BIM: BimDrag how to lock visible adjoining solids?

Roy Klein Gebbinck

BimDrag is a very powerful command. If you drag a face of a solid, other solids that adjoin it will automatically change as well. In many cases you want this behaviour.

To avoid this behaviour however, you have to make the other solids invisible or freeze or switch off their layers, which is not always desirable. Locking layers does not work.
Is there a way to lock adjoining *visible* solids to stop them from changing?
Using 3D constraints (rigid set) seems 'over the top' for this purpose.

The opposite can also be required:
In a crowded 3D model you may have to make adjoining geometry invisible to get to the face you want to drag, and yet want the invisible solids to update.

Tom Foster

In Bentley BIM there's an 'Imply Relationship' toggle that can be on or off for any given operation. If on, there's Relationship and the selected element drags with it any elements it's joined to; if off, there's no Relationshiop and only the selected element is modified, leaving unchanged the elements it used to be joined to.
There's also a group/ungroup toggle, so that for any given operation, the multi-plies of Compositions can either be dragged together, or dragged individually.
Although the terminology is obscure, and ill-explained in Help, once understood these 2 together or individually are quick to toggle in Bentley BIM, and give much flexibility to achieve widely different results, as desired.

Hans De Backer

BimDrag indeed analyses the context and may decide to also act on adjacent solids. As experienced by Roy, this behavior is usually what you want, but there are exceptions.
The 'regular' DMPUSHPULL and DMEXTRUDE tools can be used to solve such cases.

To ease working in a crowded model, we are currently developing technology that makes it very easy and very fast to clip away the display of any part of the model that is getting in your way, while allowing to edit also those solids that are only partially displayed. We hope to make this available in a couple of months.

Tom Foster

AFAIK DMPUSHPULL and DMEXTRUDE lose quite a bit of BimDrag's excellent functionality, so I hope a way will be found to use BimDrag with the kind of flexibility described above.

"To ease working in a crowded model" is very good news - many MechEng softwares do this well, intuitive and fast - but AFAIK the BIMs are extremely poor, because they assume that all buildings are multi-storeys organised into Floors which can be switched on/off so you can usually 'see' pretty well into any single Floor space. That breaks down with more interesting, non cuboid non routine commercial buildings which can't be so organised into relatively 'thin' Spaces.

One approach that might be considered - in I think SpaceClaim or is it NX? - is to pick any vertex in the 3D model, through which passes a plane which stays parallel with the monitor screen, even as the model is rotated/zoomed/panned. Everything beyond that plane is displayed; everything 'closer to the viewer' from that plane is undisplayed, or displayed with chosen transparency. As the model rotates through the plane, its elements instantly change from 'displayed' to 'undisplayed' or vice versa, as they pass through the plane.
Instead of a single vertex as the plane's 'centre point', Hans's instantly-tweakable 'working clip volume' can be defined to form an enlarged 'centre point' of the plane, so work can proceed on everything within that clip volume (and beyond) without any part of it becoming undisplayed when rotated.

Roy Klein Gebbinck

For flexibility I would prefer the ability to lock a selection of solids instead of a global 'Imply Relationship' toggle.

Tom Foster

OK, but I'd like both - a permanent lock and a one-shot version of same.

Jason Bourhill

@Hans De Backer:

BimDrag indeed analyses the context and may decide to also act on adjacent solids. As experienced by Roy, this behavior is usually what you want, but there are exceptions.
The 'regular' DMPUSHPULL and DMEXTRUDE tools can be used to solve such cases.

I guess it may already be obvious, but BIMCONNECT sets the context of how BIMDRAG will work. I believe there is also the a command called MOVE, which you access via GRIPS :-). However SELECTIONMODES tends to get in the way. If you watch the BIM tutorial, you'll see that this needs constant adjustment to achieve the desire action. It would be nice if there was more intelligent mode switching, or that it is state is drive by the active command.

@Hans De Backer:

To ease working in a crowded model, we are currently developing technology that makes it very easy and very fast to clip away the display of any part of the model that is getting in your way, while allowing to edit also those solids that are only partially displayed. We hope to make this available in a couple of months.

Something I noticed with LIVESECTIONS is that object snaps stop working for the sectioned object. Fast clip of the model would indeed be useful, but you would want to retain access to all the usual tools.

Regards,

Jason Bourhill

CAD Concepts

Jason Bourhill

Perhaps a simple example where BIMDRAG doesn't work in context well with the modelled component. In the attached drawing there are two roof profiles. one with a gable end, and the other hip. With the gable end BIMDRAG works well to extend the roof. With the hip profile BIMDRAG doesn't work. You need to MOVE the end, then BIMCONNECT.

Regards,

Jason Bourhill

CAD Concepts

45HipRoof.dwg

Hans De Backer

Jason wrote:
"However SELECTIONMODES tends to get in the way. If you watch the BIM tutorial, you'll see that this needs constant adjustment to achieve the desired action."

Perhaps you are aware but just in case... the need to modify SELECTIONMODES has decreased considerably since pressing the Ctrl-key now acts as a SELECTIONMODES toggle. E.g. when SELECTIONMODES is set to 2 ( = give priority to selecting faces ) it suffices to keep Ctrl pressed to temporarily toggle to selecting solids instead.

Jason wrote:
"Something I noticed with LIVESECTIONS is that object snaps stop working for the sectioned object. Fast clip of the model would indeed be useful, but you would want to retain access to all the usual tools. "

That is exactly why we are developing this new display clip approach : retain access to all usual tools.

In fact, we will take it a step further. To make modeling using a clipped display a more natural experience, besides offering all usual snaps, we are working on making it possible to also snap to the intersection contours of clipped solids (although the display-clipped solids do not have actual geometry there...).
Well, probably just like you: can't wait to get my hands on it to give it a try!

Jason Bourhill

Thanks Hans,

hadn't picked up on using the CTRL key with SELECTIONMODES =2. Certainly makes life easier.

Very much look forward to the release of clipped display tools.

Regards,

Jason Bourhill

CAD Concepts

Roy Klein Gebbinck

@ Jason:
You say that BimConnect sets the context for BimDrag. But that is not exactly true in my opinion. BimConnect only creates L-connections between solids. BimDrag looks for *any* adjoining solids and not just for solids that have been 'BimConnected'.

Tom Foster

@Hans De Backer:snap to the intersection contours of clipped solids

Not sure what that means -
first, in Brics, is it posible to snap to the intersection profile formed between any 2 solids? Sorry I'm not actively exploring 3D Brics at present, to verify that, but if so that wd be wonderful!
second, are you saying that that snapping works even when one of the solids is undisplayed (invisible) because clipped? Or to the undisplayed part of a solid that crosses the clip plane? Or to all solids in the model, even if both are undisplayed because both are outside the clip volume?

Going back to 'first' above, a further thing on my wishlist - to snap to any face of a solid. When something is being projected on a fixed vector (or even when being freely dragged by the mouse), to be able to snap it to the point where it happens to hit the face of another solid (or surface, or closed 2D shape).

Tom Foster

Sorry, formatting went wrong. A tech foirum like this really ought to have an Edit facility - so important to be able to go back and make posts precise, as intended