Wishes
Post your wishes about Graphisoft products: Archicad, BIMx, BIMcloud, and DDScad.

A few things to make GDL less frustrating

Anonymous
Not applicable
1. Auto save and recover. Nothing worse than your computer crashing and losing hours worth of work. Why isn't recover work in the GDL window?

2. When adding new parameters it would be nice if they appeared below the current highlighted one rather the end of a very long list.

3. A debugging spell check that checks spelling of your parameters comparing them to what you typed in the parameter list. Ditto on the GDL keywords.

4. A printed version of the GDL manual that actually made sense.

5. A magic key that would stop processing without having to press it 50 times before it responds.

6. The ability to copy parameter lines from one object to another.

7. To beable to see 3D hotspots on the 3D window.

8. An origin point on 2D like in 3D

I could go on but I think that will do for now. 😉
17 REPLIES 17
owen
Newcomer
can't be done im afraid Rob .... it makes too much sense
cheers,

Owen Sharp

Design Technology Manager
fjmt | francis-jones morehen thorp

iMac 27" i7 2.93Ghz | 32GB RAM | OS 10.10 | Since AC5
Laura Yanoviak
Advocate
James wrote:
And while we're at it....

9. Colour code scripts
10. A column to the left of every script numbering each line (with the ability to turn on and off).
Yes, Yes! -- Essential
owen wrote:
2003 post and i just voted essential. I get 1 vote in total on this poll?
As of today's date, I see 5...
MacBook Pro Apple M2 Max, 96 GB of RAM
AC26 US (5002) on Mac OS Ventura 13.5
NandoMogollon
Advocate
I still don't understand why there is not a software that actually "writes" the GDL code.... Like Dreamweaver or Frontpage do with HTML...
In the mean time... i will keep trying to understand the Graphisoft manual... which was written to some one that actually knows how it works.
Nando Mogollon
Director @ BuilDigital
nando@buildigital.com.au
Using, Archicad Latest AU and INT. Revit Latest (have to keep comparing notes)
More and more... IFC.js, IFCOpenShell
All things Solibri and BIMCollab
Dwight
Newcomer
But GDL code DOES write itself!

Save any assembly of elements as an Object and there you have it: a GDL written object. So quit whining.

What you are asking for is some magic sensor for parametric script creation.
And it won't happen because GDL is not retrogressive: you can write executable scripts that respond to variables [numbers of shelves in a book case for instance], but to ask an application to sense your meaning from an assembly of slabs is impossible.

If you want to learn GDL, obtain the GDL Cookbook.

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/sbe/cookbook/
Dwight Atkinson
Rod Jurich
Contributor
Laura wrote:
/...
owen wrote:
2003 post and i just voted essential. I get 1 vote in total on this poll?
As of today's date, I see 5...
Missed this when first posted. Mine makes 13 votes.

That's 13 in almost 5 years!!

Is it any wonder GS see this as such a low priority.
And GDL being the foundations for AC.
Rod Jurich
AC4.55 - AC14 INT (4204) |  | OBJECTiVE |
Dwight
Newcomer
Low priority is correct.

Through the years, several GDL helpers have been presented but all of them went away.

Code is code and if you have the aptitude it is not so bad.

But the truth is that most users build their objects from primitive elements and do not require parametrics.
Dwight Atkinson
Anonymous
Not applicable
Well, sorry to bring up this worlds-longest-running-thread again!
Dwight wrote:
But the truth is that most users build their objects from primitive elements and do not require parametrics.
If it was as easy as revits, maybe more would.

Just wondering Dwight (or anyone else), have you experienced or seen how revit constructs its library parts (families). I had never seen it before and I thought it was fascinating. (It's about 25mins long)

http://designreform.net/2008/03/12/revit-family-basics/

The example it gives is very simple, but it shows quite nicely how parameters are visually applied to an object.

Everything that it presents can be done in ArchiCAD at the moment, but doing it completely by code forces you have to think about it in a completely abstract way, which is difficult. This is one of the problems facing someone coding in GDL, how to visualise and quantify the correct geometry and the transformation manoeuvres to get what you want.

Something simple like actually being able to visually assign a parameter to a particular dimension on a piece of geometry could maybe help, not necessarily by using 'reference planes' as in revit, but actually to a preview of the geometry itself. How you then define the transformation visually from 0,0 is another problem to be solved later!
Rob
Graphisoft
Graphisoft
Just wondering Dwight (or anyone else), have you experienced or seen how revit constructs its library parts (families). I had never seen it before and I thought it was fascinating. (It's about 25mins long)
...and yet it is nothing new. I have seen this system in early 90'. that was developed by Israel/French team (and is still used) in AEC software ARC+.
::rk