topic Re: Protruding Dots at Drawing Boundaries in Documentation

Protruding Dots at Drawing Boundaries

Gerry Leonor — Wed, 10 May 2023 09:28:34 GMT

this was already probably a bit of an annoyance earlier to me, but someone brought it to my attention.

on the left, you've got a screenshot of a drawing on a layout with a break-line object with a masking fill covering the rest of the slab section details.

on the right, you've got a screenshot of the same drawing in PDF, & you'll see a most of the masking fill covering the slab section detail except when it gets to the boundary of the drawing -- where you'll see a bit of the covered model poking through the drawing boundary. it's thickness depends on the thickness of the pen used for the line / cut-line. the only fix we found for this was to add ANOTHER masking fill in the layout just to cover this protrusion. i even tried adding a white line boundary around the drawing & the black dots still pop-up. no matter if i put the masking object/fill to the top of the Display Order, the dots still appear.

is there a fix for this?

Re: Protruding Dots at Drawing Boundaries

DGSketcher — Thu, 28 Oct 2021 05:54:25 GMT

@Gerry Leonor Just move the break-line object a little to the right or extend the mask with stretch hotspots?

Re: Protruding Dots at Drawing Boundaries

Gerry Leonor — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 00:56:03 GMT

it's way past it. have tried using a simple 2D fill in the detail window & the dots still show up.

Re: Protruding Dots at Drawing Boundaries

Barry Kelly — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 01:04:44 GMT

You have to extend the white fill past the end node of the line you want to hide.

The thicker the line, the further you have to extend the fill.

Lines have round ends that extend beyond the line node by half the width of the line thickness.

It is a bit odd that it seems to be hidden in your layout but still shows on the PDF.

Usually it is WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get).

Maybe zoom in more on the layout and you will see the line also.

Barry.

Re: Protruding Dots at Drawing Boundaries

Gerry Leonor — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 02:59:45 GMT

3 screenshots:

Lineweights are turned on with the Layouts screencap.

is this not replicable at anyone else's end?

Re: Protruding Dots at Drawing Boundaries

Gerry Leonor — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 03:23:40 GMT

here's another.

screenshots are from the layouts

the attached file is a PDF of the published layout. i used other elements that can replicate a 'masking fill'.

in the second drawing, i've cropped both ends to where a masking fill is supposed to cover the thick lines. masked by either the object, fill, slab or even the text with a background fill.

you'll notice that the lines still poke through as dots in each instance -- even with the 2D text. immediately after the "c" for 'breakline object" & just above the first "L" for "slab with cover fill".

Re: Protruding Dots at Drawing Boundaries

Barry Kelly — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 03:54:39 GMT

I can confirm this does indeed happen in version 22 (haven't tried later versions).

I am not sure why it does this.

Even though you have stretched the drawing frame over the white fill from your masking break line, the end of the hidden lines still show through beyond the extent of the drawing frame.

I even drew a thin line at the edge of the drawing frame - there should not be anything extending beyond it.

Especially seeing as the lines are completely covered by a white fill anyway.

The only work-around I can suggest is to place a white solid fill with a white perimeter (or no perimeter) over the top of the edge of the frame on the layout.

Barry.

Re: Protruding Dots at Drawing Boundaries

Erwin Edel — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 07:06:56 GMT

Archicad has been like this, for as long as I recall. You need to mask off the whole thing and show the whole masked area on your layout. If you trim the placed drawing across the mask, you get these 'dots' as you fittingly call them.

Doesn't make sense, but I learned to live with it...

Re: Protruding Dots at Drawing Boundaries

DGSketcher — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 08:10:15 GMT

I'm beginning to think this is a Windows issue, never seen it on my Mac.

Re: Protruding Dots at Drawing Boundaries

Barry Kelly — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 09:56:32 GMT

Other than adding a white fill to the layout, you may be able to do this.

Stretch the breakline mask over the entire end of the slab.

Now when you place the drawing on the layout, do not drag the drawing frame over the mask object.

Leave it stopping short.

As it is not going over the mask object you will not see the 'dots' any more.

If there are other bits you need to crop off then you can create an irregular polygon frame and just stretch it around the mask object.

Barry.

Re: Protruding Dots at Drawing Boundaries

Minh Nguyen — Mon, 08 Nov 2021 13:39:54 GMT

Dear All,

Thank you very much for sharing your experience with this issue!

Based on the screenshot, it looks like upon exporting to PDF, the masking effect somehow failed to cover the end of the line, thus rendering a tiny cut piece of it. Unfortunately, I couldn't find this object in the default Archicad library, so I assume this is a custom object?

Best regards,

Minh

Re: Protruding Dots at Drawing Boundaries

Barry Kelly — Mon, 08 Nov 2021 14:15:47 GMT

It is actually an object in BIMComponents.

Looking at the script, I wonder if it is the way the masking fill is scripted.

It has a contour, but the nodes have a mask that turn some of the contour lines off.

I think that might be it.

But I am not sure why when the drawing frame crops of the missing line of the mask, the ends of lines underneath still bleed through.

If I get time tomorrow I will test it out.

Barry.

Re: Protruding Dots at Drawing Boundaries

Gerry Leonor — Mon, 08 Nov 2021 19:43:41 GMT

FYI: this glitch also happens with other masking elements (see my response with a screenshot & PDF a few replies above), using a fill, slab with a cover fill & text with a -1 background fill...

Re: Protruding Dots at Drawing Boundaries

Minh Nguyen — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 12:04:53 GMT

Hi Gerard,

Thank you very much for pointing it out, I must have missed it somehow. Sorry for the mistake!

I could reproduce the issue now. It seems to confirm my assumption that the drawing's border causes some trouble with the masking effect. I will ask my colleagues to have a closer look into this. As soon as I have an answer I will let you know!

Thank you once again for the big help!

Best regards,

Minh

Re: Protruding Dots at Drawing Boundaries

Gerry Leonor — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 12:23:04 GMT

thanks -- keep us in the loop.

we're turning a blind eye to it & hoping the bosses don't notice...& if they do, i hope they do the same...it's not really a killer bug, but it is annoying.

Re: Protruding Dots at Drawing Boundaries

Minh Nguyen — Thu, 18 Nov 2021 10:38:19 GMT

Dear All,

Thank you very much for your help in this case so far!

I have received an explanation from the development: unfortunately, this is a known consequence of the current implementation on how the elements are drawn in the PDF export.

In the output (PDF, print) the drawing border is not used as a clip polygon, the lines are cut shorter instead. But this causes that the line endings are visible at the end. So the line ends at the border of the drawing, but the round line ending goes out of the border.

To change this behavior, it will be a very big task. The whole area has many design questions as well, e.g. if we clip with the drawing contour, the lines that are exactly at the edge of the drawing would be visible only with half of their thickness.

Due to this, other than what Barry mentioned, we don't have any other solution for this.

I'm very sorry for the inconvenience! Please let me know if you have any further questions!

Best regards,

Minh