Visual Merge for Adjacent Zones with Customizable Attribute Matching

[nonpertutti]

Currently, Archicad displays boundary lines between every Zone, even when multiple Zones logically belong to the same area (e.g., split due to varying heights or modeling constraints). Unlike Slabs, which can visually merge when adjacent, Zones cannot be visually merged.

We propose adding a “Visual Merge” option that:

• Allows adjacent Zones to visually merge into a single envelope,
• Lets the user define which attributes must match (e.g., Category, Function, Use Type),
• Lets the user ignore other attributes (e.g., Name or ID), so Zones named “ZoneA.1” and “ZoneA.2” can still merge as one “ZoneA”,
• Aggregates the displayed area and properties accordingly, while keeping the underlying separate Zones intact for data granularity.

Example use case:

A building floor is divided into multiple Zones (ZoneA.1, ZoneA.2) to handle different ceiling heights. Despite being logically one functional unit (ZoneA), it appears with internal separation lines. With “Visual Merge”, the floorplan could show it as one unified Zone for clarity, while internally preserving sub‑Zones for height calculations.

Why this is useful:

• Clean, realistic floorplans without unnecessary internal boundary lines.
• Flexible attribute matching to control what triggers merging.
• Maintains detailed Zone segmentation (e.g., heights) without duplicating data or losing total area reporting.
• Consistency with existing Slab visual merge behavior.

[Karel Landa]

Wouldn't it be better if Zones could have detailed height setting for these scenarios so we don't have to use SEO and could get min. and max. height of the zone?

This way you don't have to split one room to multiple zones and you don't have to look for workarounds so the the 2 zones are shown as one in schedules.

[rakurs]

Both of these suggestions make sense, nonpertutti's and Karel's.

[nonpertutti]

@Karel Landa, it would. In my opinion the current problem with using SEO is not the modeling part, but the visualization of what you get and data extraction. Therefore with a complex height zone (either with a new function or with a SEO cut) one should expect:

1) visual plan definition of the lines where the height or the slope change;

2) a way to isolate and extract data from these parts of the Zone (e.g. related area, volume, min and max height, medium height)

I also need to isolate data lower, higher and between certain heights that I want to set. I am going to post a separate wish for this.

This kind of things is often needed for formal graphical demonstration and I end up doing it manually - that is why a Visual Merge could be a very easy (for Graphisoft) and welcome workaround to have available in some cases and managing schedules still is less painful.

[nonpertutti]

Also, a Visual Merge comes useful also in cases not related to heights. Often I find practical to manage the gross volume and area of a building drawing a Zone for each apartment (or, more generally, property). There’s plenty of useful stuff I can do from that. However sometimes I’d like to visualize the building on its whole as one Zone, and a button that just gets rid of the splitting lines in the visualization would very easily do the job.