Name_​of_​material

[James Murray]

How can we use Name_of_material without an error, when a given surface ID is not used in the project? Rather than the request just returning 0, there is a Material not Found error report. I have already put in a conditional to stop the request running in the parameter script; the error refers to the master.

James M

[Gergely Fehér]

Can you attach a test libpart, and tell me which AC version you are using?

Gergely Fehér
Team Leader, Library Team
GRAPHISOFT SE

[James Murray]

This is the Surface Viewer that shipped with AC11, which only started giving errors in AC21. The error occurs if there are unused IDs in the the surface attributes.

Attachments:

1. Surface-Viewer_GB.gsm_.zip

James M

[Geoff Briggs]

Hi Gergerly and James. A little more context on this. I opened this old object, originally created by Matthew Lohden in 2007, because the 3D text was castling shadows on the surfaces and I wanted to add a few lines of code to stop that. Everything was working fine other than that, including the index checking. It’s only after I saved the changes in AC21 that I began getting the error in the 3D window or settings dialog. The script checker returns OK in all scripts.

Thanks for your help.

Geoff Briggs
DeForest Architects
Seattle, USA

[Gergely Fehér]

I checked the request with a simple script in ac20&21 – it works the same way, gives a warning instead of just returning zero… For me it seems to be a bug, I add it to our bug database, to eliminate the warnings from attribute checking requests (it seems other similar requests are affected too…). If this problem is more than a “useless warning” in your objects, please send me some details in mail, to be able to raise the issue’s priority.

Gergely Fehér
Team Leader, Library Team
GRAPHISOFT SE

[Geoff Briggs]

Thanks for checking and confirming the issue. Yes it seems like a bug to me too.

The reason this is more than a “useless warning” is due to the circumstances of when it occurs. The nature of the Surface Viewer and other similar utility objects is to parse entire lists of available attributes. A separate warning is generated by each missing index number, both when you regen the 3D window and when making any changes in the settings dialog. And each warning requires a key press or mouse click to dismiss. So even if I’ve been diligent in keeping our template tidy, if an attribute creeps in with a large index number I might be looking at a hundred or more key presses to get the script to run. So these objects are essentially useless until this bug is fixed.

Geoff Briggs
DeForest Architects
Seattle, USA

[James Murray]

I’ll add that ‘useless warnings’ train the user to ignore all warnings, which will certainly include serious warnings eventually. My policy is to eliminate such errors entirely. Since GDL never substantively improves, it would be great it didn’t gradually get worse.

James M

[Gergely Fehér]

Thanks for the responses, you’re right, it’s a bit more than a useless warning. For the first check, it seems we can correct it for the next main version.

Gergely Fehér
Team Leader, Library Team
GRAPHISOFT SE

[Geoff Briggs]

That would be great. Thanks.

Geoff Briggs
DeForest Architects
Seattle, USA

[Geoff Briggs]

This appears to be fixed in AC22. Thank you.

Geoff Briggs
DeForest Architects
Seattle, USA

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