topic Re: Display Order - at the top and bottom? in Modeling

Display Order - at the top and bottom?

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:53:03 GMT

I've got some lines that are being draw under zone text in my drawing, however when I try to move the lines to the front it says they're already at the top of the stack, and when I attempt to move the zone back it says the zone is already at the bottom. That being said ,the display order is still wrong, and I'm not sure how to resolve this.

Does anyone have a workaround for this bug?

Re: Display Order - at the top and bottom?

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 23:00:40 GMT

go into the zone settings and change the background pen to whatever.

Re: Display Order - at the top and bottom?

Erika Epstein — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 15:58:24 GMT

there are something like 8 or 16 stacking levels. You can 'bring forward' or 'send back' one step at a time until you get the desired effect.

Re: Display Order - at the top and bottom?

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 13:52:54 GMT

Erika wrote:
there are something like 8 or 16 stacking levels. You can 'bring forward' or 'send back' one step at a time until you get the desired effect.

However I'm not getting the behaviour I would expect. I've moved the zone as far back as it will allow, and the object I want on top of it as far forward as I can, yet the one in back shows up on top. Any ideas what else might be causing this?

Re: Display Order - at the top and bottom?

Laura Yanoviak — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 15:49:35 GMT

Cleverbeans wrote:
However I'm not getting the behaviour I would expect. I've moved the zone as far back as it will allow, and the object I want on top of it as far forward as I can, yet the one in back shows up on top. Any ideas what else might be causing this?

It would be helpful to know what "object" (or more appropriately, what "element") it is that you want on top. Also, a screen shot would help.

Re: Display Order - at the top and bottom?

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 16:08:10 GMT

Laura wrote:
Cleverbeans wrote:
However I'm not getting the behaviour I would expect. I've moved the zone as far back as it will allow, and the object I want on top of it as far forward as I can, yet the one in back shows up on top. Any ideas what else might be causing this?
It would be helpful to know what "object" (or more appropriately, what "element") it is that you want on top. Also, a screen shot would help.

I'm having problems with various elements in particular custom GDL objects, text, lines, and polylines which are being displayed under Zone text. I'm not sure what value a screenshot would have since display order is pretty obvious. Note that if I choose "move to back" or "move backward" on the zone it tells me that it's already at the bottom of the stack, and if I tell the other elements to "move to front" or "move forward" I get the "already at the top of the stack" message. I assume this has something to do with zone text but I have no idea how to resolve it.

Re: Display Order - at the top and bottom?

Laura Yanoviak — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 16:58:18 GMT

A screenshot would help us to determine if it is a bug or user error. Zone Stamps default to a display order value of 5, while Zone Backgrounds default to a value of 9 (1 being the top of the stack, and 14 being the bottom). So if you're trying to get an element above the Zone Stamp, but below the Zone Background, I don't think it's possible. With the information that you've provided, that you can't get any element to display above the Zone Stamp, the only response I can give is that that is abnormal behavior, and I cannot recommend a work around.

Re: Display Order - at the top and bottom?

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 18:16:52 GMT

Ok, I'm not trying to do anything fancy as all I really need is a background/foreground style setup. The strange part is that everything was working fine last week, and no changes were made to the display orders in the interm but we caught the error on a set of prints. I guess I'm in a bit of a pickle.

Re: Display Order - at the top and bottom?

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 20:40:38 GMT

Update: I tried moving the display orders around again, this time I moved the zones to the front and the objects to the back just in case they were reversed somehow but this had no impact, and switching them back to normal still didn't work.

Will support be able to help with this sort of thing? I'm supposed to sending out my final prints this week and if I have to port all my drawings into another piece of software to print I'd rather know sooner than later.

Re: Display Order - at the top and bottom?

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 20:51:19 GMT

Update:

Got it working. I had coworker try it and he was able to reproduce the error on his machine. Also, we found a way to get control back - apparently by changing the model view. Once we switched to a different model view we were able to move the zones backward and then when I switched back the changed help.

Anyone know why model views would impact the drawing order stack?

Edit: Apparently this didn't fix it, just allowed me to correct one object/zone pair out of a few thousand. So it seems switching model views may not have been related.

Re: Display Order - at the top and bottom?

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 23:23:13 GMT

You have thousands of zones? Perhaps the problem has someting to do with the size of the project. Just a wild guess but I've never seen this problem and even my largest projects don't have that many rooms.

As a workaround you could make views with just the layers you want on top and overlay then in the layouts.

Re: Display Order - at the top and bottom?

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 15:26:19 GMT

The thousands was just hyperbole, I've got about 30 zones with 1 or 2 elements under the text in each zone, over 7 drawings so maybe 450 objects or so that I want the text to be under.

The overlaying might work, I don't have permission to create layer combinations because apparently this causes problems with the attribute file but I'll see if I can get one of the admins to work it out. Nothing like redundant work to keep me billable.

Re: Display Order - at the top and bottom?

Laura Yanoviak — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 15:42:03 GMT

Just out of curiosity -- why do you have so many elements that you want to display ABOVE the Zone Stamp? I can't think of a single instance where we would want the Zone Stamp obscured by anything.

Re: Display Order - at the top and bottom?

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:10:48 GMT

Laura wrote:
Just out of curiosity -- why do you have so many elements that you want to display ABOVE the Zone Stamp? I can't think of a single instance where we would want the Zone Stamp obscured by anything.

They're electrical schematics. The zone stamps are there to assist reverse lookups from the schedule and to show coverage areas for fire equipment and emergency lighting mostly for permitting purposes. However the main geometry in drawings is there to guide the electrician who is actually installing the devices, and they won't care about the zone information at all, so the clarity of the schematic is paramount. Since a break in a line has a meaning, an artificial break created by layering causes confusion in the field.

It should also be noted that all our symbols are scale invariant, so they have a much larger footprint than the actual object would, thus the collision with the zone stamps. This is a pretty standard practice in our neck of the woods.

Re: Display Order - at the top and bottom?

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 23:58:37 GMT

Sounds like a the prefect place to use the overlay approach. I have often seen the electrical schematics in black overlaid on a grayed out floor plan. Very easy to do in the layouts with the right pen sets.

Re: Display Order - at the top and bottom?

Arcadia — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 09:06:08 GMT

I don't think this issue has anything to do with the zones. I come across this problem quite often just working with 2d lines, fills and text. You would think that you could pull any object to the 'top' but sometimes it just won't go any higher even though clearly it is not on top. Also you would think that any new text or lines or whatever would automatically be placed on the top but this is often not the case.

Re: Display Order - at the top and bottom?

Laura Yanoviak — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 15:08:27 GMT

Arcadia wrote:
I don't think this issue has anything to do with the zones. I come across this problem quite often just working with 2d lines, fills and text. You would think that you could pull any object to the 'top' but sometimes it just won't go any higher even though clearly it is not on top. Also you would think that any new text or lines or whatever would automatically be placed on the top but this is often not the case.

I know that Text and Dimensions brought to the top of the stack CANNOT be overlapped. Also, Bring to Front does not assign the element to a Display Order of 1, but brings it above all placed elements -- the opposite is true for Send to Back.

Re: Display Order - at the top and bottom?

Anonymous — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 15:34:59 GMT

Matthew wrote:
Sounds like a the prefect place to use the overlay approach. I have often seen the electrical schematics in black overlaid on a grayed out floor plan. Very easy to do in the layouts with the right pen sets.

Yeah this is exactly what we're looking for, I'll move to the overlay approach as a home rolled layering scheme. We're going to be reorganizing our workflow for the next project and this will likely work better for us anyway.

Thanks for the help guys.

Re: Display Order - at the top and bottom?

Erika Epstein — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 06:16:01 GMT

Arcadia wrote:
You would think that you could pull any object to the 'top' but sometimes it just won't go any higher even though clearly it is not on top. Also you would think that any new text or lines or whatever would automatically be placed on the top but this is often not the case.

There is a ranking to which elements have priority. If you can't put a line on top of something else e.g.a slab, you have to first send the slab backward. The line or lower order element can't bump a higher ranked element out of place. the higher element must be moved first.

Sounds Orwellian.

Re: Display Order - at the top and bottom?

Arcadia — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 09:51:58 GMT

Its bloody weird if you ask me. If I can't get something to display on top then send something else backwards instead then it can mess up the order of other elements. I just want to be able to move any object or element that I want to the absolute top any time I want and in this way I can always get things to display correctly. I had this in my 2D software and miss it.