topic Glass transparency in sections/elevations in Documentation

Glass transparency in sections/elevations

Marian Pristavu — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 12:39:28 GMT

Hi,

I have an elevation with the uncut elements fill set to “Surface - Texture Fill, Shaded.

The problem is that if I have a window and in front of this a glass railing the transparency doesn’t work correctly.

I added a screenshot so you can see the problem >>> the elements that are behind the glass railing only show the contour lines and not the surface.

I tried modifying the glass material but it doesn’t work.

Do you have any idea how to fix this?

Thanks

PS: Archicad 25 | Mac OS

Re: Glass transparency in sections/elevations

mi_jan — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 15:41:39 GMT

So the problem is that the glass surface does not have 100% transmittance so when turning shading on in your elevation settings it will show the surface color assigned to the glass surface which is why you are seeing that greenish color over your door. If you switch it from the glass surface to the Air surface it should work how you are trying to get it to work; I would not go and just dial the transmittance up on the glass surface because then you are going to be able to see through all your windows as well. So the quickest thing would probably be setting up a graphic override rule for the elevations that makes those railings use AIR surface instead of actually turning the panels to air surface in your railing settings, this way it does not affect your sections or 3D model.

Re: Glass transparency in sections/elevations

Marian Pristavu — Wed, 02 Mar 2022 12:28:17 GMT

Thank you.

Sorry but I have been super busy and couldn't answer.

Your solution works and maybe it's the quickest but it doesn't answer the question completely. We are working on some commercial plans and we wanted to show together with the transparency a discreet tint for the railing glass panel. Unfortunately this is not possible with the air surface because to have that colour you'd have to change the transparency and it gets opaque.

On the other hand, it works in 3D Documents. We don't have the textures yet (maybe in a future Archicad update) but the client is happy with the result.

I went a little bit further with the tests and I found some bug (unless I'm missing something)

I have 2 glass railing, same geometry and parameters, the surface is different. Replicated the surface parameters from one to the other and it's still not working - see attachment