Accessories addon

[Heimo Mooslechner]

Thank You – Graphisoft – for creating this addon.

Please continue the development of this thing. There could be a creat potential in this thing. There are existing other Addons with similar potential but the real benefit of Your Addon is that the implemented GDLs are linkd to the original Archicad-slab. Editing the slab and the GDL folows.

I playd with the code of the Floor Construction object and tried to develop it to an austrian version – because the original GDL is not really usable for us here. I have uploadet it to Bimcomponents.com to find here: austrian floor construction for Accessory-Addon.

(there seems to be an error on this page because there is no downloadbutten..)

BUT i have found two things what make it hard to use for me as GDL-scripter:

First – The points – numbering seems to change place if someone inserts new points into the original slab-edge. If You delete Edgepoints – it is numbering sometimes on step forward, one step back.. Its hard to script a good functioning thing on this behaviour.

Second: Rounding edges on the slab results in a mass of new points and not into a real slab-edge- following round shape. This is also a massive problematic behavour for scripters.

Im trying to make a railing – object – and when there are so many new points created where a raunding should be – its not easy to deal with this.

So – My Question: Who made this Addon – is it possible to get in contact with the original programmer of this addon – to ask for a better documentation for it AND to ask for reals rounding edges for it – smile!

I dont like the need to reverse-engeneer the original GDL-Parts to get the Addon working for my own ideas. It would be a grat help to get a better documentation for it.

Then – the delivered library showed that there are also ideas for polyline-following ect.

Is it possible that there are Beta-Addons for Polyline-functionality or other Parts like a Polyroof – following ect?

A Video of my Questions:

Youtube Question to Accessory-Addon

Teacher in HTL-Salzburg
AC5-19, Win and Mac
GDL hobby developer

[Heimo Mooslechner]

Are all dead here? 😉

Teacher in HTL-Salzburg
AC5-19, Win and Mac
GDL hobby developer

[Heimo Mooslechner]

Obviously nobody home here – i have a further suggestion for this addon: Make it possible to link more than just one GDL to the addon. I just tried to add a further Slab-Accessory-GDL to a slab but then the GDL before is not linked any more and became a static element.

I am working on a GDL for flat roofs and would like to be able to “devide” the functions into several extra GDLs all linked to the Slab-Addon.

I mande a functioning Attika for the Slab, but i want to add railings in betweeen or complete different things on the slab-sdges – editable but linked to the slab.

The progress so far: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14pWsDN4R_A

Teacher in HTL-Salzburg
AC5-19, Win and Mac
GDL hobby developer

[Gergely Fehér]

As it is written on the goodies download site: “Goodies are Add-Ons to ARCHICAD that are based on legacy code which GRAPHISOFT does not support anymore. You can use it ‘as is’, but be warned that they might not function properly, and they will not be fixed or upgraded.”

Gergely Fehér
Team Leader, Library Team
GRAPHISOFT SE

[Heimo Mooslechner]

It should be supportet and upgreaded – there is great potential in it! Dont sleep!

Teacher in HTL-Salzburg
AC5-19, Win and Mac
GDL hobby developer

[Heimo Mooslechner]

Otherwise GDL should implement an real easy way to let the user operate polygonal elements exact like other Archicad-Tools like slab or roof-Tool with the normal pet-pal.

In V19 – Archicad implemented editing more polygonal elements with one single command. GDL should be enabled to be editited also with this workflow!

Then – the accessory-addon would become needless

Teacher in HTL-Salzburg
AC5-19, Win and Mac
GDL hobby developer

[Gergely Fehér]

Heimo,
Introducing polyline input and working methods to GDL objects is a much better idea, than upgrading the old accessories – but it is a quite complicated issue. It is on our list for a few years, but still had no time to design in depth and develop it.

Gergely Fehér
Team Leader, Library Team
GRAPHISOFT SE

[Heimo Mooslechner]

Thanks for Your quick reply!

Some additional thougts to that topic:

Dont make the error to think, this is just a hobby of an old teacher in Austria.

Spending Your time to implement this polygone-functionality to GDL could make hunge impact on further develop GDLs and could make much more developers step into this topic.

When reading on architalk-forum, You can read that there have stoppt some of the most skilled developers to develop in GDL because of the “not evolving GDL”.

I know, i am not having any right to give You orders which way Graphisoft should use its recources, but GDL is a main feature in Archicad and could be main selling point in the future in my opinion. And i think having worked out the importance and possibilities of features similar to the Accessory-addon enough with my examples and videos.

Teacher in HTL-Salzburg
AC5-19, Win and Mac
GDL hobby developer

[Kristian Goodsell]

Gergely

I absolutely agree with Heimo on the whole accessories development and improvement!
Accessories are the solution! I can say we would easily save in the hundreds of hours per month with the accessories as they are! If they were maintained and developed with even a hint of care they would be game changers!
One example is our roll formed metal truss devision. If the wall acc worked as it should, I could transmit the entire building to the roll forming machine and be saved the cost of drawing the frame in other software! As it stands, I can’t and won’t defend the state you’ve allowed the acc’s to fall to!
Polyline functionality might be fluffy enough to sell you a licence here and there from a youtube video but intelligent tools properly linked to base elements are where the difference is made!
There needs to be a serious opening of eyes there to see what users actually need!

[Dmitry Rogozhin]

Accessories is great solution. Using the API is very complicated, there is no support for scripting languages (Python, for example) – in this case Accessories only way to write the object to the reinforcement of the walls and ceilings.

[Nader Belal]

Adding my two cents,

I see that Graphisoft is on a difficult road fork related to GDL accessories and legacy code, in one part I like the idea of the ability to extract info from AC using GDL and not API (since it’s difficult and we lack a manual for people with null experience as myself) and on the other part I understand GS stance of not investing in legacy code for the inconvenience that it may pose.

What if GS, made a renovated accessories code, something that is built from the ground up, and giving your clients the possibility to migrate their GDL objects from the old legacy code to the new code ?

[Gergely Fehér]

Hi!
Accessories are dead end in many ways, we still do not want to develop them further in the future. It is a an outdated and limited technology, from the past, where modelling and bim tools were much more simple. As they still can be used with single plane roofs, and simple walls/slabs without priority based connections we did not kill them, but we won’t spend any time on them except of minimal maintenance.

Gergely Fehér
Team Leader, Library Team
GRAPHISOFT SE

[Nader Belal]

Hi Gergely,

Just a question, if I need to get coordinate data of any element for my library part, to have the same capacity of the accessories, how should we proceed using GDL ??

Best regards,
Nader

[Barry Kelly]

Nader Belal wrote:

Just a question, if I need to get coordinate data of any element for my library part, to have the same capacity of the accessories, how should we proceed using GDL ??

This is why we still need the accessory add-ons.
It is these add-ons that form the link between the object and the element (at least that is my understanding).
I would love an add-on for multi-plane roof as I am not skilled enough to create my own.

The GDL objects that work with the add-ons don’t need to be maintained by Graphisoft.
But a basic object that reads all of the element parameters would be nice – it doesn’t actually have to do anything.

I am sure there are plenty of users that can create new objects.
Even I am currently getting my objects to work with the roof accessory (hence the desire for a multi-plan roof add-on).
If I can do it I am sure there are many others that can do it as well.

Barry.

Versions 6.5 to 22
Dell XPS- i7-6700 @ 3.4Ghz, 16GB ram, GeForce GTX 960 (2GB), Windows 10
Dell Precision M6800 - i7 4700MQ @ 2.40GHz, 16GB RAM, AMD FirePro M6100 (2GB), Windows 7 64bit

[Nader Belal]

@Barry

There is no GDL scriptor that can deny the possibilities offered by the accessories plugin, that is for sure and we have Graphisoft saying it will only give it minimal maintenance with 0 (zero) options for future development, and I see this also as understandable.

But, reality checks, since that the possibilities that this plugin offers is big leap forward for object creation, and reality also dictates that the have to be very cautious when making the decision of using such plugin as may be one day Graphisoft will simple stops shipping it, and we have no other option that can substitute it. That is why I was asking (out of my personal ignorance) if there was another way to achieve the same without using the accessories plugin that I’m not aware about.

Well there may be one, using Grasshopper, so you load the object to Grasshopper (that if the object is not placed on the layout), detect the vertices coordinates, then send it back to another object from Grasshopper (it’s not that simple and not that hard). Which could be seen as something really cool, but not practical for a limited number of objects or objects with limited options and capacities in any project or circumstance.

[Author]

Posts