Modeling mesh with contours

[Anonymous]

I have been trying to apply some contour lines to a mesh, but I continue to have a problem.

The contour lines I have are in a dwg file. I merged the dwg file into ArchiCAD, and then created a mesh. I selected the mesh, and then selected the mesh tool button, using the wand I selected the contours one by one adjusting the elevation of each one through the pet palette. As I selected the contour lines they would take on the color assigned to the mesh, and I could select one of the nodes on the contour line and adjust it through the pet palette. After applying about 60% of the lines, I selected the next line with the wand, it was applied to the mesh, but the contours were no longer visible. The nodes were visible, along with the outline of the mesh, and the original lines I was applying to the mesh. If you tried to select a node there would be no pet palette pop up. If I tried a 3d view nothing appears in the window. If I click undo everything looks the way it is supposed to include the 3d view. I was able to skip a couple contours that would not apply correctly and find others that would apply, but the end result was an incomplete model.

I was thinking maybe there was something wrong with the lines I was merging into ArchiCAD. I tried referencing the dwg file and tracing the lines with ArchiCAD continuous polylines. The result was the same.


Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Bob

[Anonymous]

Allah belkhair aghati

ok , did u get any message of " non regularized
polygon " ?

mm...sometimes its sad to say something about relaunching ArchiCAD .

[Thomas Holm]

Btusini wrote:
I have been trying to apply some contour lines to a mesh, but I continue to have a problem.

(edited) A guess is that your mesh is getting too complex. This might happen without an error message. You might want to try to reduce the number of nodes before creating the mesh by simplifying the contour lines with the magic wand settings, like in this Wiki tip:
http://www.archicadwiki.com/TechNotes/Handle_huge_surveyors%27_drawings?highlight=%28TechNotes/%29%7...

[Anonymous]

There is no error message and I have restated ArchiCAD, rebooted the CPU...no luck. I will e-mail the file to anyone who would like to give it a try.

Thanks,
Bob
btusini@yahoo.com

[__archiben]

Btusini wrote:
There is no error message and I have restated ArchiCAD, rebooted the CPU...no luck. I will e-mail the file to anyone who would like to give it a try.

sure - zip it and flick it through. e-mail address in my sig.

if you can highlight the contour lines that won't work it would be helpful.

cheers
~/archiben

[David Collins]

I have seen this sort of behavior in complex meshes when adding a new contour or void somehow compromised the outline of the mesh. Sorry I can't be more specific, but its been a while. I've created really complex meshes with thousands of nodes and I haven't yet run up against an upper limit.

Mesh rules for safe passage:

1. Use the magic wand sparingly, especially with imported files, where you may not know exactly what you're tracing. Its always better to create new outlines and contours by tracing them in point by point.

2. Pay particular attention to the outside boundary of the mesh and to any voids you may have. Contours can accept a certain amount of flakiness, but the basic defining polygon of the mesh has to be closed and regular. Keep these simple.

3. When creating contours, it sometimes helps to keep their end lines a slight distance away from the mesh boundary. After you've set all the heights, you can then drag the contour ends over to join with the mesh boundary.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the help guys!!

It does seem that it is a complexity problem. Although I changed my process a little and that seemed to help, although not completely solve the problem. Instead of applying a height to the contours as I applied them to the mesh, I applied all of the contours to the mesh first, then went back and applied the heights. This worked much better and I was able to use about 90% of the contours.

I tried the spline option, but the splines were so far off from what the contours were it really didn't work well. I could have edited all the splines but the amount of work would have been overwhelming. There maybe some additional setting for splines in ArchiCAD that I have to figure out, that would have eliminated some of this problem.

Again thanks for the help.

Take care,
Bob