• TechNotes
• Benefits of Solid Element Operations

TechTip Winner of the Month of December 2002

Originally submitted by David Pacifico and Robert Bissett/KarlOttenstein

These tips help give you some ideas on how to take advantage of Solid Element Operations, first introduced in ArchiCAD 8.

Using Solid Operations for site insertion (Karl Ottenstein)

1. Go to the story with the foundations of the building (and the mesh representing the site).

2. Select all walls, roof planes (ramps) and slabs that comprise your foundation.
   

3. Open the Edit > Solid Element Operations dialog box.

4. Click on the Get Operators Elements button.

5. Now deselect your foundations and select the site mesh(es).

6. Click on the Get Target Elements button.

7. Select Subtraction with Upwards Extrusion from the Choose an operation pop-up menu as seen in the screenshot below:
   

8. Now click Execute and take a look at the mesh in 3D.
   

The advantage of this method is that the Mesh will be fitted automatically to the foundation (i.e., excavated), even if the building is moved:

"...the building can be moved around on the mesh and the hole moves with it. Very nice for preliminary site insertion - can get useful views and sections without seeing terrain running through the structure, or without having to cut a whole in the mesh for the building, and then edit the hole as the building moves/changes."

Section through the ramp

Using Solid Operations en lieu of the 'Trim to Roof' command (Robert Bissett & David Pacifico)

This method has a distinct advantage to the well-known Trim to Roof... command, and that is that even if the roofs are altered after the walls were trimmed to them, the walls will keep up with these changes and will always trim correctly to the roofs. Thus, no more re-doing of trimming walls to roofs is needed.

As Robert Bissett stated it on ArchiCAD-Talk:

"v8 arrived last night. The solid element operations are excellent. What would have taken quite a while was done in just a minute or so. Trimming walls to a dome shell is now a breeze. If you need to move the wall or change the length it automatically retrims! Didn't expect that."

Hint: Solid Operations can also be used as a fast solution for placing walls under stairs.

Category3dModeling