topic Hidden surfaces in Modeling

Hidden surfaces

KeesW — Wed, 24 May 2023 06:38:25 GMT

I think that I have requested this before, a long time ago. Why can't Archicad automatically, or optionally, show elements obscured by other elements in front of them as hidden lines. For example, in Sections, walls in front usually obscure walls behind. It would be useful if the outlines of these obscured walls or elements were shown in dashed lines. This could also apply to items of furniture, doors, windows or other things which benefit from being locatable behind the obscuring wall. How useful would it be if slabs over e.g. service trenches, would show the outline of these trenches as hidden lines?

Re: Hidden surfaces

Erwin Edel — Fri, 15 Jul 2016 07:15:32 GMT

This would be awesome, along with abilty to stagger the marked distant area line. I am stitching together elevations for that one, whenever the need crops up.

I don't mind doing the 2d linework, but it all adds up in terms of time spent.

For furniture I sometimes use a transparant surface with a percentage fill with white pen on panels and bring them to front to make the linework of the shelves behind it appear greyed out, but dashed lines would be better.

Perhaps the graphical override offers a solution here, but that is still for the better part manual work.

Re: Hidden surfaces

sinceV6 — Fri, 15 Jul 2016 20:12:05 GMT

Hi.
While I get the idea in terms of the ease of use, and that the ideal way would be to have yet another "distant area" control (otherwise how would AC know how far you want to show these projections), there are certain ways to get something similar in an automated fashion:

For sections and elevations you could create a marquee selection around the obscuring wall and the elements behind it that you want to show, open this marquee in 3D, use orthogonal projection and use "look to perpendicular of clicked surface" so you see straight to this wall like in the section/elevation; create a 3D document from this and use the "hidden edges" function. You'd need to change model display options so it leaves you with hidden edges. This way you can overlay this in sections/elevations and it'll update automatically should changes occur.

Best regards.