!Restored: ArchiCAD 12+?

[Anonymous]

As the debate on the relative merits of ArchiCAD 11 rolls on, and we all digest what still remains to be addressed, there are obviously numerous issues that remain unresolved.

Some we have learned to live with, and find workarounds for. There are others that I believe are much more fundamental.
One of those is how ArchiCAD deals with curved surfaces.
Many people fail to understand that in ArchiCAD, curved surfaces become facetted in Views AND 2D section and elevation windows. It is like turning a vectorial line drawing into a bitmap - it might look OK but try doing anything that requires accuracy (like, for instance, working drawings!) and you are in trouble....

I have prepared a PDF (refer attached file) complete with an example explaining the problem.

Please consider lobbying GS as I reckon this will become more & more of a problem...

[stefan]

Miki wrote:
The real source of the problem is translation from mathematical curve to something that your graphic card can understand.[...]

The viewport display is just a representation, which indeed uses the Graphics card for improved performance. The analytic display in ArchiCAD (the hidden line display in the "internal engine") uses the real lines and curves and this uses only the CPU. Even though it is not possible to display the "real" surfaces in a program such as Rhino, they handle the full geometric complexity underneath for geometric operations.

In fact, we see the clean surfaces only through some representational approximation 😉