topic Re: Renovation override styles - pen weights in Modeling

Renovation override styles - pen weights

Anonymous — Mon, 24 Mar 2014 15:20:34 GMT

I'm trying to get my existing elements drawn with heavier pen weight. I can choose pen color in renovation override styles palette, but it doesn't affect to pen weight.

As a result, I'm looking something like that:
http://www.jamesanzalone.com/imglib/725Plan.jpg

Or actually opposite of that, new structures with thin pen and existing with bolder one.

Re: Renovation override styles - pen weights

Laszlo Nagy — Mon, 24 Mar 2014 16:45:36 GMT

This is so by design. And because of this it is kind of misleading.
Why?
Because the way ArchiCAD Pens work is a Pen definition includes the setting for both the Pen COLOR and the Pen THICKNESS.

However, when you define an override Pen for a Reno Filter, when an element is overridden, it will be overridden only by the Override Pen's COLOR, but NOT WITH ITS THICKNESS.

I am sure this is a decision GS Product Designers had to make when designing this functionality and this is how they decided.
I personally think that in such cases it would always be the best to leave the choice to the User. So there could be a setting in the Work Environment Dialog called "Override Pen Thicknesses with Renovation Filter Override Pen's Thickness" or something. The User would be able to toggle the state of this setting. This way it would be under the control of the user and either desired output would be attainable.

Re: Renovation override styles - pen weights

Anonymous — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 06:40:57 GMT

Ok thanks. That sounds quite illogical to me. I hope that GS figure out a better solution for that.

So, if the reno filter is off the table, is there another easy way to produce that kind of result because I really need it right now? Or do I have to change the pen setting to each element separately? For this case, that is not a big problem because I only need one type of plan, but it would be good to know.

Re: Renovation override styles - pen weights

Laszlo Nagy — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 11:45:01 GMT

Yes, I think you will need to use another Pen Set with different defined Pen thicknesses.

Re: Renovation override styles - pen weights

tsturm — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 20:58:04 GMT

Based on Laszlo's reply, since you will not be able to change the line thickness by changing the pen it goes with, you should try to do your printing in grey scale. The parts of the building you want to emphasize would be in the black pen and the parts you want to minimize would be in grey. The amount of grey is up to you. However, you will be stuck with the thickness of the wall you are changing.

This process of selecting a pen to change the color during the reno filter, is very strange. Perhaps the designers could have provided a color wheel to make the selection from versus using the pen chart.