Mesh/Fill Dimensions -- am I an idiot?

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Very simple question -- I must be being really dense...

I have a irregular polygon Fill and a correspondingly shaped 3D mesh.
Imagine there was a 2d bounding box around the fill...and a 3D cube around the mesh.

I wish to know:
a) X,Y, Z co-ords of Bottom left of Mesh (X,Y of Fill)
b) X,Y,Z co-ords of Top Right of Mesh (X,Y of Fill)
c) Lowest and Highest Z values of the mesh and
d) It's simple subtraction (b-a)-- but Length and Width and Height
e) all relative to (0,0,0)/

Element Info doesn't give it to me and the Mesh settings doesn't give it to me...how do I get it???

[Dwight]

Since this is your first posting, I must assume you are an new user and not a sinister lurker...

This isn't "automatic" as you might wish, but is is straight forward. Someone may know a better way than this, but see if this works for you:

I assume that you mean absolute 0,0,0, not relative, say to the bottom left corner of your element....

Perhaps you could say what you are trying to achieve with this information....

For your A and B:

Double-clicking the origin locator icon relocates your origin to absolute 0,0,0

Set your coordinate box readouts for x and y to 'absolute,' not 'relative.'
[turn off the deltas - most users work using "relative' displacements]

To establish the "bounding box" of the mesh, locate the four outermost nodes visually. Place the cursor on each node and record the relevant locations.
These are displayed in the Coordinate box. You want: Max y, min y, max x, min x.

For your c:
As for the "Z" range you will query the actual mesh nodes individually. I know of no way to express the height range of a mesh except to use an elevation view.

There once was a GDL object that did most of the function you need - it displayed its x,y when placed.

It is easy enough to establish a bounding box with a fill, and using the relative coordinates, set to 0,0 at the lower left to get the x,y size in just one step.

I have misgivings that this answer is not on target for you - try it out and let me know....

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the direction...and yes -- a newbie.

eyeballing the extreme nodes is the way I went -- although it's pretty arcane to say the least! One would think a properties window would display this info -- or the info window for that matter.

in the end i exported the object to 3ds - loaded it into vue d'esprit and checked the properties.

Why do I want to know them? Because I want to project (exactly) an image onto the mesh (irregular polygon boundary). I know my image size...and i know it's anchored at absolute (0,0,0). So if I new the anchor of the mesh and its size -- i could cut out the appropriate sized image to project onto the mesh.

I wonder if someone has a script that can query a selected object and report the results?

s.

[Dwight]

Hmmm.

There's this fantastic movie called "Adaptation," [written by my screenplay hero Charlie Kaufmann whose humorous depiction of screenwriting guru Robert McKee in that movie will be confirmed when McKee's seminar finally comes to Vancouver where i will see for myself] where Meryl Streep plays journalist Susan Orlean on the trail of "the Orchid Thief." She wants to chase down the story of the stolen orchid so she goes to Matthew Ocela, native associate of the Orchid Thief. He says "I don't have much to say to you. It's just not the Indian way."

So, when you are working in Archicad and something comes up you didn't expect because all the other programs do it that way, don't be too disappointed because " It's not the Archicad Way."

The "Element Information " dialog is fairly new, so to an old timer like me, clicking on the min x max x min y max y corners is a quick set of moves, comparable to looking up something on a table in a window i never open.

Here's how to map an image to your irregular mesh that eliminates the need to relate to absolute zero origin:

There's a trick in the 3D window that let's you map any texture to any node regardless of its relationship to the absolute origin.

See Menu: Design> Align 3D Texture - page 27 in the Reference Guide

The method to align a texture with an irregular mesh is to put a rectangular slab under the irregular mesh equal to the mesh extents [instead of messing with a fill]. Image the mesh and slab together in 3D [F4] and use the slab as the texture reference for the material on the mesh.

This method bypasses any need to know coordinates at all.

This is elaborated in greater detail on page 146 of my book.

[Anonymous]

merci,

I'll give it a whirl...