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

Rethink (Custom) Objects

Anonymous
Not applicable
Hello,

Here's a wish which I'm sure has been posted a lot of time before me, but I didn't find any clear topic about that.

For me, the most (and almost the only) frustrating part of archicad comes with objects.

I think there are two possible paradigms when it comes to objects :
- Either you have a very complex object system, allowing creation of highly parametrable objects. Since it is complex, you have to deliver a big object library, with a lot of options for every object, which will suit most of the uses you can think of.
- Either you have a very simple objet system, which allow the creation of lowly parametrable objects. Since it is simple, you deliver some very basic objects that the user customize himself.

No need to say archicad uses paradigm 1), as revit (for instance) uses paradigm 2).

The way to create custom objects, as soon as you need even a very small parametric aspect (for example the width of a door), is incredibly unattractive. So, I often find myself to use the least inacceptable door that I've been able to get, instead of using the door that I really want.

So I have to spend a few hours to tweak and try every option of the parametric object to get something which looks like what I want. And I have to change all of the 17 line colors of even a very simple object, and the 4 hatches types, and so on... And then I have to manage to put that *** door in the right place in my wall, which needs a lot of work, because it depends of the thicknesses of my wall... And in the end, you still get an old fashioned, over-detailed object, and you can't do anything about that (unless you have a degree of advanced studies in GDL). And if I change my mind and want to use another object, I loose my windows dimensions... ARGH !

Or I could have drawn my own object, precisely how I wanted it, using a nice object-editing interface.


I would very much advise to develop something similar to revit's approch, where the parametric aspect of an object are : object's reference planes (so you can parametrize width/height/depth of objects), and parts visibility (so you can show or hide some parts depending on the scale and/or on some options).

This, in my mind, would be such a great improvement that you could sell it as archicad 17 !

Thanks !

Olivier

[edit : typos]
2 REPLIES 2
Anonymous
Not applicable
redleader wrote:
So I have to spend a few hours to tweak and try every option of the parametric object to get something which looks like what I want. And I have to change all of the 17 line colors of even a very simple object, and the 4 hatches types, and so on...
[edit : typos]
I would recommend something like an "Standard Object setup". Where I can set my Default Object settings for Colors and Line-type. I also agree that it's not convenient that changing a Window/Dore overwrites all settings. I can use the Shift-STRG combination to paste basic settings like Dimensions but it is not possible to easily change the look of Windows with different Dimensions in "one Step".

For Custom doors Windows one wold wish for a solution that lets you define the "Stretchable Areas" to get a parametric Object.

Further I like to remind that Archicad still saves to the last Saving-Place instead to the original File-Path.

Good Luck and a nice Day
TMA_80
Enthusiast
THis is one of the most apparent shortcoming of ArchiCad if we compare it to some of the leading architectural softwares today.

I've test both revit family oject and Grasshopper and the same question came to my mind, How GraphisSoft has missed that...especially when they had the GDL base from the begining

I know there were few "short-living" attemepts Zoomgdl (which couldn't go parametrics then...)

...I hope this aspect will be adressed as the base is already here.
AC12_20 |Win10_64bit|