ARCHICAD - Maxwell Library Objects

Maxwell plugin extends the selection of ARCHICAD library objects with its own Maxwell Library objects.

With these objects you can vastly reduce the data amount inside your ARCHICAD project without sacrificing the complexity of the final rendered image.

Maxwell library objects give access to the following Maxwell features:

• Referenced MXS
• Extension objects (Maxwell Sea, MWObjectAlembic, Maxwell Volumetric, etc.)
• Render Boolean

For further info about Referenced MXS files, Maxwell Extensions and Render booleans (Maxwell Boolean) please read the associated documentations, here we discuss only the ARCHICAD implementation of these features.

Editing Maxwell Library Objects

When you select a Maxwel Library object the Maxwell palette shows the Objects Properties, Surface Materials and Mini Library Editor tabs. These are also available for any kind of ARCHICAD library objects, but in case of Maxwell objects the Mini Library Editor can be especially useful.

The Mini Library Editor shows the library parameters of the selected object(s). By clicking on a parameter inside the upcoming popup window you can easily adjust the value of the parameter.

Maxwell Library Parameters

All the Maxwell Library Object types have some parameters which are common. Inside the Mini Library Editor you can see these below the Transforms and AC Display groups.

Transforms

The parameters under the Transform group help you to position, rotate and scale the object in the 3D space.

Show rotation mini Tool  

Toggle the display of the rotation tool (visible only inside the 3D window).

Rotation tool can be helpful in case you want to rotate the object interactively. Click on the moving Hotspots of the tool and rotate the object as you like.

Tool Scale

Set the scale of the rotation mini tool.

Rotation X and Rotation Y

Set the rotation values around the X and Y axis. Normally an ARCHICAD object can be rotated only around the up (=Z) axis. With these parameters you have more freedom to rotate the Maxwell Library objects.

Scale X, Scale Y, Scale Z

ARCHICAD provides controls to set the Width/Length/Height values of the library objects. But the problem with these Width/Length/Height values is that you don't see what was the original size of the object, and it is easy to set sizes which are not according to the original proportions. With these library Scale parameters you can set the size of an object (besides the standard ARCHICAD dimension values) as scaled values of the original size.

AC Display

These are the parameters responsible for the display of the library object on the Floor plane or inside the ARCHICAD 3D window.

Unfortunately ARCHICAD 3D display can become slow in case we load geometries with high polygon numbers. In case we would like to have nice response times from AC it can be necessary to reduce the display complexity of our objects.

Display Mode

You can choose from three display modes: Bounding Boxes, Vertices, Faces.

If speed doesn't matter choose Faces mode. In case speed is an issue and you don't need proper geometry display choose Bounding Boxes

Display Percentage

If simple Bounding Box display is not enough, you can set the Display Mode to Faces and make it speedier by displaying only a certain percentage of the polygons.

Display Reduction Iteration

Besides the option Display Percentage it is an alternative mode to display the geometry with reduced polygon number. Display Percentage displays a poly-mesh with a lots of holes in it, which can be confusing. Whit this poly reduction mode the plugin displays a simplified but still tight poly-mesh. Set this parameter value to 0 if you don't want reduction, or increase the number to have stronger poly-reduction.

Contour Pen

Set the color of the object contours on the Floor Plan

Fill Pen

Set the color fill of the object background rectangle on the Floor Plan