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

Slab with inclination

Anonymous
Not applicable
This is a recurring need, even more in Brazil when doing floors that need to have some form of inclination for drainage. Recently, the design for a house for the elderly, where a portion of the floor slab needed to have a 1% inclination towards a linear drain on the wall, was impossible to do within Archicad, and required in the final documentation to be done by drawing instead of in the model itself, drainage line indications done by drawing instead of having a tool for that ( as we have for floor height ) and a 3D detailing, with the adequate floor composite, done in Rhino as a 3D detailing.

I am not sure what the coding implications would be for this, but this is a recurrent need, which is quite annoying. The Ramp GDL object will serve for accessibility ramps or car access ramps, but whenever an inside or outside slab needs to be slightly inclined, it becomes a nightmare. I have used the roof tool for that in the past, which feels like a perversion of the roof tool. Because, in principle, roofs and slabs can be considered the same thing, and a one inclination roof with different textures and materials is the same as a slab. But it is not the same as me, as an architect, actually requiring for a portion of a kitchen or bathroom or swimming pool floor slab, I want to to have a 1% or 2% drainage inclination.

So, here's for a wishlist that whenever I have this on Archicad, and it is a constant "At least one per project" issue, it is a very annoying one. Even more if you consider, Revit does have that tool.
24 REPLIES 24
Braza wrote:
Some times it just feels like the developers of these competitor and rival programs just look through ArchiCAD wishlist pages and pick what features to add to their respective software from there, while GS are busy ignoring their own users.

I don't think so...

As you said, Archicad and Vector Works (among many other software) are property of Nemetschek. So their develop teams just do what they are told to do. They are not really competidors. They just have the same boss.

For me it is more like this...

You may not think so, but that's not entirely true what you've just said.
Nemetschek doesn't run those subsidiary companies (including the developers of Allplan) like that.

In fact it doesn't "run" them at all, insofar as making for them day-to-day decisions and giving them orders and directives as to what to do, is concerned and "running" a company goes.
They are more or less each autonomous in what day-to-day business decisions they make as to their development and marketing strategies and independent of what their sister companies do.

They are in fact, in competition with one another (or at least their products that are in the same field of competition, like the BIM products - Allplan, Vectorworks and ArchiCAD), but because they're each regionally dominant in different parts of the world where they don't directly compete with each other or for others core customers, it's not a problem for Nemetschek to leave them as is (Allplan is popular primarily in Germany in some other European countries and has a greater area of interest than just architecture. Vectorworks is primarily popular in North America but also has more vast appeal worldwide than the other two products and also use usage in Landscape design and the Theater industries. And ArchiCAD is more popular widely used in Europe, Russia and Asia than in North and South America (where Revit is dominant), and is primarily architecture-focused and doesn't deal with other AEC-related fields directly at all (like Allplan which has an engineering component) and is arguably the most mature and developed in the purely "BIM" software field.
In this regard, Nemetschek is more like a "holding" company owning them all rather than a management type owner.

Like I said, there are areas where two or more of them will directly compete with each other for customers or for dominance, but in most cases they are mostly separated by regional preference and popularity.

They do have technology sharing in certain (limited) situations - like the fact that Cinema4D's render engine is employed in the render engines of some of the products across the board even while Cinema4D itself is also independently used by some firms that are customers of their other products. But beyond something like this, there doesn't seem to be any direct coordination of development efforts between the different firms.
If anything, Graphisoft, for example, seemingly has greater cooperation with McNeel - a non-Nemetschekk company and the makers of Rhino and Grasshopper - over the development of their Rhino-Grasshopper-ArchiCAD bridge, than they do with Maxon, a fellow Nemetschek company and makes of Cinema4D and the cinerender engine they use in their own product
Anonymous
Not applicable
The thing is: When I (and a lot of us) know the ammount of "Little Things" that has and could be done...

When I see an annual upgrade/subscription cicle...

And each year I see new features like: *Improved DRofus Connection*, *Improved Solibri Collaboration*, *New Maxon Engine*, *Support for IFC3%&#**, etc; I can't help myself but get the impression that a considerable part of the extremely talented Graphisoft resources has been used in consolidating Nemetschek portfolio among large firms.

Or perhaps (and most certainly) I must call my doctor for a new prescription.
Mark Wallace
Enthusiast
As Barry Kelly has suggested, the "roof" tool is typically used for a "slab with inclination," grade, slope or whatever. I've used this method for many, many years.
Mark R. Wallace AIA
---------------------------------------

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Barry Kelly
Moderator
Mark wrote:
As Barry Kelly has suggested, the "roof" tool is typically used for a "slab with inclination," grade, slope or whatever. I've used this method for many, many years.

I actually recommended using the 'mesh' tool.

Barry.
Barry wrote:
Have you tried the mesh tool?
The base is flat and nodes can be added to the top and heights of those nodes can be set to get the heights that you need.

Barry.
One of the forum moderators.
Versions 6.5 to 27
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Anonymous
Not applicable
Thank you so much for all the replies. Some of these are indeed methods I use to cheat since the software doesn't do something that has been a part of architecture for... as long as architecture exists ( ie: a sloped slab... not even a complex one, just, understanding that, some floor slabs are inclined in a certain direction for drainage, not only as roofs, it makes even more sense when you're designing outside, be it a pool-side slab, or a sidewalk on a street - yes, I did use archicad for urban designs as well and it did perform well, some landscape offices are using archicad and revit for that matter ).

I didn't even complain about the lack of existence of a very complex slab, just having the software have proper support for something that is inherent in architecture. Everytime I have to do a wheelchair accessible shower area.

The Roof Tool, yes, it works, and I can even place level dimensions on it, but... in section, if for example, I just create a roof and a slab, with the exact same material, and work them side by side, overlapping as they should, for a shower floor that has a flat area and a sloped area... they do not create a continuous material cross section, they don't understand they are the same floor... they simply become two different things. As they should, because they are.

I might try creating a flat roof side by side and see if they join. If they do join, hey, I have a solution right? But then, why do we have a slab tool anyway? Can't we just use the roof tool for everything? I won't even check how it comes out on the IFC for exachanging files, maybe I can hand tweak it to come out correctly. And have to remember, every single time, I had to hand tweak roofs into slabs so I can have a proper output.

With the inclined slab, of course, we need a dimensioning tool for showing inclination in our designs, something archicad also lacks.

I need this in my work, someone telling me I don't need it because I can bend myself out of my way to use something else for that purpuse isn't why I posted an actual need for the improvement of the tool in this forum. It's like saying I don't need a hammer because I can use the back of an axe to beat in a nail. Or I don't need a phillips drive, because a regular drive will screw in a phillips screw. If you almost never have to hammer in a nail and always have to chop down wood, it may make sense to improvise and move on. But it is still improvising, and the proper tool for doing that is still lacking in your toolbox.
Anonymous
Not applicable
And I did not mean to come out as agressive. But I am frustrated on how people didn't even read my post, or that I explicitly said I have used the roof tool, and that I find it unreasonable that we should have to do so for a complete software solution for our architectural workflow. I am sorry if I did sound aggressive, it was not my intention.
Anonymous
Not applicable
vdentello wrote:
I guess that could be something like Composites on a mesh with constant thickness? That'd be awesome.
It would indeed be awesome and quite powerful, but the merge materials part of it would have to work. And could be quite powerful.

I'd love to have both actually, the composed mesh AND the sloped slab. Because with the sloped slab, we could have a very powerful tool to constructing ramps, driveways and many other instances of an inclined slab. And the composite mesh would fit pretty much everything else.

I'd hate to have to create a complex set of morphs or meshes with a single material each, to be able to cut a complex form.

I will give a real example of a project.

I was hired by a landscape design office to help create the final construction documents of a school play area. It was mostly an outside area using rubber paving ( which would be a composite on itself showing all the material layers of the paving itself ), the sandbox would be poured concrete with drainage like a swimming pool, having a slope ( here a roof was used ), and in the middle of the sandbox, an mound made in concrete covered earth, also covered in rubber paving. A composite mesh would have solved in one object the whole floor of the sandbox.

For that project, the mound was a morph, and what I had to do for the section cut of the mound, was draw in the detailed section the correct material layers. But this was an exceptional instance for me, I don't often have to detail earthmounds or earthwork covered in concrete and rubber paving for projects very often. But that architecture firm which hired me, does.

So... yeah... a composite mesh, in which we layer in materials and even click a "fill in material" ( for example, fill in earth underneath all the layers of the composite to fill in a void... or leave the void as a void ) would be awesome and extremely powerful for landscape architecture.
Anonymous
Not applicable
Mark wrote:
As Barry Kelly has suggested, the "roof" tool is typically used for a "slab with inclination," grade, slope or whatever. I've used this method for many, many years.
Even if you take the roof, move into the archicad properties of the object, set a roof as slab, and set the IFC properties correctly, it will still work as a separate kind of entity. For example, Archicad 23 has as a new feature Improved Floor Plan Representation of Connected Slabs. When connecting a roof and a slab for making a pavement in which a portion is sloped, I don't think that will be available, because the software won't see them as connected slabs. I really wish it did, then I could really pretend the roof tool is exactly a sloped slab.

I would really love and perhaps cope with not having a sloped slab, if when connecting a "sloped slab" (roof) and a "regular slab" ( slab) as one single floor in a project, the software did really understand they are "just slabs" and behaved as connected slabs. Including, material flow in section cut.

Not having a tool to address a problem, and becoming quite comfortable with a particular workaround the lack of the tool for that job, is not the same as there being no advantages to having a proper tool to address a problem. Otherwise we move into "Well, this is how it has always been" territory. Because we all have our ways to address needs we have and the tool doesn't (yet) have its way of addressing it. This one tho, is one that is a constant annoyance.
Eduardo Rolon
Moderator
jessicaluchesi wrote:
… For example, Archicad 23 has as a new feature Improved Floor Plan Representation of Connected Slabs. When connecting a roof and a slab for making a pavement in which a portion is sloped, I don't think that will be available, because the software won't see them as connected slabs. I really wish it did, then I could really pretend the roof tool is exactly a sloped slab.
Just to nitpick but with this sample the correct floor plan representation will have a line were roof meets slab so the new settings in 23 do not need to do anything with them.
Eduardo Rolón AIA NCARB
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another Moderator

jessicaluchesi wrote:
And I did not mean to come out as agressive. But I am frustrated on how people didn't even read my post, or that I explicitly said I have used the roof tool, and that I find it unreasonable that we should have to do so for a complete software solution for our architectural workflow. I am sorry if I did sound aggressive, it was not my intention.
You did not come off as aggressive.
You came off as frustrated and annoyed.
Which is ABSOLUTELY your right to feel this way about something you're investing so much money in.
Just as it is your right to express that frustration here when you can't get the help you feel you need.

So you don't have to apologize for this.
You never have to apologize for feeling this way in something you're entitled to feel that way about.

I've always been of the opinion that the developers who make this software sometimes have to feel the frustration and anger of their users, otherwise they leave with the impression that everything is fine, and nothing needs to be improved or to be improved that much (as is sometimes the message they seem to get from their constant defenders and apologists), and that I feel is a completely unacceptable and untenable place for everyone involved to be in.

I don't think people have to keep resorting to workarounds and clunky solutions to issues that should have been addressed over 10 versions ago but which for whatever reason just keep getting ignored and pushed aside and sacrificed (for expediency at the alter of their almighty roadmap that no one who is not on the inside knows anything about).

But if we don't keep shouting and complaining about it, then what other choice do we have?

'Everything's fine.
*The house is on fire.*
Everything's fine.'