Solid Element Operations Fix

[Rob]

Working on quite complicated project on multiple landscaping levels I wanted to use SEO for terrain modeling. Well, as my intention was. After a day of massing and modeling the SEO has proven itself as an unreliable and crappy tool (oh yes - crappy). I was mainly using subtraction with upwards extrusion with slabs and roofs(ramps) as operators and a mesh as the target. It was like playing a bl**dy game. When I subtracted one piece another already subtracted popped back and that went in loops, so I ended up with chasing popping already subtracted pieces all over the project. Finally I have given up.
However, this one needs an urgent fixing, it's actually remains me of v8.0 horrors and I suppose it has not been reviewed since that release.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Hi Robert,

Your signature indicates version 8.1. Of course, you realize that nothing in an older version is going to be fixed. If the same problem exists in the current version, then that is another matter. And, you haven't given enough detail for this problem to be reproduced.

If you don't have 9.0 yet, perhaps you can post a MOD with the smallest number of elements that exhibit the problem along with a sequence of instructions to reproduce it to see if this problem still exists.

Karl

[Rob]

Karl,

please find attached zip with images to illustrate (hopefully) the problem. I know, I am not sure about v9 but being a beta tester I can not recollect any info about testing of 'improved' SEO. However, I can be wrong.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Rob wrote:
please find attached zip with images to illustrate (hopefully) the problem. I know, I am not sure about v9 but being a beta tester I can not recollect any info about testing of 'improved' SEO. However, I can be wrong.

Ah, the images help explain the behavior. Yes, I've seen this at times with site meshes as well with 8.1.

While 9.0 doesn't advertise any improvements to SEO, it includes 100's of fixes to various bugs reported from previous versions, so there's no telling if this has been fixed other than by trying to reproduce it there. 😉

Karl

[James B]

I use SEO all the time. And sometimes have the smae problem occur in 8.1. I have yet to use 9 fully to see if this bug has been fixed.

My only suggestion is to make a slab underneith the building, that goes the perimeter of the building. And do the SEO on this. then you can hide this slab (by putting it on a hidden layer).

However, it is another step and if you change anything you obviously need to change this slab.

[Rob]

Actually James that's exactly what I did.

[Anonymous]

Rob wrote:
Working on quite complicated project on multiple landscaping levels I wanted to use SEO for terrain modeling. Well, as my intention was. After a day of massing and modeling the SEO has proven itself as an unreliable and crappy tool (oh yes - crappy). I was mainly using subtraction with upwards extrusion with slabs and roofs(ramps) as operators and a mesh as the target. It was like playing a bl**dy game. When I subtracted one piece another already subtracted popped back and that went in loops, so I ended up with chasing popping already subtracted pieces all over the project. Finally I have given up.
However, this one needs an urgent fixing, it's actually remains me of v8.0 horrors and I suppose it has not been reviewed since that release.

I too have had exactly the same problem in 9.
My work around (after much frowning to say the least) was to split the terrain mesh into 3 sections at roughly a 1/3 each.
I then redid the SEO for the umteenth time and it worked.
I figure that it can't handle subtracting too many entities thus the splitting of the site to reduce the number for each portion.
It still works fine for sec/elv, 3d and the like, just a bit of a pain, but at least we can use it until it's patched. Cheers!