Profiler resolution

[Anonymous]

I couldn't find this covered previosly anywhere, my apologies if it has been.

Does anyone know how ArchiCAD's profiler decides what resolution it will profile along a curved path? A typical example is a curved handrail to a curved balcony, which comes out badly segmented. I wondered if the resolution relates to the magic wand settings, but it doesn't seem to. The GDL script when you open the created objects has plotted nodes along this path using tube, but how has profiler decided how much to segment along the curve? Is it completely internal within the profiler operation and uneditablejavascript:emoticon(':?:')

[Erika Epstein]

finshed screenshot.

[Link]

Have I failed to sacrifice sufficient goats to GOD CAD?

The latest requirements state 17 goats.

Judging by your screenshot, you'll only have 2 segments in your arc. Have you tried setting your segment length to something really low like 20 mm's? Don't forget, you need to hit that radio button too.

Keep at it mate!

Cheers,
Link.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Erika,

I can manage to get profiler to work fine and the direction is not a problem, the only thing I'm having trouble with is controlling the resolution. Changing settings in Magic Wand Settings is having absolutely no effect on the result. No matter what I have magic wand settings set to, the curved part of the path comes out with the same number of facets. I can't emulate what you did in your example

Erika wrote:
The attached screen shot shows 3 different profiler objects made from the same 'C' shape . The left was set to 72, the middle 18 the right 8.

I can't get a different breakup of segments like in your screenshot, it's always the same.

Link,
I was purposely setting the number of segments along an arc to 2 to see if it would only have 2 segments; the example shows that for me the magic wand settings aren't changing how many segments I end up getting.

Maybe two more goats are necessary?

[Anonymous]

Ray wrote:
I can manage to get profiler to work fine and the direction is not a problem, the only thing I'm having trouble with is controlling the resolution. Changing settings in Magic Wand Settings is having absolutely no effect on the result. No matter what I have magic wand settings set to, the curved part of the path comes out with the same number of facets.

Do you have the Tracing Method set to Linear Segments or Best Match?

woodster

[Anonymous]

woodster wrote:
Do you have the Tracing Method set to Linear Segments or Best Match?

I've tried both, also making no difference.

But while we're talking about it, Ive never quite worked out what this is supposed to do.

[Anonymous]

You've got to write down step by step what you are doing as you create the profile. Start by setting the Magic Wand dialog box (Tools/Magic Wand Settings...) as shown.

Then tell us step by step from there what you are doing. This works every time

woodster

[Anonymous]

woodster wrote:
You've got to write down step by step what you are doing as you create the profile. Start by setting the Magic Wand dialog box (Tools/Magic Wand Settings...) as shown.

Then tell us step by step from there what you are doing. This works every time

Woodster,

Thanks for your patience. I've been using profiler to make a gutter with a curved part and an awning roof similar to what you've shown, and I get a result similar to yours (see earlier post). The problem comes when you have a curve of a larger radius and want to reduce the faceting.

When I look at your image it seems that there are fewer than 36 segments along the curved part as you would assume there should be. Because I was getting similar results to yours and couldn't seem to make this smoother, I tried going the other way to make less segments to see if I could force it to be coarser (to test wether magic wand settings was actually making any difference at all), but it didn't change the result.

Could you try say 4 "segments along arc" to see if you get a "coarser" curved part

[Anonymous]

Ray wrote:
When I look at your image it seems that there are fewer than 36 segments along the curved part as you would assume there should be. Because I was getting similar results to yours and couldn't seem to make this smoother, I tried going the other way to make less segments to see if I could force it to be coarser (to test wether magic wand settings was actually making any difference at all), but it didn't change the result.

Ok, you got me going on this one and I tested it out. You are right in that the Magic Wand settings are not affecting the number of segments as they should but they do affect the number of segments.

What's happening is that even thought we have set the magic wand to X Segments Along Arcs it is giving us Segments Along Circles. In my case I was using an arc of 90° so when I set the segments to 4 I got 1, 8 I got 2, 16 I got 4, etc. When I drew an arc of 45° the results were unpredictable (although I didn't play around with it that much)

It's a bug!

woodster

[Anonymous]

woodster wrote:
Ok, you got me going on this one and I tested it out. You are right in that the Magic Wand settings are not affecting the number of segments as they should ......

It's a bug!

Thanks Woodster,

For a while I thought I was in my own little mixed up world.

[Erika Epstein]

bug checks out here too.. today. But then why was it working correctly for me the other day?
I just tried reproducing waht I made the other day.First I couldn't even generate a straight segment, kept getting "add-on errors" Then archicad crashed twice, bug report and all,. finally restarted archicad and reproduced the items, but this time they showed up with your "bug". Profiler has a history of being a quirky add-on but very useful and comes with AC...

Ray wrote:
......

For a while I thought I was in my own little mixed up world.

sounds like fun while it lasted.