topic Re: Quality of 2D lines in Documentation

Quality of 2D lines

Anonymous — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 13:43:31 GMT

Hello,
This has annoyed me for a while. Is there a way to improve the quality of 2D lines in archicad and in particular their ends and junctions. When I look at my friends prints from autoCAD the quality and crispness of the lines is far better than mine from ArchiCAD. We use the same plotter and im aware of line weights etc. so im not talking about that but more the fact that if I have a thick line of say 0.5 or larger you can see that the end of the line is rounded and not square like my friends. This causes problems when thick lines meet thinner lines and actually protrude past them slightly due to the rounded end. I don't use plotmaker - does that help with line quality? Im using ArchiCAD 9.

I hope people know what im talking about! - and there is an option to get crisp lines with square line ends!

Thanks, Rob

Re: Quality of 2D lines

Barry Kelly — Fri, 05 May 2006 02:30:01 GMT

rob wrote:
Hello,
This has annoyed me for a while. Is there a way to improve the quality of 2D lines in archicad and in particular their ends and junctions. When I look at my friends prints from autoCAD the quality and crispness of the lines is far better than mine from ArchiCAD. We use the same plotter and im aware of line weights etc. so im not talking about that but more the fact that if I have a thick line of say 0.5 or larger you can see that the end of the line is rounded and not square like my friends. This causes problems when thick lines meet thinner lines and actually protrude past them slightly due to the rounded end. I don't use plotmaker - does that help with line quality? Im using ArchiCAD 9.

I hope people know what im talking about! - and there is an option to get crisp lines with square line ends!

Thanks, Rob

No way of changing the lines that I know of.

A work-around though is to set up a bunch of walls for various thicknesses and use those with the reference line in the centre.
Not very productive though!

Barry.

Re: Quality of 2D lines

Petros Ioannou — Fri, 05 May 2006 07:08:27 GMT

You cannot do it but if you are desperate to do that then you can use a wall composite with solid fills on both sides acting like line widths.
You will need to add wall-ends and use cavity closure for windows doors in order to appear correctly. Keep in mind that you have to create composite for each wall width needed.
Either way it is a work-around but I don't recommend it.

Petros

Re: Quality of 2D lines

Thomas Holm — Fri, 05 May 2006 09:01:40 GMT

The "true weight" option in Archicad was originally intended to be used on (raster) printers to mimic the output from pen plotters. That's why the line ends are rounded. GS hasn't yet allowed us to access this parameter.

This procedure will give you exactly what you're asking for:

1. In your pen/color table, set up a pen with 0.00 width. It will print with the highest resolution (sharpest edge) your printer allows. Set up one pen like this for every color you want to use.

2. Use an ordinary wall (not composite) with
- fill set to solid and
- fill pen to the above
- edge lines set to continuous and
- edge pen to the same
- reference line to center
- wall ends to both
- thickness to your desired line width to scale (1mm is minimum)
- set up walls like this for every line width and color you want (make a palette on a layer that you hide when printing)

3. Use these walls to draw what you want

4. Print to scale. Example: A 1 mm thick wall will print as a 0.1 mm wide line at scale 1:10, if the printer can handle it.

It sounds more complicated than it is. Lines created this way will print wysiwyg wether you use "true weight" or not. Remember that lines created this way will be visible in 3D too, unless you hide their layer.

Re: Quality of 2D lines

Petros Ioannou — Fri, 05 May 2006 11:36:32 GMT

This issue was also discussed here:

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=8568&postdays=0&postorder=asc&&start=0

Petros

Re: Quality of 2D lines

Anonymous — Fri, 05 May 2006 12:12:30 GMT

Petros wrote:
This issue was also discussed here:

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=8568&postdays=0&postorder=asc&&start=0

Petros

There is also an old wish about that somewhere.
I also miss the "correct" way of drafting architecture, especially for details, but probably our old wish is not so simple to fulfil

Re: Quality of 2D lines

Petros Ioannou — Fri, 05 May 2006 12:40:47 GMT

I am not so sure it is so difficult to achieve that in ArchiCAD, since it recognizes the sectioned part of a wall and places a fill inside it!
Probably it has to do with what Thomas said about pen plotters (draw on the axis to assure accuracy), but there aren't many pen plotters around these days, am I correct?

Petros

PS if I remeber correctly there was an print option in AutoCAD 12 to achieve that but it didn't always work. And I think it is not around anymore

Re: Quality of 2D lines

Anonymous — Fri, 05 May 2006 12:56:49 GMT

I bet the main difficulty is about the orientation of the "line". When you draw a wall, actually, you have to define if the axis is on the left, the right or axial. This is why you can easily fake "correct" drafting.
Imagine, you should define that for each line of each object? You need global rules and flexibility. Example: the wall: global rule could be: thickness inside the wall. It's quite easy because a wall is necessarily a closed polygon. But there are more complex situations. I heard that Bentley solved that a long time ago, have no idea how successful it is.

Re: Quality of 2D lines

Petros Ioannou — Fri, 05 May 2006 13:01:35 GMT

You don't need this for every line width.
Up to ,35mm the line can be placed on the axis.
It is thicker lines that need this adjustment and these are needed for section elements. Maybe an enchancment to the BoldCutLines display option would be enough?

Petros

Re: Quality of 2D lines

Anonymous — Fri, 05 May 2006 13:09:36 GMT

Petros wrote:
You don't need this for every line width.
Up to ,35mm the line can be placed on the axis.
It is thicker lines that need this adjustment and these are needed for section elements. Maybe an enchancment to the BoldCutLines display option would be enough?

Petros

Maybe. First time I heard about that is probably 10 years ago (my reseller). As you know, GS developers rarely answer why they cannot achieve something. But I don't want to contradict Djordje about how hard they work , so it should be hard.

Re: Quality of 2D lines

Petros Ioannou — Fri, 05 May 2006 13:29:14 GMT

Post traumatic experiences from the "AC10 announced" topic?
I don't think anyone in there ever said or even implied that they're not working hard. There is always a reason behind a decision (time, resources, priorities). I don't think that such a line quality function would help a reseller to sell more AC licences.

petros

Re: Quality of 2D lines

Anonymous — Fri, 05 May 2006 13:55:24 GMT

Petros wrote:
Post traumatic experiences from the "AC10 announced" topic?
I don't think anyone in there ever said or even implied that they're not working hard. There is always a reason behind a decision (time, resources, priorities). I don't think that such a line quality function would help a reseller to sell more AC licences.

petros

no no I do think this way.
I have no part into the whining horde. I probably shall have some frustration with AC10, but after having tested it (and before having upgraded, I am not a masochist subscriber).
Back to quality line, could be ok for marketing:
"Look how engineers represent things!
Look how nice it is when architects are in the development staff! "

Re: Quality of 2D lines

Djordje — Sat, 06 May 2006 04:16:52 GMT

Philippe wrote:
Maybe. First time I heard about that is probably 10 years ago (my reseller). As you know, GS developers rarely answer why they cannot achieve something. But I don't want to contradict Djordje about how hard they work , so it should be hard.

They do, only not in general public.

How do you feel when you spend a couple sleepless days, go for a presentation, and get blasted out of the water by the client? Now take the same feeling to more than a year's work ...

Re: Quality of 2D lines

Anonymous — Sat, 06 May 2006 07:28:56 GMT

Djordje wrote:
How do you feel when you spend a couple sleepless days, go for a presentation, and get blasted out of the water by the client? Now take the same feeling to more than a year's work ...

this is one reason why I have no part into the whining horde.
Nevertheless, the main reason is that I like to know about what I speak before criticizing (generally, nobody's perfect... )

Re: Quality of 2D lines

Anonymous — Sat, 06 May 2006 09:39:21 GMT

Thanks for your responses guys. Its a real shame Graphisoft cant solve this as it would seem, on the outside, that it shouldn't be that big a deal to fix. Do they know about this problem? Why has AutoCAD had clean lines for years and that is built on really old code (as archicad now seems to be!) I'll give your ideas a go but i can see the whole appearing in the 3D window a bit of a pain to say the least. Can you set up layers to automatically not show in the 3D window rather than manually turning them off all the time?

I already have a big project almost finished so I don't really want to mess around with it now. Do you think I would be better just printing through my friends AutoCAD for this one - what are the best export options to just get the best results for simply printing (not editing or using the file)?

cheers again

Re: Quality of 2D lines

Djordje — Sun, 07 May 2006 03:29:43 GMT

rob wrote:
Can you set up layers to automatically not show in the 3D window rather than manually turning them off all the time?

Set the layer combination for 3D, save the view.

rob wrote:
Do you think I would be better just printing through my friends AutoCAD for this one - what are the best export options to just get the best results for simply printing (not editing or using the file)?

Definitely not. Are your layouts in PlotMaker ready?

Re: Quality of 2D lines

Anonymous — Sun, 07 May 2006 10:49:11 GMT

No they aren't plotmaker ready unfortunately. I have never been able to get to grips with plotmaker seems unnecissarily complicated compared to AutoCAD viewports (don't get me wrong ArchiCAD is much better than AutoCAD in so many ways - just not at quality and ease of 2D drafting, which is kind of important!) i just resort to PDF for printing from photoshop where you can do a much nicer presentation of work (although you have to manually update drawings). Why do you ask if they are plot maker ready?

Thanks

Re: Quality of 2D lines

Djordje — Mon, 08 May 2006 17:26:28 GMT

rob wrote:
Why do you ask if they are plot maker ready?

Because PlotMaker is for printing ...

... anyway, you are missing a lot for not using it.

Just IMHO, as always

Re: Quality of 2D lines

Anonymous — Tue, 04 May 2010 10:26:22 GMT

4 years later, still no real solution for that problem ? Or did I miss something ?
I still have to reprocess all my drawings into illustrator to be able to fix this