Stretching Morphs

[toman311]

Hey all,

I am use to editing Morph elements in a way that I don't think ArchiCAD can do anymore. This change might've happened in Version 21 or 22. I think 21.

So, I have all of these fancy moldings done with the Morph tool. I didn't do them in the complex profile tool because these moldings form a rectangle. So, they all have to miter, yet two of the profiles would be a column and the other two would be a beam.

So, normally I would just draw a morph profile of the molding I'm using and trace it around a 2D morph line that I pre-drew in 2D. This has always worked fine for me. If there were any stretching required, I would cut the morph where I needed it, move things where I wanted, and extend the Morph to fill in where it is not; then I would use the Boolean Operations to fuse the two pieces back into one. Piece of cake. No problem. This sounds like a good way to go about doing things.

This has worked for me for awhile until a recent update to ArchiCAD. Now, I cannot seem to be able to cut the Morphs.

I cannot edit the Morphs molding profile with the Box Stretch because the proportions will change. I don't want to move nodes because the Morph is made from a complicated wood molding profile.

What I have been doing lately is redrawing the WHOLE morph piece. I haven't had many Morph objects to adjust... till now. So, I've reached the breaking point and I almost actually need to have a better way because the time to take to redraw everything is almost out of the question.

I'm hoping you all on ArchiTALK have some new info I haven't seen or ArchiCAD wisdom or something. I'll redraw it if I have to, but only because I have to.

From my point of view, ArchiCAD just lost a BIG FEATURE for the Morph tool.

Hopefully I'm just not knowledgable on some new features!

[Barry Kelly]

I don't think anything has changed with splitting morphs - but I don't do it very often.

I find it easiest to place a temporary slab wall or roof in 3D and position it to where I want the cutting plane.
Then I split the morph (again in 3D) and delete the temporary element.
This just save trying to get the correct plane for the split by clicking points in space.

It would be nice if a morph could be split in elevation, but it seems they can not be.

Barry.

[Steve Jepson]

toman311 wrote:
Hey all,

I am use to editing Morph elements in a way that I don't think ArchiCAD can do anymore. This change might've happened in Version 21 or 22. I think 21.

So, I have all of these fancy moldings done with the Morph tool. I didn't do them in the complex profile tool because these moldings form a rectangle. So, they all have to miter, yet two of the profiles would be a column and the other two would be a beam....

For moldings you will probably like using the Molding Straight 22 object. It has 6 different profiles you can use in combinations if needed. You can miter and adjust for length the Objects by simply adjusting the node locations. They can be exploded into morphs for other sorts of tweaking and/or saved as objects. I end up saving lots of profiles I need to extrude as objects, convert to morphs and then slit for miter because I don't know how to get even acceptable curves form complex profiles. The Curved Moldings have all the same profiles and functions. These are great for making curved arches with some kind of profile. You just model the arch in plan view with one of these molding objects, then convert it to a morph and rotate to vertical. This is how you would make a spayed molding around a cathedral arched window or portal of some kind.

[Steve Jepson]

Barry wrote:
I don't think anything has changed with splitting morphs - but I don't do it very often.

I find it easiest to place a temporary slab wall or roof in 3D and position it to where I want the cutting plane.
Then I split the morph (again in 3D) and delete the temporary element.
This just save trying to get the correct plane for the split by clicking points in space.

It would be nice if a morph could be split in elevation, but it seems they can not be.

Barry.

It would also be nice if splitting a morph would not undue the SEO that as done to it before it was split.

[toman311]

Thanks Barry for reply!

I don't know what I was doing before, but I got it to work for me. Thanks again for the info!

[toman311]

Thanks for the tips Steve!

Sadly, I don't see a way to get custom shapes. At my office, we use a lot of different molding profiles that we specify for it to be what we have drawn.

It seems this tool just doesn't have enough variety of shapes. I wish there was a way to use custom profiles as the profile for these objects.

The main problem is trying to draw trim on vertical surfaces to miter appropriately and to still be easily editable.