Wishlist

EVERY CAD/BIM/3D software has this essential feature - why doesn't ArchiCAD?
There was a discussion in one of the beta tests years ago about enabling this, at least based on favorites (if you change a favorite, all placed "instances" of this favorite will be updated, too. Of course, there should be options to exclude (override) defined elements.

[Topic title edited by moderator to remove ALL CAPS]

The use of surface textures in cover fills, either 2D or applied to 3D elements in Section/Elevation is very useful.

In 3D Views, it is possible to have surfaces with (partly) transparent textures by making use of the PNG alpha channel.

Unfortunately, these textures won't appear truly transparent in Section/Elevation Views.

With the Views set to show Uncut Elements as 'Surface - Texture Fill, Shaded' or 'Surface - Texture Fill, Non-shaded' with the transparency feature enabled, this inconsistent appearance emerges:

-3D Elements with surface applied to it behave transparent, but the transparent parts of the texture get a white background.

- 2D Fills using the Surface Texture Cover Fill do not behave transparent at all.

To solve this issue, please support PNG alpha channels for Section/Elevation views.

Hi everyone again,

I've posted a tread but community suggests me to repost it with a referal at only one wish.

So here i am again, I’ve seen a lot of wishes here—some are totally useful, others maybe less so— I’m wondering : aren’t you tired of modeling plinths with beams or finishes with other walls, just because Graphisoft left wall accessories behind? And if you try to take off surfaces or measure lengths from accessories, it’s absolutely impossible to get the right informations. We supposed to work bim right? Wouldn’t it be great to have a finish tool, like the railing tool, but maybe with advanced features—directly linked to walls and their openings?

A tool like that could be more greatful then other new features that are now implemented.

Lets make Archicad great again!

Victor,

Currently graphic overrides alter the appearance of only items before the marked distant area in cross sections, wrongly implying to the viewer that distant objects are not in the category that graphic overrides are trying to highlight.

Certainly, the case remains that distant objects should always look different/ more distant in section compared to close objects, but the graphic overrides dialog should also thus include an additional set of parameters to control distant objects appearance - or even better a 'smart.' pen intensity fading option based on main override pen colour, so no separate pen needs to be defined.

The current deficit in functionality is very problematic when the graphic override is intended to code items that meet a given criteria by pen colour - because the distant objects will continue to match the appearance of items outside that category, even when they belong within the category. 

The below screenshot is from a section that has a graphic override applied such that all items in Design Option 2 are supposed to display in orange.  But because the doors are in the marked distant area of the section marker, they wrongly display as unchanged (i.e. in grey) - wrongly communicating, for contractual and other purposes, that they are in Design Option 1 

Hello all, 

It would be super nice to add the option coordinate the Drawing tool with the Survey point same as the Xref. 

The Drawing tool has many benefits opposite from Xref:

• keeps all attributes out of Archicad
• possible to turn on/off layers 
• possible to easy change Pens & Colors 
• possible to paste all elements into AC with option to put them in one layer
• still linked with the original file 

In practice I used to use mainly for references with MEP and other consultants. Also in cases when some parts of the project are only 2D existing drawings etc.

All best!

Currently, when creating door schedules in Archicad, the door leaf dimensions are correctly reported for single-leaf doors. However, for double-leaf doors, the schedule only displays the total width of both leaves combined, without distinguishing between the individual leaf widths.

This approach can lead to misunderstandings, especially in the context of technical documentation or coordination with manufacturers and contractors. For instance, in asymmetric double doors, it is essential to communicate clearly the dimensions of each leaf (e.g. 900x2315mm + 400mmx2315mm), rather than a single combined width (e.g. 1300x2315mm).

Proposed improvement:

Introduce an option or parameter in door tool that allows users to display and differentiate the width of each individual leaf in a double door configuration. With just a number, Leaf 01 and Leaf 02.

This would significantly improve clarity in project documentation and better reflect the actual door details.

Unfortunately, the fact that ArchiCAD wants to fit the elements to each point really slows down and hinders accurate, nicely edited work.
It would be nice to have a simple solution that would enable the fitting to the points of the point cloud to be turned on and off.

The switched off points would allow for faster and more accurate editing.

Thanks in advance, it would be a great help.

In Archicad, it's currently possible to retrieve curtain wall panel surfaces by orientation (East, West, North, South, Southeast, etc.) in schedules, which is very helpful.

But I'm wondering — why isn’t it possible to simply display the geographic orientation of a wall, window, or door as a built-in property?

This type of information is often needed for daylight analysis, thermal studies, or for custom schedules that include the exposure of building components.

Of course, we could manually create a custom property and assign the orientation for each element one by one — but that’s time-consuming, error-prone, and difficult to maintain when elements move or are modified.

It would be great if Archicad could offer this as an automatic, read-only property, just like it does for curtain wall panels.

Is there a built-in method I’m missing? Or is this something that could be considered for future development?

Thanks in advance for your help or feedback

The Autotext function is really useful for labeling. You can use it to label everything from date to drawing name to properties. We propose that Autotext can be placed wherever in your PLN and actually be exported to DWG while keeping the value it displays in Archicad. 

In many documentation standards section markers should look like below.

Currently in Archicad it is not possible to achieve this graphic. Please make it available.

Because site meshes are typically the most complex entities in an ArchiCAD project, by a very large margin (unless you live in Holland of course), SEO operations on them are quite expensive computationally, and successive operations rapidly slow regeneration of cross sections and elevations while editing, on even the fastest machines.

Bewilderingly, meshes STILL don't support materials priority intersections despite this fact, and despite the fact that every single project has foundations that need to cut into the site mesh. So this is not an edge case.

On sloping sites, foundations and siteworks are inherently very complex, and site meshes are inherently very complex even before SEOs are applied, meaning a project of any scale rapidly becomes unworkable, even on top end hardware, as the number of SEOs required keeps expanding to follow the progression of design & documentation processes. Hundreds of objects typically need to interact with the ground.

Highly embarrassing spending $10K on the best PC that money will buy, and half that again on (increasingly) the second-best BIM software that money will buy, to have even the normal requirements and complexities of depicting the actual construction of buildings on actual sites exceed the capabilities of the system, without time wasting and laborious manual workarounds. 

PLEASE give some serious love to meshes, as the highest priority. The current functionality is literally decades old, and is so limited that it is completely beyond justification.

Unless and until there is some way found to massively speed up SEO calculations, please at the very least enable materials priority for meshes

Another wish that I have posted in the old Wishforum (I think) but did not make it here.

Curtain wall is a great tool for catering not only patterned facades but also to solve some parts of model where library objects are not good enough (eg. Door/Window). But the limitation for now is that if the reference line or boundary of the Curtain wall is curved, it is segmented based on the scheme of the CW.

On the first picture, in Edit mode, frames are segmented if I make curved boundary of the scheme.

On the second picture it is visible forced segmentation based on the scheme.

We need a possibility to set if it is supposed to be segmented or curved.

PS: I'm aware of an workaround where I can set the the scheme to be more dense and then in Edit mode delete unwanted parts but that creates too much elements in the project and I can not correctly schedule panels.

Currently in Archicad, Expression based properties are unavailable to elements contained in hotlinks (they show up as "---" values in schedules and are unavailable for evaluation in the Property Manager. This is a serious flaw and undermines many of the recommended workflows in housing projects, for example. We need to be able to consistently use expression based properties on all elements.

In our office, we make modules out of recurring apartment types, to streamline modelling and ensure consistency across the project. To not be able to use expression based properties in schedules for any of these apartments makes either modules or properties completely useless. 

When placing door/window favorites from the Norwegian .tpl, we encounter an issue with Distance Guides: measurements refer to the edge of the window frame instead of the window opening. Since we standardize measurements based on the window opening, with a 15 mm tolerance for the frame, this causes a discrepancy.

Due to our default favorite settings, this results in a 15 mm difference, which is frustrating. We either have to adjust all our favorites or manually account for the extra 15 mm when placing door/windows. This worked perfectly with the experimental feature in AC27.

Our Requests:

1. Add an Option to Choose Measurement Reference:
   Allow Distance Guides to measure from either the frame or the opening. This would significantly improve workflows.
2. Simplify Measurement Reference Adjustments:
   Currently, the tool always refers to the reference line when placing door/windows, regardless of the “To Edges” or “To Ref. Line” setting. A more intuitive way to switch between reference points—such as a hotkey—would be highly beneficial.

Thank you for your consideration.

The ability to generate wall schedules that itemise wall types used within the project is a great tool for detailing wall types for construction.

However, the limitations of the schedule outweigh the benefit on using it (for example, there is no option in the scheme settings to list each composite layer and it's thickness). Instead, the recommended "work around" is to manually model each wall within the project and label it using using the Skin List Label.

I wish that the wall schedule could:

1. provide a 3D Plan View (rather than a "2D Plan View") that allows materials within the composite wall to be tagged with an active label, and

2. list the composite layers (like the Skin List Label does).

Example of wall schedule with desired labelled wall material shown in red:

Example of Skin List Label used for the same wall as a "work around" after manually modelling each wall in the project:

When using profiled wall as a zone boundary, there is a problem if the wall is offset from the floor level. In that case, the zone fills part under the wall going to the outside boundary of the wall (if there is for example a metal sheet). This leads to wrongly generated data for area and volume.

On the picture below, you can see basic wall offset from the floor and zone correctly filling only space inside (this applies to composite wall as well). Next is a wall with a complex profile and as you can see the space under it filled.

I'm well aware about the possibilities of workaround (split the wall to more elements, leave core as a basic wall etc), but in a phase of case study, where it is maybe simpler to model it this way, I don't want to get wrong numbers.

I've discussed this with Tech support and was told this is a limitation of the program, not a bug.

The curtain wall needs expanded options for door and windows:
-operation and style
-hardware (separate interior/exterior)- this is a BIG one
-leaf thickness control when clicking "edit"
it would be ideal if the c/w doors and windows just piggy backed the door and window libraries with the same settings

...
and TBH, the whole UI is a constant trouble shooting exercise. Every time I edit a curtain wall, I feel like I am re-learning the tool.

When attempting to select one from amongst a number of overlapping elements in plan view (such as fills, slabs, roofs, library objects etc), hitting the <Tab> key while the pointer hovers above them, will normally cycle between and highlight each element in turn beneath the pointer, without the need to chance exactly on a node or hotspot, and the user can just keep hitting <tab> until the correct element is selected. 

However when the overlapping elements are large enough to extend beyond the current zoom in the plan view window, especially when there are complex elements (such as site meshes) in the mix, ArchiCAD often takes a longer time to identify the overlapping elements, and the Tab-between-elements behaviour appears to time out, leaving the fallback MS Windows OS Tab-between-fields behavior to kick in (apparently this issue does not arise on Mac) 

So, instead of tabbing between elements in the normal way, when any of the overlapping elements are too complex or large to be detected in time, suddenly, hitting Tab causes the focus to switch away from the elements under the mouse pointer, to the feilds in the Tracker dialog nearby.  

Currently, the onlywork around I have found is to ensure Tracker is not enabled.

I reported this to Central Innovation, my local reseller, but they are adament that Graphisoft has told them that this irritating and intermittent behaviour is intended, or 'by design'. 

In other words, 'by design', it affects only Windows computers, and 'by design' it affects only views where the overlapping elements are large or complex, and 'by design' it only occurs when Tracker is enabled.

My only scope for having the bug corrected, they told me, is to post it as a 'wish'.

To me, demoting bugs to 'wishes' rather than owning up to and addressing them, is just more evidence of the Graphisoft corporate cash-grab decline - however I am now posting it here.

Minimal space for statutory clearance around doors is a great feature, however there is a solid line displaying against wall when minimal space is turned on.

This is not generally an issue unless there are two doors next to each other, which then exposes the solid line. I have tested this on a number of basic standard library doors and it occurs in all instances. Graphisoft have indicated the same lineweight issue exists in ArchiCAD 27 & 28.

The issue is due to a limitation of the Minimal Space feature and it occurs because minimal spaces for doors are aligned with the length of the wall.

I wish the display of line weights and their location were more flexible within the Minimal Space feature.

On the attached I have highlighted the section solid line that I would like to remove.