Aligning fill origin on an object or simplifying object

[kevin b]

I have created a surface using GDL toolbox, am I correct in my understanding that there is no way to get the fill origin to align where I want it to because this is an object and you cant align the fills on an object? If I am wrong what is the method.

Just as a bit of background, I started by creating two sine waves of different frequencies, spaced a distance apart and then one of the waves was elevated with the surface created being the ruled surface between the two sines waves. I know the number of horizontal and vertical points which i used for smoothness, or lack thereof in this case and made a fill pattern to mimic that essentially making mullions for a glass curtain where the facets fall on the surface (because when rendered they are not as readable as desired. I made a wireframe surface using the same waves, which i then exploded, made into individual 3d polylines and re-elevated and then made tubes with GDL toolbox to create the structure behind the curtain. I could repeat this process for the mullions but its becoming a hugely slow process the more I add. Or is there some way to simplify the geometry of all these pieces somehow to make it less of a drain on the system when trying to shade or render.

As always any help greatly appreciated.

[Anonymous]

Don't know if this can help you but check out the page 87 paragraph 8.3 in the "Intro to Object Making.pdf" documentation

[kevin b]

I don't have any intro to object making pdf documentation, where can i get that?

[TomWaltz]

It's on your Archicad Installation CD under "Documentation"

[kevin b]

You'd think help would be under the help menu, not that that help is any good either considering the instability. Oh well, no access to Installation CD today guess I'll wing it once again.

[kevin b]

OK, so I finally found intro to object making buried in the help menu (why is it so hard to find things) anyway chapter 8.3 makes absolutely no sense to me. So apparently I can write a macro for a texture but how do I tell it where the texture starts, why can't I just click on the corner of the object where I want the origin to be like a wall or whatever else? Why do I need to be a computer programmer to create architecture? It shouldn't be this difficult.

[Anonymous]

If you want to create a "smart" object for multiple future use, then you have to learn GDL.
If you want to make something only for once, then explode the object to its component (lines,arcs,hatch) and use the "link to Fill Origin" under the "Fill Default Settings" dialog.

[__archiben]

kevin wrote:
You'd think help would be under the help menu, not that that help is any good either considering the instability. Oh well, no access to Installation CD today guess I'll wing it once again.

kevin

change the name of the directory "Graphisoft Documentation" in your application directory to just "Documentation" - the PDFs in there will then show up in the 'help' menu in archicad . . . archicad might need relaunching first though.

stupid, stupid bug. makes you wonder doesn't it?!

~/archiben

[Djordje]

kevin wrote:
II made a wireframe surface using the same waves, which i then exploded, made into individual 3d polylines and re-elevated and then made tubes with GDL toolbox to create the structure behind the curtain. I could repeat this process for the mullions but its becoming a hugely slow process the more I add. Or is there some way to simplify the geometry of all these pieces somehow to make it less of a drain on the system when trying to shade or render.

Don't make the tubes rounded; square will look equally good.

[kevin b]

I had actually tried that originally with the structure but I had a very difficult time getting the angles right so I went with cylinders. And modifying pieces made with the GDL Toolbox seems hit or miss for some of the functions. For instance changing the type of tube seemed to work fairly well but then it would get caught up on one and I'd have to restart archicad to get it to work again. And I can only sometimes modify a node (point) on a 3d polyline, I usually have to redraw it completely. I seem to be doing everything by the book. I turn off the dialog box, select the ployline, select the ployline tool, which then causes the polyline to visually disappear from the screen although the curser will find the nodes, but i click and drag and sometimes it is modified and sometimes the line becomes visible again but not edited.

I could obviuosly go with rectangular tubes for the mullions as the angles wont really matter at the size they will be but it would still seem to be more efficient from a processing standpoint if I could get the fill to align the way I'd like.

And that paint_It macro from the GDL help doesn't make sense to me. I understand that GDL is helpful to utilize the full power of ArchiCAD etc etc And I get the idea that it is in your library so you can just call it up. I just don't get how this macro works. How do I use it with this surface I created, where do I tell it what fill it is and where I want the fill to start? Most of the help on GDL stuff is too cryptic and assumes you already know what you are doing. It all seems to go something like this "here's a really great thing you can do with GDL, here's a chunk of code to do the really great thing, good luck" as if by showing us 700 lines of code (or even 7 in this case) will allow us to understand how to get what we want without telling us where it goes or how to manipulate it. And to be honest I don't want to care what the code is. There's a command to make a fill align or set its origin and it should work on everything, or there should be another tool that's specific to objects that does the same thing. I understand the power of GDL but the user interface to harness that power needs a lot of work still.

Anyway thanks for the help so far.