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

Combining Profile Manager and Morph?

Ingolf
Advocate

Basicly I am very satisfied with Archicad. Two of the best things are manouvering in 3D and the lists and schedules. What do I wish for? Well, I wish for a tool to make new objects in a graphical way. I don't talk about good old GDL or new (and interesting) Param-O. My ideal solution seems to be a tool within Archicad, a combination of the Profile Manager and the Morph tool. I am looking for a tool similar to Revit's Family Editor. The Profile Manager has some of the features for making an object in a versatile way. But it lacks the 3D component that the Morph tool can give it. The Morph tool must in addition be easier to use, like using Sketchup. It is to complicated to play with 3D elements using Morph as you can do easily in Sketchup. So that is my wish for the future versions of our incredible Archicad.

Ingolf Sundfør, Bricklayer, Author of several Real Life Problem Solving Books for Archicaddicts in Norway.
PC/i7/W11/ArchiCAD 6.5-27
6 REPLIES 6
DGSketcher
Legend

Having used Sketchup in the past I would agree the AC Morph editing seems complicated in comparison. I don't know if GS were avoiding a potential Google copyright issue at the time but I think much like using a mouse for everything else CAD, push & pull editing should be considered a shared 3D industry standard.

I'm not familiar with Revit's Family Editor, could you give some examples of what you want to achieve?

Apple iMac Intel i9 / macOS Sonoma / AC27UKI (most recent builds.. if they work)

Regarding the Morph Tool - could you expand on what you find to be hard compared to eg Sketchup? I have not used Sketchup in a few year but my recollection is that the difference is that in Sketchup you have specific tools for operations that can be used on edges/faces and in Archicad you first select a edge/face and then choose the operation you want to do. Or is there a more fundamental difference? 

DGSketcher
Legend

It's a while since I used Sketchup, but iirc their modelling works on an intuitive assumption of pushing & pulling nodes, edges & faces, in AC you need to select what you want to edit and then typically choose what you want to do from the context menu. The Morph tool has always felt slow and complex in comparison to the SU workflow, not forgetting SU has in place component handling which is a crucial part of pulling models together.

Apple iMac Intel i9 / macOS Sonoma / AC27UKI (most recent builds.. if they work)

So its more a question of efficiency rather than difficulty? I agree that the context menu approach takes away a bit of the intuitiveness of free-form modeling but I think that is a cost of Archicad not being primarily a free-form modeling application and thus it have to take other elements and tools into account for its approach.

I'm not sure where you are going with this? My response to the OP was supportive of his opinion that Morph editing could be better. Overall I think AC isn't an intuitive piece of software; it does some amazing things which other software can't, but it can always improve and simplifying workflows for efficiency should always be a priority. This however is rapidly heading off topic from the OP's comment regarding the graphical creation of parametric objects.

Apple iMac Intel i9 / macOS Sonoma / AC27UKI (most recent builds.. if they work)

I have a hard time seeing how this is off topic or a question of me going somewhere or not.  

 

In addition to a new tool OP wish for changes to the Morph Tool since it is hard and complicated in comparison to Sketchup. I wasn't sure exactly what was meant nor what was wished for so I replied asking for OP to expand.

 

I read your post as a reply to this and concluded that your issue with the morph tool is related to efficiency rather than a more fundamental issue with the tool. I noted that I agree to some extent but also that I think there is a reason for Sketchup being more intuitive.

 

I agree that workflow efficiency should be a high priority for GS but I would not want them to spend scares resources trying to make the morph tool be more like Sketchup. I will therefore express that opinion when I see someone suggesting it - in line with the purpose of the wish forum.