OFFSET EDGE - Pet Pallet

[Anonymous]

Is this a wish or a bug?

Working with polygon shapes and the Offset edge tool on the pet pallet works fine, it does just what you want.

However, when it comes to editing a polyline or a selection of unclosed elements (see topic on this), such as a selection of walls or lines, then the behaviour can be rather strange.

Select several joined lines/walls and then edit the end one using the Offset edge.

Then what happens is this:

Rather than extending the adjacent elements and keeping the end one at the original length, you find it lengthens or shortens the element, depending on the undrawn line between the first and last element you have selected.

In the example below, the closed shape would be a triangle, and the wall is either lengthened or shortened according to which way you offset.

This is not what I want to happen.

Am I the only one who thinks this is not what the edit should do?

[Anonymous]

Dwight,

True, there are plenty of wish list items that are more desperate (a Redefine button for Layer Combinations & Model View Options).

However I sometimes think that we end up putting up with features that don't quite work as they should because we don't bother to complain.

This certainly was the case in the pre-ArchiCAD-Talk Forum days.

[__archiben]

Andy wrote:
However I sometimes think that we end up putting up with features that don't quite work as they should because we don't bother to complain.

well said!

[LiHigh]

IMHO, I don't think it's a bad thing. What more can you do about edge editing?

If we look at different senarios as illustrsted in the attached image, it might be good to have the invisible vectors which pass through the 1st and last points of the serie of connected elements.

[Anonymous]

I think the end segments of the polyline (or selected walls, lines, etc.) should simply retain their original length.
This seems the most commonly desired behavior and easiest to understand.
In the rare cases where one wants the edge to stretch it can be done manually as a second step.

[SeaGeoff]

I agree. The Pet palette should work the way Andy and Matthew describe. With regard to walls I would like to see a specific Connected Wall Mode so that, when activated, you could simply drag any wall and all intersecting walls would extend or shrink accordingly. Similar to using the marquee but without all the hassle of protecting all the stuff you don't want to move. VectorWorks has had this for years and it works great.

[SeaGeoff]

I did a little experimenting and discovered that if the walls are grouped, and groups are then suspended, that offset edge works closer to like we want. The key is that the walls need to form a closed polygon but will still work if one segment extend past the closed shape. The same works for lines and polylines. Things break down if segments extend every which way and T intersections are not maintained. Basically only corners are preserved. At first I was pretty excited, but with all the limitations I still think there's room for improvement.

[Laszlo Nagy]

I have an idea. It is obvious to me that both ways of how it works are useful under various circumstances. So why not have a keyboard shortcut using which you can toggle between the two working methods:
1. The offset edge does not change its length
2. The offset edge changes its edge just like as an edge of a polygon would.

Then the user could control what would happen.

The other choice would be to make Archicad smart enough to be able to decide which method to use in which case. But there may be so many possible scenarios that it would inevitably make mistakes in some of them. So the user should have the control.

[Anonymous]

Matthew wrote:
I think the end segments of the polyline (or selected walls, lines, etc.) should simply retain their original length.
This seems the most commonly desired behavior and easiest to understand. ...

Exactly Matthew.

I can never remember using the function deliberately to achieve the effect that LiHigh illustrates, but I have tried offsetting polylines and walls and realised that the function doesn't do what I want several times (may be I'm just thick).

So I don't think Laszlo's idea is necessary.

[__archiben]

laszlonagy wrote:
Then the user could control what would happen.

i like smart solutions like this. it's the mac OS way of working: a feature works in the most likely used way by default, but holding down the ALT key opens up a whole new world of alternative functionality.

unfortunately (in my opinion - others would say fortunately!), graphisoft's approach to user interface in 10 is one of making all commands visible on the interface, (such as picking up and injecting parameters, trimming, etc...) and so all new functionality from now on seems to require a full command be available rather than just ALTernative options on the one command . . .

~/archiben

[SeaGeoff]

While we're on the subject I have another complaint about Offset Edge. Once started the cursor does not recognize other edges (no half-filled pencil) or invoke guide lines. Only vertices are detected. As other pet palette functions do not suffer this malady I consider it a bug.