Perforated brick wall - too many polygons

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone,


I am having huge speed issues and its doubly frustrating because making each panel that I need takes so long in itself and then they are not complying.


I am working on a project with a 60' tall 'perforated' brick screen that is slanted and skewed. To make this screen I have used a complex profile of each panel, clicked every single hole i need to make with the magic wand, then place it, and convert to a morph so it lets me slant it.


I have 5 panels to make. The first was slow. The second was unbearable. The program is taking forever to do everything EVEN when I have the layers with the screen off.


So my question is-


Is there any better way to make this wall - bear in mind I need it to cast interior shadows through the perforations and I need to do a dusk rendering with interior light glowing through the holes.


If there is no better way,

Is there a way I can get the program to run better when the layer is off. Or is there a simpler view mode I can use. I am using monochrome with shadows off right now.


Thanks for any help I'm getting very frustrated with this!

Thanks

[Karl Ottenstein]

Bruce wrote:
When I last tried alpha masked surfaces for something similar (admittedly it was in AC13), the result was a zero-depth looking element. Good for things like what you have listed (fences, balustrades, window screens), Karl, but not really that good for elements with any real depth to them - especially if the render camera will be reasonably close.

Has this changed in more recent versions?

Good point, Bruce! For a close up of a thick element, it would at best look hollow with holes on opposite sides. Didn't feel like it was that massive in the sample images, but yeah... you're right.


A different possibility to lighten the polygon load is the old GDL trick of changing the resolution of the holes depending on how close the perspective camera is to the hole. When November55 used the magic wand to cut the holes, they became static openings, with as many polygons as the magic wand resolution settings at the time. (Lowering the magic wand settings dramatically first might have helped if there were no super close views of the holes.) With a camera-distance sensitive object, using hexagons far from the camera and higher edged polygons closer to the camera, the polygon burden could be reduced. Would have to be something like a skylight and not a solid element subtract - that many SEOps would probably kill things, too. But, I don't know if skylights/windows/doors can query the distance from the camera the same way a standalone object can. Too many years since I played with all of that.

[Hmooslechner]

Have You tried to make a GDL from the original form when finished? GDLs are much faster displayed compared to the original Morphs or what ever You have used.

That could speed up the thing a lot.

suggested workflow:

An extra archicad-Session for one Paneel.

After you have your perforated pannel - select it and make a new librarypart-copy of it.

Then You draw this from one Archicad-Session into the other collecting-file-session, then no slow morph is implemented.

Try it!

proof of concept - german, AC19, but worth looking:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W27GRg5HLh0

[Hmooslechner]

english vid-totorial AC21 slow Macbook, Workflow..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjBVIeeYSDw