Archicad to Autocad; The forbidden fruit?

[DavidLee]

I work with many different Architects, and Engineers in my line of work (Telcom Consultant). Most use Autocad which makes life super easy, and in some horrible situations some use Archicad. I always seem to have issues with the Archicad files as one would expect as they were not created in Autocad. I'm able to figure out layer and plot styles no problems. The biggest issue that I can not seem to get past is that Archicad seems to build walls and objects in blocks or groups with hidden elements in them. So when they are imported into Autocad they have all of these items associated with them, and do not show all of the items. It usually takes me days to adjust the layers and explode wall and furniture objects so that we can use them in our office. I've looked all over the web, and all I can find is material about importing and using Autocad files in Archicad, but nothing about the reverse. Has anyone messed with this and had any luck in speeding up this process or is this just part of the doom and gloom of dealing with 2 different types of software.
I've attached just a simple little example. It shows upper and lower cabinets along a wall. The upper cabinets cutoff the items below as if a wipeout or a clipping window, but it's actually a block and if you explode the block the items still appear below the upper cabinets.
Hidden.JPG

Thanks for any help or advice you may have on this issues.
Sorry if we're not suppose to talk about Archicad in the AUGI forums. I'm just having issues finding any information.

[Wanderer]

Sorry if we're not suppose to talk about Archicad in the AUGI forums. I'm just having issues finding any information.

No need to worry about that... our members talk about all of the software we use; Microstation, Archibus, MS Project, ProCAD, whatever! so ask away!

[dgorsman]

Microstation

ewwww...

Archibus

uhm...

MS Project

Toys for the pointy-haired bosses...

ProCAD

*shudder* At least their license manager works now...

[irneb]

Sorry I don't think I've seen anything about such. I have found that you sometimes get the same results if a DWG is exported from Revit, it depends on how the items were made inside Revit. And mostly things like a wall is exported as a block of lines + hatching, since in Revit / Acad Architecture / ArchiCAD you draw a "wall" not a bunch of lines.

If you BEdit the block, can you find the wipeout? Note that the wipeout frame may be turned off - which makes it impossible to select them (turn back on by typing WipeOut<space>F<space>ON<space>). Then perhaps these things are simply on a layer you can freeze. If not perhaps look into a lisp which would go through all blocks and erase all wipeouts.

[wolfgrrlone]

Have you tried running the "purge" and "audit" commands upon immediately opening an ArchiCad drawing? I'm thinking this may get rid of some of the underlying junk hanging around from ArchiCad.

[stimmo520]

Back to life

If someone can convert this into a lisp, here is what is needed to clean out the wipeouts.
With the exception of grid lines, select all blocks, explode all blocks (not grid lines), delete everything on layer "0", and in some instances, delete block reference - wildcard select by name *E*.

Ive been doin this for a few projects now, and its become quick, and Im a novice lisp writer, but the selection set manipuation is a bit much for my knowledge level and time allowed to do such things.

[irneb]

Is there some way to distinguish which "blocks" are gridlines? Something like a layer - or perhaps something like a portion of their block-name?

E.g. say they're on a layer called something with "GRID" inside it, you can select all the blocks not on those layers like so:

(if (setq BlocksToExplode (ssget "_X" '((0 . "INSERT") (8 . "~*GRID*"))))
  (command "_.EXPLODE" BlocksToExplode "")
)

The first line selects everything in the drawing (ssget "_X" ... but filters only for block inserts (0 . "INSERT") and layer not with GRID in it (8 . "~*GRID*"). To see the DXF codes refer to the developer help on them: http://docs.autodesk.com/ACD/2011/EN...a0ab7-5df0.htm

The the 2nd line simply sends that selection set to the explode command.

Then to erase everything on layer 0:

(if (setq EntitiesOn0 (ssget "_X" '((8 . "0"))))
  (command "_.ERASE" EntitiesOn0 "")
)

To select blocks with "*E*" in their name:

(if (setq BlocksWithE (ssget "_X" '((0 . "INSERT") (2 . "*E*"))))
  (command "_.ERASE" BlocksWithE "")
)

I wrapped all the selections in ifs, so that the command only runs if there are actually objects found to select.