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

The new option in 25 to Select in 3D should work together with marquee.

Mats_Knutsson
Advisor

The function Select in 3D is not good for larger projects since it show everything.

It works with 3D cutaway but only if I select something that's "inside" the cutplanes. Kind of confusing. A prompt that the element is not visible/selectable because of current cutplanes would be appropriate.

AC 25 SWE Full

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8 REPLIES 8

You can use select in 3D and then use zoom to selection that will help you find selected element without 3D cut away, that works for floor plan also.

AC 27 INT 5003 - AC 26 INT 6019 ( For MEP Purposes )
AMD Ryzen 7 5800H with Radeon Graphics 3.20 GHz 16.0 GB

But that's not what the request is.

The way it currently works, is if you have a marquee selection of a area you're working on  shown and isolated in 3D, but in floor plan you want it to select and show a particular specific element with this command, it selects the element but gets rid of the marquee selection area and shows everything.

 

How is that useful when what you want to select and work on is hidden by walls or slabs or objects that you had cut around with the Marquee tool?

 

It's yet another example of a good idea for a good workflow command that they've thought of, but then implemented in a really shoddy way, that defeats the whole purpose and diminishes any benefit of having it in the first place.

 

The whole point of 3D cutaway or the Marquee selection is that you don't want to look at or work with everything and only want to isolate or select an area to work on - maybe because the whole model is too heavy, or maybe because what you want to work on is hidden behind other objects.

Why introduce a tool that allows you to select and show something from the 2D plan, and then it gets rid of the isolated area cutaway in 3D that would make it easier for you to work on said object?

 

It's silly.

 

This is exactly what happens when you don't have an effective user-testing process for new tools.

It makes what would have otherwise been a great new tool (or command) effectively useless.

 

And it's not even the first time it's ever happened with them.

 

 

Haha yes. Elaborated 🙂

AC 25 SWE Full

HP Zbook Fury 15,6 G8. 32 GB RAM. Nvidia RTX A3000.
Barry Kelly
Moderator

I think the problem is, what you have selected in plan, may not necessarily be within the marquee.

So does it show the marquee with nothing selected, or the marquee plus the selected elements outside the marquee?

If the latter, the code for displaying 3D would have to be re-written, as you are asking it to do two different things.

Display what is inside the marquee as well as display what is selected.

 

Currently we have the standard options to 'Show selection in 3D' and also ' Show marquee in 3D'.

We would need a third option to 'Show selection and marquee in 3D'.

 

Maybe a warning to say the selection is outside the marquee so can not be shown?

But it would be nice, if the selection was inside the marquee, that the 3D view be limited by that marquee as well.

 

Barry.

 

One of the forum moderators.
Versions 6.5 to 27
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@Barry Kelly wrote:

I think the problem is, what you have selected in plan, may not necessarily be within the marquee.

So does it show the marquee with nothing selected, or the marquee plus the selected elements outside the marquee?

If the latter, the code for displaying 3D would have to be re-written, as you are asking it to do two different things.....

 

Barry.

 


No, that's not what we're talking about.

 

We're talking about when you use the 'Select object in 3D' command for something that is INSIDE the marquee and should be selected (and ideally zoomed to) when you switch to the 3D window,.....without eliminating the marquee selected area and showing everything,....which is what currently happens.


Here's the sequence of events of what we're talking about:-

1.) in 2D plan window, draw a custom marquee shape to select and isolate an area you want to work on in 3D (Maybe you're working on a project file that encompasses an entire range of city blocks that have been modelled as massing, but I only want to concentrate on the specific project building without the surrounding context, plus I use the Marquee to cut away one of the walls to show the floor slabs and interior partition walls.

2.)  in 3D window, selected marquee area is selected.

3.)  back in 2D, you select a specific element or object you want to edit and from the context mouse menu you click on the 'Select in 3D'command.

4.)  object is selected and even zoomed at, but in addition, the marquee area isolation is gone and the entire city model is once again shown which is both time-wasting by rebuilding the entire model area again, and pointless since I can't directly select and edit the element which is once again hidden by one of the walls I had hidden by the marquee selection shape.

So it's only a useful command if you're not using the marquee tool and don't mind showing the entire model - which is not how most people work in 3D when you're dealing with large models.
Which in effect makes it pointless and useless.

Currently, in the mouse context menu (while in 2D plan window) there are 4 pertinent commands :-

 

'Show selection in 3D' - shows the selected object in the 3D window as an isolated object or objects with nothing else shown, which admittedly is useful in certain situations, but is obviously limited in certain situation. Has been there for as long as I remember.

 

'Show Marquee in 3D' - as stated on the tin, and has been there ever since I began using Archicad. Probably one of the most useful workflow commands there is.

'Show all in 3D' - also self-explanatory and also legacy.

 

'Select in 3D' - the newest command, and as noted in this thread, problematic and half-baked or not properly implemented to work correctly with other 3D display commands thus making it mostly useless.


I think it should take it as a default that if you have a marquee area selected in 3D and choose the 'Select in 3D' command, that the marquee should be respected and maintained and in the case the object is outside the marquee, it can still select it (just like you can have objects selected that are not entirely within the marquee), but give the user a warning that the selected object is partially or entirely outside the marquee selected region.

But this is an after-the-fact suggestion for correct implementation of the tool,... a whole.....2 VERSIONS since its been available for users (I forget if it was there since version 24, which would make it 3)
That just speaks to not-so-great follow-through with new tool implementation on their end that users have to make wish requests to have them 'do over' these new tools in future versions down the road, in order for them to work correctly or be useful.

Something that I think they'd save themselves the trouble of, if only they ever bothered to listen to people when they were implementing these new tools or preferably BEFORE.


But I'm sure they'll get to it when they get to it.

Eventually.
(.....if ever,......what with all they have on their plate with Structural, MEP tools, Cloud services,....and whatnot.....Busy busy busy )

 

 

P.S. (and slightly off-topic) This is a godawful forum text editing format that gives the luxury of only 3 or 4 lines worth of screen real-estate to write your paragraphs of text, and whoever thought it was great should seriously re-think how they design stuff.


@Bricklyne Clarence wrote:


No, that's not what we're talking about.


I know exactly what you mean.

The command is 'Select in 3D' and that is exactly what it does.

It shows the entire 3D and selects what you had selected in plan.

 

What you select in plan could have nothing to do with the marquee.

That is why I said, like you did, there should be a warning that the selection is not inside the marquee.

Or maybe there should be a new option 'Show selection AND marquee in 3D'.

 

 

 


@Bricklyne Clarence wrote:

P.S. (and slightly off-topic) This is a godawful forum text editing format that gives the luxury of only 3 or 4 lines worth of screen real-estate to write your paragraphs of text, and whoever thought it was great should seriously re-think how they design stuff.


Just stretch the text box with the stretchy handle at the bottom right to increase the text box size.

 

BarryKelly_0-1663329441166.png

 

 

Barry.

One of the forum moderators.
Versions 6.5 to 27
Dell XPS- i7-6700 @ 3.4Ghz, 16GB ram, GeForce GTX 960 (2GB), Windows 10
Lenovo Thinkpad - i7-1270P 2.20 GHz, 32GB RAM, Nvidia T550, Windows 11

It’s ok you’re right I was missing your point,

since Archicad 17 there’s Cutting Planes new feature it’s so effective to surround your selection tightly with many 2D cutting planes ( Horizontal, Vertical, Diagonal, Custom ) then select your element in 3D with all confidence that the cut area of the project only will be shown ( just be sure that cutting planes feature is active in 3D view ) and if not enough you can create more 3D cutting planes then when satisfied you can hide all those planes and your selected element is in your hand even if you switched to 2D view you will see planes are surrounding your element and everything is stored ( show or hide cutting planes as you like ) till you finish your task and then you can remove those planes so you don’t need a marquee anymore, I hope I got you this time.

AC 27 INT 5003 - AC 26 INT 6019 ( For MEP Purposes )
AMD Ryzen 7 5800H with Radeon Graphics 3.20 GHz 16.0 GB

This is somewhat similar to an issue with Hide Selection in 3D which was introduced in AC25. To me these are undoubtedly symptoms of a fragmented approach to development where you just add whatever you can manage to get done without taking into account whole workflows.

 

To me it is obvious that there is a need for a proper effort to consolidate and enhance how we control both the limits of views and content of views [of the model space]. Instead we keep getting these underdeveloped quick fix "new features".