Walls not joining up correctly

[Anonymous]

I've just opened somebody else's drawing and find that I can't get walls to join up properly (see screenshot), regardless of the wall fill or the composite type.

Is there some global setting that's been turned off?

[Eduardo Rolon]

In the Menu go to;
View->On Screen View Options-> Clean Wall & Beam Intersections

You might also want to check your layer intersection numbers.

[Anonymous]

Found it, Eduardo! Many thanks.

[Erich]

Why is this option even present. Can anyone think of a situation where you would not want your walls to clean up globally?

[Laszlo Nagy]

Maybe it is a legacy thing. But I am just guessing.

[Anonymous]

It must be a legacy thing. I recall working on a software in 1991 called Speedikon that displayed all walls as vectors with an arrow to indicate from where to where the wall had been drawn. The software did not live up to its name. 😞(

[Anonymous]

laszlonagy wrote:
Maybe it is a legacy thing. But I am just guessing.

I think you're right. As I recall it was a way to speed up work with large projects on slow computers. Pointless now as far as I can see.

[Karl Ottenstein]

I still use this to verify where wall reference lines are. Years ago, it was the F7 shortcut key, which I still use to toggle it when needed. Sometimes walls don't connect properly, and you start thinking that the skin priorities are the issue, only to find that someone only brought the reference line up to the non-reference edge of a wall. Etc etc.

Important to remember that walls in ArchiCAD are really thick, tall lines. The reference line is critical, and this function is the best way to see what is happening.

(The reference line direction is also shown when walls are not cleaned-up. I have not tested this for several versions now, but it used to be that various things like texture alignment in 3D and accessory behavior, magic wand behavior, and the order of points in an autoscripted GDL object were affected by the direction. Can't say I've had the direction affect anything for me in a long time though.)

The interesting thing about the original screenshot is that the reference line direction is NOT shown. I never realized that there was a separate On Screen Option for showing reference lines ... and it is toggled when you toggle Wall/Beam cleanup. But, doing a Wall/Beam Intersection resets it so that the reference lines show up again the next time intersections are not generated.

[Anonymous]

Karl wrote:
I still use this to verify where wall reference lines are. Years ago, it was the F7 shortcut key, which I still use to toggle it when needed. Sometimes walls don't connect properly, and you start thinking that the skin priorities are the issue, only to find that someone only brought the reference line up to the non-reference edge of a wall. Etc etc.

I used to use it for the same purpose but now that we can toggle the reference lines (with arrows) I see no need to turn off the clean intersections.