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

I wish each element had it's own personal 'undo' history.

Gus
Newcomer
Imagine this idea:
What if each element had it’s own personal history, that was separate from the history of the whole project history? Keep the project history too, but allow architects to toggle from “element history” to “project history”

For Example:
If this “element history” were possible we would be able to shorten the length of a wall, then go work on another element’s details, then change the thickness of a line somewhere THEN go back to the original wall and change the wall back to its original length, by selecting it and going back in that wall’s personal history, without affecting all the line weight changes, and other element changes made between your two sessions with the wall.
If we had this functionality, the linear nature of the history of our projects would become “multi-linear,” and I really feel like it would fix a huge, albeit unnoticed limitation in project design flow these days “the linear history” of the whole project.

How cool would it be if we could go beyond the “linear project history”
and begin to design with both “linear” project histories, and “multi-linear” project AND element histories?
www.michaelgustavson.com Architect NY WI IL
Madison WI
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8 REPLIES 8
Anonymous
Not applicable
This would exponentially increase file sizes and have a massive impact on project performance. Adding huge amounts of data will significantly increase the risk of data corruption and calculation errors for what would be a tiny fraction of a percentage productivity increase (I think this may save me one to two minutes a year) for a tiny fraction of a percentage of users.
Gus
Newcomer
sboydturner wrote:
This would exponentially increase file sizes and have a massive impact on project performance.
How do you know this?
www.michaelgustavson.com Architect NY WI IL
Madison WI
Archicad21 MEP EcoDesSTAR Win10-64-bit
EliteBook8570W Corei7-3630QM@2.40GHz
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Anonymous
Not applicable
How do i know this?
Each element would need to be stored in its current state plus any previous states (let's say 99 steps as current max Archicad undo queue), so the file would contain 99 times as much data, plus elements interact with each other and the status of these interactions would also need to be stored or generated so we could possibly have 99 x 99 (9801) different interactions just between two walls ....... and so the data set and calculations grow
Also the undo queue is currently reset every time you save, this info is not saved into the file, so even if 1 undo state of each element is stored you would double the file and ram size requirements
Scott
Gus
Newcomer
Are you a computer programmer?
www.michaelgustavson.com Architect NY WI IL
Madison WI
Archicad21 MEP EcoDesSTAR Win10-64-bit
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Rob
Graphisoft
Graphisoft
Gus wrote:
Are you a computer programmer?
I do not think you have to be a programmer to figure it out.
::rk
Anonymous
Not applicable
Rob wrote:
Gus wrote:
Are you a computer programmer?
I do not think you have to be a programmer to figure it out.
MAkes sense to me
Erwin Edel
Rockstar
An important part of my work drafting models is to recognise when I'm about to make a big revision / change of course in mid design and archive the current state, so it's fairly easy to go back to either entirely or by some quick copying / pasting of select elements. This is on top of saving backups of any model related to published drawings, of course.

I would try that approach rather than wish for such an elaborate and potentially resource demanding feature.
Erwin Edel, Project Lead, Leloup Architecten
www.leloup.nl

ArchiCAD 9-26NED FULL
Windows 10 Pro
Adobe Design Premium CS5
Gus
Newcomer
I do this as well. Exactly the same way you do. In the future, our computing power will be enormous. Especially if we begin sharing CPU power online. I think this will be possible some day. Maybe some day soon? I read online the other day that quantum computing may be coming along in the near future, and if it does it will probably be "farmed out" processing power via the internet.

Another possible solution is that "element history's" are recorded, but they are recorded in the background and stored in a separate file somewhere, and when you want to return to an elements personal history you have to wait for that data to be uploaded from somewhere?

I'm obviously not a programmer, but creativity is endless, and the new background processing that ArchiCAD has started doing could be extended greatly. I watch my CPU usage while I'm modeling and it peaks occasionally, but in-between the peaks are huge swaths of time where the processor is almost dormant. Those periods of time could be utilized in the background, and I don't know why they are not. Maybe it's because this is just the beginning of ArchiCAD background processing. Wouldn't it be cool if your processor was jacked up to 75% constantly rather than going up and down like it does?! It seems that would be a better use of the resources that are already in our computers.

I would love to hear a programmer's point of view on this.
www.michaelgustavson.com Architect NY WI IL
Madison WI
Archicad21 MEP EcoDesSTAR Win10-64-bit
EliteBook8570W Corei7-3630QM@2.40GHz
QuadroK2000m RAM32 (2)250GBSSDs
4 Monitors Internet:4Up60Down