As I really appreciate the further development of this software, I would like to have some suggestions we would appreciate in our workflow.
We’ve noticed some elements, in particular slabs and walls with an outline that was subtracted/added will simply disappear at some point. Perhaps this happens because some elements were created in a previous version. It is very problematic also, because we are not sure of the element is still “in the file” and just not showing, or it is actually gone.
Snap works in mysterious ways when VA objects are inside of a block. My suspicion is that it is related to the level designation (if something like that even exist?), because it happens when a certain level is tuned off.
documentation doesn’t work with linked blocks. The 2d generated section will just ignore the objects inserted as a linked block.
transformations (in particular mirroring) of blocks containing VA objects is not working as expected.
level designation - there should exist for each VA object information about the level on which it is placed. This is how other bim software also understands levels. It would also be useful to isolate only those elements. And ideally, the selection tools should only select objects on the levels that are turned on.
Hope we see those and other improvements in the future releases.
Please share any file which we can use to reproduce this behavior. Check your Units Absolute Tolerance (in Document Properties > Units). You should have a value of 1mm in order to avoid issues related to that.
Take into account that snaps don’t detect the sectioned area or edges of objects when a Level or a section is activated. No matter if those objects are inside blocks or not. May that be the reason for your snap issues?
Please share any example that is not working so we can fix it.
This is a planned feature for VisualARQ 3. Objects will be linked to levels, so you will be able to know in which levels objects are located.
But you can already select objects by level! Just hide the upper and bottom levels of the desired one, and select the remaining geometry in the scene.
Thanks for the answers. Linked and embedded option does the trick.
I isolated some other issues in this file: VA_bugs.3dm (7.3 MB)
The slabs in the blocks will dissapear immediately when I want to edit the block or even explode it. The staris in the file are in a block that is mirrored on the other side - their rotation becomes confusing when you try to edit the block. And the third thing is snapping. I am aware that snap doesn’t work on the sectioned part. However, if I hide the EG level in the file I am unable to snap to the wall elements in the block.
It looks like the blocks that contain the slabs and the stairs in your project have been eventually modified but you still see the former geometry inside it. I’ll report it to the development team.
The blocks of the stair and the slabs seem to have a related issue. But mirroring them should behave properly, as any other Rhino block. If you create a new block with a stair and edit the stair inside it, you should have no problem to rotate it, or mirror it. Same thing if you mirror or rotate the block. Let me know if this doesn’t work for you on a new block.
The walls are in an upper level of the EG (they are on “OG5”). If you hide the EG level (so the upper levels also hide), you cannot see the walls, obviously, unless you activate the “plan view reference”. See gif below:
Yes, the slab and stair issue seem to have happened when the VA updated. The blocks were not modified by us. When I create a new block I cannot recreate the issue.
The snapping issue happens when the correct level OG5 is turned on and levels below are turned off (actually it seems that it only works when EG is turned on). That is not the expected behaviour, I would like to snap on the walls when some levels are off.
BTW: Another small bug, that is visible also from your gif is the rectangle that appears on top of the round stairs in the cut view. It messes up the plan representation of the stairs and nearby objects.
Hi Denis,
I could reproduce both errors, the snapping on the walls one, and the odd rectangle that appears when sectioning the stair. I’ll report both so we can fix them.
I’ll keep you posted with any updates.
By the way, the issue about the rectangle on the spiral stair seems to be visible only when the stair shows its “overhead” Plan visibility representation. Switching it to “Projection” makes the rectangle go away, but we will check this bug anyway.
In the linked Rhino file that contains VisualARQ objects, the objects do not change properties when the link is updated. It should be similar to the way Rhino blocks work, where user is asked whether he wants to keep the file blocks, replace them with imported ones or keep both. Otherwise working with files that contain linked geometry is really impossible, as they will not adopt any changes made in the linked files.
What kind of properties do you mean? size of a door, for example? this should work. If you go to the Block Manager, you will see the blocks that need update, and after updating them, the linked files should update, including VisualARQ objets.
If you have any example where this is not working, please share it.
This is also asked by Rhino when you link files with blocks used by VisualARQ objects.
In any case, I recommend you using “embedded and linked” option when using blocks that contain VisualARQ objects, otherwise, the plan view representation and the section attributes display might not work.
