3D navigation and disappearing objects

[Anonymous]

Hi:

While navigating in 3D mode (Open GL Shading) most objects disappear. They re appear when I stop moving around making it very difficult to show the 3D space.

Any idea why this is happening?

Thanks!

[Barry Kelly]

So if you switch to the vectorial (internal) 3D engine, do you have the same problem?

If not then it is obviously an OpenGL problem.
What sort of video card do you have and have you tried updating the drivers for it?

Also what version of Archicad and operating system are you using?
It is a good idea to add this info to your profile signature as it can affect the answers you need.

Barry.

[Paul King]

You could also try a full reboot of your machine to clear out video ram, then load up just the project (and nothing else) when restarting. Sometimes I have found I may even need to power off then on again only after waiting 20 seconds to completely clear things out.

Also check your 3D elements are not a very long way from the project origin (as in kilometers away) - things can get flakey when that happens.

Also ensure you don't have hugely polygon intensive objects in the current 3D navigation view - depending on the specs of your GPU, there may just be too many polygons to render these dynamically in OpenGL mode . You could try marqueeing around just the elements you are working with (then hit Ctrl F5) to reduce the load in 3D navigation.

[Erwin Edel]

If your model is very far away from the origin (0,0,0), strange things will happen as well, because ArchiCAD has to calculate your model using very large numbers.

[Paul King]

I recently discovered a workaround for this - if you do BOTH of these things, the corrupt 3D dynamic display far from origin issue may disappear: First, move your project origin to somewhere close to your 3D elements, AND create a camera nearby, and use this camera to open a 3D perspective window. If you don't do the latter, the default openGL perspective camera origin appears to remain at the original project origin location, for reasons unknown.

[Erwin Edel]

You can place a user origin for the '2d windows' but I don't think this actually changes the coordinates for 3D calculation.

If you are modelling at some XY coordinate related to the 'real world' for BIM export reasons, the better method is to use the special object that fixes this for exports.

I generally have my 0,0,0 as the cross between the bottom left grid lines of my model.

[Paul King]

I used to agree with you about origins not really changing, but after doing both things I mentioned, problems in 3D went away, and all coordinate feedback in pet pallet was consistent with the new project origin even in 3D window.

I am am interested in this 'special object' you mention for reconciling a need for distant real world origin. Can you elaborate?

[Erwin Edel]

I couldn't think off the name in English right away (our library is in Dutch), but I believe it is called 'survey point', you place that in your model at the point of the, you guessed it, survey point you want to specify. You can then fill out the XYZ values and when exported things should work.

There is also the PointCreator addon bit, that I believe does pretty much the same.

Edit: slightly related, you can also set up 'sea level' and 2 more reference levels (for which you can specify a custom name) in the Project Preferences, for those who might model things at some silly Z elevation for dimensioning. Say you are Dutch and your projects base level is a reasonable 2,3 m below sea level, just set the sea level at 2,3 m and you can dimension things at -2,3 m.

[Laszlo Nagy]

mantrajt wrote:
Hi:

While navigating in 3D mode (Open GL Shading) most objects disappear. They re appear when I stop moving around making it very difficult to show the 3D space.

Any idea why this is happening?

Thanks!

There is an article on Help Center that may help you handle this situation:

https://helpcenter.graphisoft.com/tips/archicad/incremental-drawing/

[Brad Elliott]

I'm having this same problem with a very simple model on a Macbook Pro. The problem occurs even when I just have walls and a roof turned on. This is an AC22 issue as the navigating is smooth and fast in AC21. Even when I turn on display all elements within a radius to 200' and I'm only 10' away and transparency turned off which even my 10 year old computer could have handled on this model the windows still drop out immediately and redraw when you stop.

[uisanata]

I can confirm this behavior in AC22. We have the model in national coordinates, 70 km away from the origin point.
Also, the wireframe of selected morphs does not correspond with the actual geometry, it's off.

The registry hack is useful for disappearing objects but at the end of each navigation command, it has to refresh the window. Sometimes it's not so snappy, sometimes it's OK.

I wish Graphisoft would fix this origin problem once and for all, it's not that complicated, isn't it? I have no idea how to draw in national coordinates without using cumbersome workarounds such as hotlinking the building model .

[Anonymous]

To draw in National coordinates don’t you simply use the survey point object and set the latitude and longitude in the project info

[uisanata]

sboydturner wrote:
To draw in National coordinates don’t you simply use the survey point object and set the latitude and longitude in the project info

Could you explain how ?
I want to be able to add a coordinate object and get the national coordinates.
I know how to use the survey point and also set the latitude longitude, the rest I'm missing...

[Erwin Edel]

Besides the Survey Point object, we have 'dimension coordinate' object, I don't know the exact english name, as we work with a localised Dutch library, but this should be part of the standard archicad library.

You can specify an offset for the XYZ coordinates and just place that anywhere in your project and it will show the correct 'world' XYZ.

I also specify (by near estimate) the longitude and latitude for project location and set up the north direction.

If I get files that are following our national coordinates, these are allways drawn with 1 drawing unit = 1 meter, and the Netherlands is TINY, I would hate to think of using a project in 1 drawing unit = 1 mm in real world coordinates