the mystery of the shifting hotlinked pln

[Andy Thomson]

Have been searching for answers to this question, first background:

1. Create a file, just a dumb little box house on a slab (site - mark where the house sits with hotspots or make a hole) call it House.PLN
2. Then delete all house components from file, and save as Site.pln
3. In Site.pln, 'Place module', 'new hotlink', and bring in House.pln

1st Question. Sometimes the house comes in as per original file, at 0,0,0
BUT! sometimes it comes in 1000 metres to the y+ and 1000 metres to the x+ and finally, sometimes it comes in 1000 metres x- 1000 metres y-

(1000 is a rough guess, but thereabouts).

Why?

When this happened to me, I was baffled, and thought it must be sloppy cadmanship, but then others in the office kept coming to me saying 'My elevator cores have shifted away from center', or ' the 8th typical floorplate has shifted - and nobody opened the source file'.

We work extensively with hotlinked PLNs in Teamwork (why use Mods anyways?) - and I am beginning to see there is some consistent wonky behavior that cannot be attributed to 'somewhere between the keyboard and the office chair'. Importing PLN's as hotlinks has been a little weird, but I have never personally witnessed hotlinks that just plain 'move themselves', but I have been tasked with finding out how this is happening.

It just makes me wonder how origins work. All machines, PC, Mac, every workstation sees a PLN's 0,0,0 the same right???

Right?

It never changes, global 0,0,0 - user origin does not affect hotlinks, or does it?

Thanks for reading.

A

[Anonymous]

There is a known bug in the latest build (2018[?]) with modules moving. Maybe you are suffereing from the same problem.
I was led to believe by my reseller that Graphisoft were giving this top priority - three weeks ago, but as yet there doesn't seem to be a fix, or if there is I haven't seen it.

[Anonymous]

Andy,

We haven't experienced this problem, but we have been publishing modules rather than linking the PLNs (as you may recall). Perhaps the (temporary) solution is to go this route.

BTW: How are things back in the north country?

[Andy Thomson]

Ah, the chilly Northlands of Canada (NOT!) I have been sweating like - only a human can! It's been awful! But anyways...

I saved a bunch of MOD's, but found when PLN's import thru Hotlink manager, they don't bring all their attributes with them ie. section/elevation - so I began to wonder why I should bother with the extra step of publishing and/or saving MOD files at all. (and since nobody dares create extra layers/attributes in this office, or they suffer being let go 😉

But if it solves the mysterious shifting, I guess we'll have to advise we go that route until then next patch addresses the issue.

Thanks for the suggestion,

A

[Anonymous]

It's almost definitely a .mod file problem, acknowledged, but as yet un-fixed, by Graphisoft.

I believe that the problem is most likely to occur if the original model elements in the .mod file are distant from the origin (in the original file).

[Andy Thomson]

It may be a .Mod file problem, but it is also a .Pln file problem when PLN's are handled like hotlinks, say when 'floorplate' PLN's are brought into a 'Building.Pln' via hotlink manager.

When the multistorey 'Building.Pln' is ready to come into the site, it can be merged, and all the nested floorplates, even though their sources are pln files not MOd's, come in like clockwork, all stories at once, only one kilometer away from where they oughtta come in!

I actually deliberately started a project with a datum at AC's global 0,0,0, and then farmed out hotlinks (pln's and mod's) to bring back into the source file, and they always showed themselves landing in the right place, right where they should have come in, until the area outside the marquee was clicked to place them, and then they sprang a kilometer away from the former view.

As for mysteriously relocating hotlinks, I have not 'personally' experienced this yet, but using teamwork, with dozens of files.......several of my collegues have, and they say they did not open the source file.

This is a reproducable phenomenon though with insertion - See backround test at beginning of this thread!

A

[Anonymous]

Hotfix (Build 2045), which addresses this problem now available. Check for updates in ArchiCAD's 'Help' menu.

[Andy Thomson]

Ah, thank you. Downloaded once, distributed 35 times. Feels better already.

A

[Anonymous]

Hi Andy,
For my project (and I believe the other large project in our office), I have many unit .mod files hotlinked into 6 building plns, which are then hotlinked as .pln files by story (not .mod) into the Site Plan. There has been no shifting of any of the .mod or .pln hotlinks. The hotlinked .plns are located in precisely the same location relative to 0,0,0 in all building and site plans, so no dragging is ever done. That is, each building is never moved in the Site Plan, always in it's source file. It seems that the only difference is that they are not Teamwork files...yet.

Hopefully, the patch has solved your problem, but I wanted you to know that most of us here are linking .mod & .plns with no shifting. I will be interested to hear if you isolate the problem, especially as I contemplate working in Teamwork.

Mabe

[Andy Thomson]

The patch did the trick. I think it may have been more of a teamwork thing. we always locate all related files relative to absolute (world) 0,0,0 also.


when the file was opened up, and everything reset, nothing moved on send/receive.

all other files were fine. these are all pln to pln to pln, unit, floorplate, building and site files.

A.