Modeling
About Archicad's design tools, element connections, modeling concepts, etc.

Splitting merged contour lines (mesh)

Anonymous
Not applicable
I have received a DWG with contour lines for a terrain. Unfortunately, two contour lines intersect and is regarded as a closed polygon by ArchiCad. That means that when I now want to change the mesh point height of one of these contour lines (selecting a point and clicking "Apply to All"), it selects and changes both contour lines ... This results in me having to go through each and every point in the two contour lines and elevate each point manually. Quite a painful task as I am dealing with approx 800 points in each!

Is there any way in ArchiCad to split one contour line into two?

Essentially we are just talking about splitting up a polygon/mesh.

P.S. If the terms are wrong or confusing do tell me, and I can try to reword or explain more, perhaps using some screenshots or simplified example.

tool.png
11 REPLIES 11
Anonymous
Not applicable
I am wondering if the lack of replies is due to a too vague or confusing description of the problem, or if it simply due to there not being a way to do this in ArchiCad.
Barry Kelly
Moderator
Can you show a screen shot of how the contour lines intersect?
Ideally with the mesh selected so we can see the node positions on the contours.

Barry.
One of the forum moderators.
Versions 6.5 to 27
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Laszlo Nagy
Community Admin
Community Admin
Can you select one of the intersecting ridges by clicking on one of its edges? Then move that node that is at the intersection point of the two edges?
I tried it in a new project and when I did that I could pull that node of one ridge away from the common node. Then it was possible to set the heights of the two ridges separately.
Loving Archicad since 1995 - Find Archicad Tips at x.com/laszlonagy
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Anonymous
Not applicable
Thank you both for answering - I am sorry that I was unable to reply this morning, Barry. Will try and post a screenshot once I get to work in the morning!

I will also try out the tip from Laszlo ASAP.
Anonymous
Not applicable
Here is a detail and an overall picture (next post) of the landscape I am working with. It is very difficult to tell which intersections that are causing the problems due to the complexity of the landscape file.
Intersecting contour lines.jpg
Anonymous
Not applicable
And the overview picture ...
overview.JPG
Barry Kelly
Moderator
It looks like you should be able to drag the nodes to separate the contours.
Not an ideal solution as you shouldn't be moving the contours but then they shouldn't be crossing in the first place so there must be an error from the original DXF.

Barry.
One of the forum moderators.
Versions 6.5 to 27
i7-10700 @ 2.9Ghz, 32GB ram, GeForce RTX 2060 (6GB), Windows 10
Lenovo Thinkpad - i7-1270P 2.20 GHz, 32GB RAM, Nvidia T550, Windows 11
Anonymous
Not applicable
Unfortunately erronous and/or incomplete terrain models from the city planning office is the norm rather than the exception here in Norway, so intersecting contours is just a fact of life one needs to deal with on a daily basis ...

Trying to drag one node affected other nodes in unintended and surprising ways, so I was unsuccessful in going in that direction. That was why I was hoping to circumvent the problem by splitting a contour line before the intersection point.

Thanks for your help anyway!
Laszlo Nagy
Community Admin
Community Admin
What if you cut a small hole around the intersection of the two ridge lines, then delete the hole? That will definitely separate the two ridge lines from each other as it will result in 3 ridge line segments.
Loving Archicad since 1995 - Find Archicad Tips at x.com/laszlonagy
AMD Ryzen9 5900X CPU, 64 GB RAM 3600 MHz, Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB, 500 GB NVMe SSD
2x28" (2560x1440), Windows 10 PRO ENG, Ac20-Ac28