topic Re: Template default pens and colours in Project data & BIM

Template default pens and colours

KeesW — Thu, 29 Dec 2016 04:47:14 GMT

I must again complain about the complexity of default pens and colours in the Australian, and perhaps other, templates. What genius dreamt up so many combinations and how are users supposed to remember them? Do they even make sense?

Let’s look at text options. We have 'Annotation-general' and 'Annotation-text'. They have different line colours and thicknesses. 'Annotation text general' differs from 'Annotation -general'. In this section, text uses 0.35mm whilst headings are 0.25 mm lines. Sorry for being a bit thick for thinking that convention has thicker lines for headings as for standard text. Dimension lines are only 0.13mm.

We have subtle differences between cut structural (0.20) and cut non-structural (0.18) elements. These are the same colour and I doubt if anyone can see the differences between them on a drawing or on a screen. So why do it? Is the template the outcome of a PhD thesis or designed for practical use?

So why don't I change it? Because pens and colour choice should be interrelated with materials, surfaces and object appearances. As Archicad becomes more complex, reconstructing these connections becomes more time-consuming and only academics, or those in large practices with enough spare time, can sustain this overhead expense.

Subtle variations and academic distinctions do not make for sensible and memorable rules. The KISS principle has clearly by-passed the author of our templates. There is much more than can, and should, be said about our templates and I look forward to hearing views from other users.

PS: Archicad-talk may have added an emoticon without my approval. Please ignore it.

Re: Template default pens and colours

KeesW — Thu, 29 Dec 2016 04:52:09 GMT

An emoticon has been added without my approval. It obscures (0.18) which is the point of this objection.

Re: Template default pens and colours

KeesW — Thu, 29 Dec 2016 04:56:08 GMT

Archicad-talk doesn't like (0.18 mm) without the 'mm' because it obscures it with an emoticon!

Re: Template default pens and colours

Laszlo Nagy — Sat, 31 Dec 2016 15:46:30 GMT

ARCHICAD-Talk Forum considers an 8 followed by a ) as a laughing smilie.
You can Edit your post, then check the "Disable Smilies in this post" checkbox to prevent that.
I have done that with your original post, and so now it displays it normally.

Re: Template default pens and colours

KeesW — Sat, 31 Dec 2016 20:31:49 GMT

Thanks Lazio. My wife pointed this out to me after my vent.

Re: Template default pens and colours

Steve Jepson — Tue, 03 Jan 2017 22:39:08 GMT

KeesW wrote:
I must again complain about the complexity of default pens and colours...

So don't use them. Make a simple pen set that is rational and easy to manage.

Give the first 10 columns a pen weight/size based on the pen number.

Column 1 = .1mm
Column 2 = .2mm
Column 3 = .3mm ....
Make column 10 = .01 so you will have hairlines in every color too.

Make the first Row black, the the other colors for rows don't matter.

It would look something like this depending on the colors for rows you want to use.

The point is to match the pen numbers to with the pen size so you always know what size the pen is by looking at the pen number.

Pen 1 = .1mm
Pen 2= .2mm
Pen 3= .3mm so on and so on.

Pen 104 = .4mm
Pen 228 = .8mm
Pen 181 = .1mm
Pen 85 = .5mm you get the idea I am sure.

This makes it very easy to keep a what-you-see-is-what-you-get relationship between your screen and your final prints.

It's not that I do not understand what you can do with pen sets, it is just that I can do all of that in other ways. I have been using this one and only pen set for about 25 years and I have never wished I had a better one.

Re: Template default pens and colours

Richard Morrison — Wed, 04 Jan 2017 00:03:13 GMT

It's worth mentioning that now with graphic overrides, you don't really need multiple pen sets. If you get GOs set up correctly once, you only need a penset with a couple of rows. (or columns) Or if your drawings are black/white/grey, you could probably get away with a single row of pens.

Re: Template default pens and colours

Steve Jepson — Wed, 04 Jan 2017 00:52:08 GMT

KeesW wrote:
There is much more than can, and should, be said about our templates and I look forward to hearing views from other users.

Here is a perspective not many share with me.

The only kind of Template I think is useful is the exact opposite of a what most people would consider a Template.
http://www.masterscript.nl/Clean-Template

I much prefer to let the Template(if you want to call it that) evolve on it's own by importing only what I want, when I want it into the new project.

With hundreds of completed projects, what would I use a Template for? My past projects are all Templates aren't they?

I paste or import assemblies of elements into the new project and adjust them for the new conditions. I may not even import any Favorites. I don't need to load any libraries either. Everything I need is automatically imported into the new project when it comes in.

I typically work with 3 instances of ArchiCAD open. The new project that starts with the Clean-Template, and perhaps a couple of similar completed projects to assemble the new project with.

I don't need to model very much from scratch anymore.
Templates are for people who need to outsource the work but want it to look like they did the work inhouse. Or for people who don't have any completed projects they did the way they would like to have done it. That is perhaps the best argument I have seen for why a person would want to use a Template. The project always starts out well organized and with the little extras that take some extra time but are intended to pay off in the end. But then the time runs out and everything is in a panic to just get it out the door. It gets real easy to tell yourself "it doesn't have to be perfect. Nobody will care anyway if the CAD file is a mess. All that counts is the .pdf." And so you never do have a completed project that is how it should have been done. Whereas if you hand a Template that already is set up to keep you from needing to take so many shortcuts you would actually end up with the project done the way it should be. That is a powerful argument for Templates. I don't care who you are or how you work.

That being said, I still don't use them

Re: Template default pens and colours

KeesW — Wed, 04 Jan 2017 01:07:48 GMT

Thank you for your thoughts and comments. I have been using my list pen weight related to pen numbers for years. But...... new templates created by our vendors (e.g. Graphisoft) appear to provide advantages of integrations with objects and elements that might be worth considering. I find them too complex and almost incomprehensible.

I'd like to hear someone defend these complex templates for practical work applications instead of intellectual purity.

Re: Template default pens and colours

DGSketcher — Wed, 04 Jan 2017 16:59:43 GMT

In the UK there was a webinar on pen sets but I don't recall anything in it that convinced me they were a good solution. As mentioned above I think G.O.s are the future accompanied by a single pen set. I don't see a need to have a badly flawed arrangement of setting multiple pens per component and then manipulating the appearance of the components with different pen sets when a simple GO setting can achieve the same thing.

Re: Template default pens and colours

KeesW — Wed, 25 Jan 2017 10:32:20 GMT

2.5 weeks and still no defenders of the complex templates foisted on us.
Surely someone out there likes them?

Re: Template default pens and colours

Erwin Edel — Wed, 25 Jan 2017 11:22:28 GMT

I like the Dutch template, which as far as I can tell does not use the overly complex system of pens international template (and other local templates) have.

Pen 1-10 are black pens when printed with your typical pen weights going from thin to thick. They have easy to distinguish CAD-colours in the set you'd typically use when drafting, so you know when you see a red line, it is the 0,18 mm etc.
21-30 is the same pen weights, but at excactly 50% grey. Great for furniture outlines (not used by default for that sadly), subdued vectorial fills, distinguishing existing structure from to be built
41-50 again same weights, but red. great for MEP / fire safety / etc
61-70 same weights, green great for: see red
81-90 same weights, blue great for: see red
101-110, black pens for cut fills at different weights / uses (can be tweaked to quickly change if wanted). I don't really use a lot of these, mostly stick to what the template offers for the building materials. I like the hairline one for clear drawings when printed
91-100 white to near black grey scale, 91 is the default backgroup pen for everything in the library, great for solid hatch fills in elevations (dark grey for glass, etc)

Everything else is just assorted colours you can use for illustration purposes, the only exception being pen 19, which is probably popular in other library parts as background pen.

I find it easy to use, like the 5 colour options with weights that are above eachother in the pick a pen dialogue and it is easy to remember pen '1' is 0,13 mm pen, so is '21', '41' etc

Re: Template default pens and colours

JaseBee — Thu, 06 Jul 2017 05:39:48 GMT

Having never really been taught traditional CAD drafting practices I've always struggled with the old pen weights/colours problem.

But a few years ago I decided to group things by elements into columns and have types of pens in rows... then graphisoft bought out their idea of how it should be done, so I kind of hybrid-ed their formatting and mine together as it was surprisingly similar.

Unfortunately this was prior to the GO options, but as we haven't upgraded to 20 yet so it still remains useful. However with my limited experience on 20 it seems that GO's are more of a blanket override, so wouldn't perhaps be as suited to objects or other elements that require some nuance between pens for correct display.

In anywise I think I'll keep the pen table I've developed, also made a handy table object to display what each of the pens are (shown attached), unfortunately GDL can't give me a numeric readout of the thicknesses...