topic Re: Lines in True weight. Rounded tip? or squared? in Modeling

Lines in True weight. Rounded tip? or squared?

Anonymous — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 10:50:31 GMT

I have this problem when drawing details and I print them they don't look very good because the tips of the lines are rounded on their ends (visible on the screen aswell when you zoom in the tip of a line in trueweight mode). Is there a way to draw with lines that have squared tips?

Thanks,
Lukas

Re: Lines in True weight. Rounded tip? or squared?

Petros Ioannou — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 13:30:08 GMT

No there isn't.
Petros

Re: Lines in True weight. Rounded tip? or squared?

Anonymous — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 13:33:34 GMT

I thought so.....

Thanks anyway...

Re: Lines in True weight. Rounded tip? or squared?

Chazz — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 14:22:43 GMT

LukasB wrote:
Is there a way to draw with lines that have squared tips?

Use a solid fill instead. I actually do this occasionally (like on title blocks). Or make a lib object and stretch it.

Choosing the end treatment of lines has long been a feature of adobe illustrator and I miss it in AC now and then.

Re: Lines in True weight. Rounded tip? or squared?

Anonymous — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 14:29:53 GMT

I thought about the fills, but it takes twice as much to make a drawing...I wish there was a faster way to do this. Why are the tips rounded anyway??

Thanks Chazz

Re: Lines in True weight. Rounded tip? or squared?

Chazz — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 14:39:54 GMT

In plan windows you could use walls of zero height. This, like all workarounds will have it share of unwelcome side-effects.

LukasB wrote:
Why are the tips rounded anyway??

This is a question shrouded in unknowable hungarian mystery. However, as a default it is definitely the best choice because it cleans up intersections automatically.

Re: Lines in True weight. Rounded tip? or squared?

Petros Ioannou — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 14:40:33 GMT

probably because drafting pens have round tips (at least after the mid 60's. Until then they used some type of ink pen -I have a set named Graphos- which could produce square corners)
Also by hand there was a workaround:
first use .6 to .8 and then refine the corners with .1...etc?

What is more important IMHO is that ArchiCAD does not place thick lines inside the wall mass on plan , but on the axis of lines..

Petros

Re: Lines in True weight. Rounded tip? or squared?

Chazz — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 15:27:48 GMT

Petros wrote:
What is more important IMHO is that ArchiCAD does not place thick lines inside the wall mass on plan, but on the axis of lines.

Petros, could you say more about this? I'm not getting it.

Re: Lines in True weight. Rounded tip? or squared?

Chris Phillips — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 15:35:20 GMT

If the detail is an independant drawing.... why not us a wall with a solid fill instead of a thick line?

Chris

Re: Lines in True weight. Rounded tip? or squared?

Petros Ioannou — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 16:18:51 GMT

Dear Chazz,
One of the principles of inking in architectural drawing is that when you use the rapidograph to ink a sectioned element you place the line thickness (of an inking instrument such as 0.6mm ) inside the width of the sectioned element.
For example (by hand)
for a 30cm wall on a 1:50 plan you draw at first (with pencil on a calque paper) two parallel lines with distance 6mm.
when you have to ink this with a 0.6mm rapidograph you have to place the line inside the mass of the wall so that the final width of the wall does not change (in case someone tries to measure something from the drawing).
Cad applications such as ArchiCAD do not do that but they place the thickness on the axis of the actual drawn line. So if you try to measure a wall from a plan with visible pen widths then it would be a little bigger than drawn.
It is more a visual problem and not a critical one since nowdays CAD CD's usually use one thickness and too many dimensions just to reassure that nobody will try to measure anything from paper...
Petros

Re: Lines in True weight. Rounded tip? or squared?

Petros Ioannou — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 16:32:49 GMT

just an example

Re: Lines in True weight. Rounded tip? or squared?

Chazz — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 16:39:18 GMT

Petros, Thanks for the in-depth info. I've never used rapidograph pens (except for the ones in my old pen plotters). I've been a CAD guy since the 80's and have literally (gasp) never drawn by hand. Having an appreciation of the roots (dare I say "the finer points"?) of all this seems that it would be very helpful.

Re: Lines in True weight. Rounded tip? or squared?

Petros Ioannou — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 16:48:06 GMT

Funny thing is that probably you're older than me! (I am 33 and a CAD user since 1993 )
Here in Greece - even today - you have to take (among other)
exams in hand drafting (with pencil and rapidographs) and free-hand sketch drawing before studying architecture at the university.No CAD exams!

Back to our subject I think it would be easy for ArchiCAD to place line width correctly and also use square corner and ends since it recognizes the section of an element. On the other hand I am not a programmer so maybe it is not that easy.

Petros

Re: Lines in True weight. Rounded tip? or squared?

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 07:43:40 GMT

Thank you guys for all the tips and tricks! I think I'll just have to live with my rounded tips for now...Have a very good week!

LINE ENDS

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 14:39:42 GMT

IS THERE A WAY YOU CAN CHANGE THE WAY YOUR LINE ENDS LOOK WHEN YOU HAVE YOUR TRUE LINE WEIGHT ON? MINE SHOW UP AS ROUNDED ENDS, AND WE WOULD LIKE TO SEE THEM AS SQUARE ENDS.

Re: LINE ENDS

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 17:59:15 GMT

I'm afraid not, Jess. We are stuck with rounded ends for the time being!

Out of curiosity, in what situations is this causing a problem to you?

Re: LINE ENDS

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 18:27:45 GMT

THIS IS FROM MY COWORKER WITH THE ISSUE.

Re: LINE ENDS

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 18:28:35 GMT

AND HERE IS THE OTHER HALF.

Re: LINE ENDS

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 18:59:07 GMT

That's a good example. I've come across that problem lots of times myself.

I've found a small rectangular fill with a solid white background and no contour lines works fairly well as an alternative, but you do have to pull the edges back so they don't overlap the main lines either side.

If we were working purely in a 2d environment this wouldn't even be a problem, just a quick trim and the rogue line would be gone. But because we are working in a 3d program, little things like this take far too long to sort out, and they don't appear correctly if you save your plans to DWG format for consultants.

I don't know what the solution is, but ArchiCAD needs a better way of dealing with little problem areas like this. Faking stuff with patches, or little white lines and fills just feels wrong for 2010!

Mini rant over!

Re: LINE ENDS

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 19:12:47 GMT

Rant on Peter.
When you rant, (which is so rare and succinct)
the powers that be should listen!
lec