Wishes
Post your wishes about Graphisoft products: Archicad, BIMx, BIMcloud, and DDScad.

!Restored: Auto rounding toggle

Paul King
Advisor
I would like some dimensions to automatically round off to the nearest 5 or 10 millimetres - for example in plans where wall framing & lining thicknesses are not round numbers (eg 94mm studs with 12.5mm lining) - or for when an existing building is initially modelled in imperial units (feet & inches) because you have original old imperial drawings to work from, but then you want to show remodelling work in modern day metric units (so one foot becomes 304.8mm)

Builders seldom appreciate dimensions like "97mm" - so dimensions that are toggled with rounding set to on should round this to nominal width.("100" mm in this case)

It doesn't matter if overall dimensions do not tally exactly with the sum of the dimensioned parts that have been rounded, so long as the overall discrepancy is within the rounding tolerance set (it should be)
PAUL KING | https://www.prime.net.nz
ArchiCAD 8-27 | Twinmotion 2023
Windoze 11 PC | Intel Core i9 10900K | Nvidia Gforce RTX 3080 | 32 Gb DDR3 | 2x4K monitor extended desktop
16 REPLIES 16
Dwight
Newcomer
A country with no pennies should have rounding.
What about this?
019.jpg
Dwight Atkinson
Paul King
Advisor
Dwight wrote:
A country with no pennies should have rounding.
What about this?
Hi - that sets all dimensions in meters (yuk) - a bit like dimensioning your house in yards ... effective if eliminating accuracy by an order of magnitude was the only objective - but doesn't give option to round to nearest 5mm, which is a common compromise (half an order of magnitude I guess)
Also doesn't give the case by case rounding control I am looking for (sometimes critical real dimensions and nominal set out dimensions need to coexist on a job)
PAUL KING | https://www.prime.net.nz
ArchiCAD 8-27 | Twinmotion 2023
Windoze 11 PC | Intel Core i9 10900K | Nvidia Gforce RTX 3080 | 32 Gb DDR3 | 2x4K monitor extended desktop
Eduardo Rolon
Moderator
and if you click the little arrows you get to choose what you want.
click option.jpg
Eduardo Rolón AIA NCARB
AC27 US/INT -> AC08

Macbook Pro M1 Max 64GB ram, OS X 10.XX latest
another Moderator

Paul King
Advisor
ejrolon wrote:
and if you click the little arrows you get to choose what you want.
Sadly what I want is not listed there
PAUL KING | https://www.prime.net.nz
ArchiCAD 8-27 | Twinmotion 2023
Windoze 11 PC | Intel Core i9 10900K | Nvidia Gforce RTX 3080 | 32 Gb DDR3 | 2x4K monitor extended desktop
Eduardo Rolon
Moderator
I was referring that meters is not the only option. Though rounding to 0 or 5 cannot be specified maybe you can consider dimensioning to centerlines as an option? It should be precise and avoid those rounding errors. HTH.
Eduardo Rolón AIA NCARB
AC27 US/INT -> AC08

Macbook Pro M1 Max 64GB ram, OS X 10.XX latest
another Moderator

Paul King
Advisor
ejrolon wrote:
I was referring that meters is not the only option. Though rounding to 0 or 5 cannot be specified maybe you can consider dimensioning to centerlines as an option? It should be precise and avoid those rounding errors. HTH.
Hi - the feedback I have from builders & other architects is that builders hate plans dimensioned to centrelines, because you cannot physically place a tape measure on a centreline - and while it makes things simpler for us , this method has largely gone out of favour with Architects nowdays. WE also have the issue that the centreline of structure is often not centreline of finished wall, and at 1:100 who can tell what is being dimensioned.

A dimension saying "100" however makes everything instantly obvious that this is a nominal 100 stud wall, even if actual gauged timber dimension is 94


Basically I want to be able to show "nominal" figures selectively, not globally
PAUL KING | https://www.prime.net.nz
ArchiCAD 8-27 | Twinmotion 2023
Windoze 11 PC | Intel Core i9 10900K | Nvidia Gforce RTX 3080 | 32 Gb DDR3 | 2x4K monitor extended desktop
Dwight
Newcomer
I guess that is why we have the custom text in the dimensions.
Dwight Atkinson
__archiben
Booster
Paul wrote:
It doesn't matter if overall dimensions do not tally exactly with the sum of the dimensioned parts that have been rounded, so long as the overall discrepancy is within the rounding tolerance set (it should be)
in that case, it shouldn't matter if you round up your model lining thicknesses in the composite structures dialogue should it?

isn't the actual gauged timber of a 100mm nominal wall actually 90mm? a far nicer dimension than 94 for drawings for sure...

nevertheless, i do agree that such a 'nominal rounding' feature would be pretty handy . . .

(i change things like this to custom dimensions. not pretty i know, but i also change a custom dimension's pen colour to bright red too - easy to see that it is no longer a measured value if i am doing any editing later and need to update them...)

~/archiben
b e n f r o s t
b f [a t ] p l a n b a r c h i t e c t u r e [d o t] n z
archicad | sketchup! | coffeecup
Paul King
Advisor
~/archiben wrote:
Paul wrote:
It doesn't matter if overall dimensions do not tally exactly with the sum of the dimensioned parts that have been rounded, so long as the overall discrepancy is within the rounding tolerance set (it should be)
in that case, it shouldn't matter if you round up your model lining thicknesses in the composite structures dialogue should it?


~/archiben
I do that now in some cases - but doesnt always work out. Especially when doing an imperial to metric conversion job. Also I like to dimension finish to finish rather than core structure quite often, and different permutations of linings give different results.

A whole extra time consuming process is currently required tweaking drawings & composites etc to make the dimensions look pretty, that ArchiCAD should be good enough to handle without compromising the underlying accuracy of what is modelled (If I know wall is 94 thick, then I want it modelled that way in case i need that accuracy for something later, but I don't necessarily want it dimensioned that way on 1:100 plans - just as we select from different flavours of rendered image for different purposes from same underlying accurate model )

Custom text is too painful when you have 300 dimensions to edit & update every time something changes. The software is supposed to work FOR us, not frustrate our attempts to present/format the information
PAUL KING | https://www.prime.net.nz
ArchiCAD 8-27 | Twinmotion 2023
Windoze 11 PC | Intel Core i9 10900K | Nvidia Gforce RTX 3080 | 32 Gb DDR3 | 2x4K monitor extended desktop

Still looking?

Browse more topics

Back to forum

See latest solutions

Accepted solutions

Start a new discussion!