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

Site mesh and slab improvements

Daniel Lindahl
Contributor
Last year I was forced to do a number of projects in Revit and discovered there ARE some things Revit does better than AC, so I would like to put them on the wishlist for the next AC release:

1) Terrain / Site mesh
I find the site mesh to be the most time consuming aspect of building up a model in Archicad, and the slight refinement that came with r14 did not live up to my expectations either.
In Revit it is much easier to create a site mesh with well-formed topography from the surveyor's DWG file. When created, the terrain can instantly show contour lines at pre-determined intervals in plan and in 3D. These contours are automatically self-adjusting if you subsequently change spot levels. You can also define site regions for areas of different colour or material on the topography such as roads and other paved areas. These are still part of the one site mesh. Very fast and simple compared to the various methods we use to achieve the same result in AC.

2) Slabs
Another thing I would like to see in AC is the ability to model a slab in the Z-dimension by inserting node points where required and setting the offset height of them. In AC we make ramps and other paved areas with falls out of roofs, but you still end up with all these individual planes and no way to hide the triangulation lines. In Revit slabs can have node points of varying level, for ramps, ext. paving, etc., not just for the perimeter, but internal node points can be added for this purpose as well. Triangulation lines that this gives rise to can be individually changed to 'invisible lines' where the surface is meant to be smooth, and the final slab is still a homogenous unit.

Could you please pass these wishlist items on to the development team in Hungary, as we all want to see AC outshine the competition on every score!
cheers
Daniel
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Daniel Lindahl Architecture
AC24 | Dell Inspiron 16+ | Windows 11
5 REPLIES 5
Anonymous
Not applicable
Done
Anonymous
Not applicable
lec1212 wrote:
Done
was it...because I am struggling to do the most basic of editing (a path that follows the grade of the terrain) and after hours still have not found the solution...yes archicad really is crap when it comes to modelling compared to much cheaper and easier to use software
Barry Kelly
Moderator
brucestar wrote:
...because I am struggling to do the most basic of editing (a path that follows the grade of the terrain) and after hours still have not found the solution...
A quick search in this forum for "path" AND "terrain" yielded these results as well as many others.

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=198451&highlight=path+terrain#198451

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=178734&highlight=path+terrain#178734

Try also searching for "mesh" AND 'path".
There have been a number of posts over the years.

brucestar wrote:
yes archicad really is crap when it comes to modelling compared to much cheaper and easier to use software
There is nothing stopping you from using that other software if you want to.

Barry.
One of the forum moderators.
Versions 6.5 to 27
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Bruce, one possible workflow for roadworks is suggested here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgznz4ng_yMoPHFZTRS41qA
Think Like a Spec Writer
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I always try to avoid terrain modelling because it is such a pain. Anything that improves the process gets my vote especially automatic contouring.

The slab issue I think is possibly covered by the use of morphs, but I guess it depends on what you need to show.
Apple iMac Intel i9 / macOS Sonoma / AC27UKI (most recent builds.. if they work)