Select multiple elements and fill them

[Paopao]

Hi guys,
I am new to Archicad (I used Autocad before) so sorry for the simple question:
I am working on a large urbanistic project where I need to edit a lot of elements at the same time and I don't know how to do it. I need to select all the elements on a layer (which I can do) and change their properties so that I can selec and fill them with a different colour (this is the part I can't do). I can do them individually but there are thousands....
Any help please?

Thank you so much

Pao

[Anonymous]

We need more information. What kind of elements? Do you want to add fills or change the fills they already have? The magic wand in ArchiCAD does not have the discontinuous option like in Photoshop if that is what you are looking for.

[Erika Epstein]

Use Find and Select

Edit>Find & Select. This will allow you to make very refined selections.
Opt/Alt clicking on an object will set the F&S to that object and its parameters. Then you need only add filters of the parameters by which you want to select.

[Paopao]

My problem is not selecting the objects, my problem is how to apply a "fill" to the entire selection without changing it by hand. I have a plan of a city and I need to fill each building perimeter with a gray filliing as they are only outlined.

Here is a screen capture: I need all the selection to look full, like the gray building. I hope it helps.

[TMA_80]

really a good question...

you could by using the Magic wand but you have to do it for each contour manually....

what would be adapted to this situation is a sort of routine (script that would automate this...) & I have no idea if it exists for ArchiCad...

[Erika Epstein]

You neglect to mention what type of objects you used to create the buildings. If for example you made them with slabs, you can turn on the cover fill option. Similarly you can do this for the roofs or even meshes.

Model View Options (MVO) will allow you to control when these cover fills are seen.

If you created all these buildings with lines, then you made work for yourself. Magic wand slabs, zones etc onto them will give you the coverfill option you want as a byproduct of creating a 3D city.

[Paopao]

they are polilines, the overall file is a patch of smaller dxf files covering the territory. It's the standard for urbanistic files nowadays here in Italy apart from shp. So it's a file generated by aerial pictures of the territory.

[Anonymous]

There is no way to apply a fill to multiple polylines in one go. There might be a way to do it in AutoCAD with a clever Autolisp routine...

Now that I think of it, there might be a really odd way to do it in ArchiCAD by making all the polylines into a 2D GDL script and using search and replace to convert them polygons with fills. The part could then be placed and exploded to get the fills into the plan. If you have no idea what I am talking about then this is probably not the way to go.

You may do best just to fix yourself a nice pot of tea put on your favorite tunes and settle down to a lot of magic wand work. I've done thousands of ceilings this way (with or without the tea) and it's not too bad. At least it's WAY easier in ArchiCAD than it is in Revit.

[Paopao]

Oh my God....I envision lots of caffeine in my future....

thanks for the replies guys.

[Anonymous]

One suggestion you might like to try... Create one giant fill that overlays all the individual polyline boundaries. Using the pet pallette and magic wand, subtract out the negative space represented as the area between polyline boundaries. I've noticed that this works better if the outer boundary of the giant fill is connected and overlapping at some point to one of the polyline boundaies located at the periphery of the group.

Might save you some time if it's not too late.