enable the mesh tool,
and magic wand one of the ridges. I could be wrong.
I also might have guessed wrong about what you are trying to do.
Peter Devlin

[Mats_Knutsson]

Peter wrote:
David,
I did some testing and I now understand why you have to convert
the AutoCad line segments into splines.
The magic wand tool apparently ignores
settings in the left panel such as line length setting
when it is tracing straight line segments with straight line segments.
It just imitates the original chain of lines.
If this true then it is unfortunate and deserves a statement in the wish list.
I can't think of any reason why Graphisoft would think that this overriding
of user defined settings could be a feature.
Do you remember whether this was true
of the magic wand tool in versions prior to AC 8.1 ?
Thank you,
Peter Devlin

Any news on this? I have a client with a dwg file with solines as te terrain and the nodes are horribly dense which causes AC to stop adding the splines to the mesh after a while, and they have done only half the model.
I tried and tried and came up with the same result as Peter D in 2005. I don't want to recommend a manual work around but I might have to just to have the model working.

Look at the ridicolous imaage attached.
/Mats

[Djordje]

Mats,

Find the technique for converting the splines to terrains described in the ArchiGuide tips.

The problem here is that the tracing is too fine; it has to be less detailed in order to succeed - in any software ...

[Anonymous]

I thought I would say a few things on this topic. The series of small lines representing the contours (ridges) that show up when importing a DWG might be the result of an option in your dwg translator (convert splines to polylines). I have at times had to do the same work around of first creating a magic wanding a spline and then using the splines I created and appropriate magic wand settings to magic wand the "ridges" in the mesh tool. As a general rule I always create new splines to represent my contours on my site plans versus using what comes straight from the engineer. Another item I discovered with the mesh tool is it is relatively fast to eliminate nodes along a single ridge in a mesh that is already created. Your can eliminate 10 nodes at once (or more) simply by repositioning one of the nodes to a different node (in this example 10 nodes away on the same ridge) and all of the nodes in between will be eliminated.