topic Re: Drafting quality ugliness in Documentation

Drafting quality ugliness

Ignacio Azpiazu — Wed, 31 May 2023 08:18:32 GMT

About a third of the drawings I have been coming across recently have basic drafting problems --nobody seems to use geometry layouts, things that should be equal are not equal by 1/16", things start having funny dimensions, etc. *Very basic* drafting problems, coming from architects etc. And nobody seems to care.

About a year ago I thought such a situation scandalous and extraordinary, but now I am starting to assume it as ordinary and just the way some people do drawings. Was I lucky before? Am I being very unlucky recently? Is that just the way things are and I was not aware?

Re: Drafting quality ugliness

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 01:30:53 GMT

Ignacio,

Small inaccuracies, as nasty as they can be, are small potatoes compared to some of the practices I have seen. Walls, doors and windows drawn as lines and arcs, elevations drawn as 2D projections on the floor plan, etc...

Of course there is always the argument that whatever gets the job done in the end is OK, but then you can also use a hammer to drive screws.

Re: Drafting quality ugliness

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 10:00:19 GMT

Am I missing something? What are doors and windows on a published drawing if not lines and arcs? (Unless they're just blobs because Archicad couldn't find the library part). What is an elevation, if not a 2D projection?

Re: Drafting quality ugliness

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 14:29:30 GMT

lol....this what we are discussing today....there are some major issues with AC on quality...so far I am not impressed....especially when it comes to line weights......

Re: Drafting quality ugliness

Ignacio Azpiazu — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 15:49:28 GMT

r wrote:
lol....this what we are discussing today....there are some major issues with AC on quality...

The quality problems we are all talking about are operator's problems. If you don't know where your library parts should be kept, less will ArchiCAD. If you are not familiar with ArchiCAD's line weight settings, it is your problem and not ArchiCAD's. People who have gone through the tutorials don't have those problems.

My initial concern goes beyond ArchiCAD though, it has to do with very basic drafting issues: when a 30' structural grid starts having columns at 29'-11 1/16", 30-1/32", etc., forget about repeating, mirroring, multiplying, walls cleaning up, dimension strings adding up, overall dimensions working, etc. And those are supposed to be instructions for building something. I am seeing that all the time, as an ordinary thing.

Re: Drafting quality ugliness

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 16:30:43 GMT

r wrote:
there are some major issues with AC on quality...so far I am not impressed....especially when it comes to line weights......

I am a newbie and was initially put off by the same issues, but I did every tutorial I could find more than once. I searched this forum extensively for suggestions and methods of getting quality line weight results. I implemented the "STS" get standarized template system. I did a bit more tweaking and I achieved the high quality I expected from myself and my software. I would not go back to AutoCAD. I have worked with Revit and yes it does some things I wish ArchiCAD did, bit I still find it less powerful and less intuituve than ArchiCAD.

My parting thought is stick to it. ArchiCAD is not filled with limitations, but rather so much that it takes a fair ammount of effort on the users part to get all of it producing the speedy well coordinated documents you want.

Cheers - Chris

Re: Drafting quality ugliness

Dwight — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 16:45:09 GMT

In my ArchiCAD illustration work, models often arrive with hasty assembly. Corners miss and a lot of things get "sort of" done.

The ramifications for messy renderings are enormous.

I believe that it takes a special serenity to sit with ArchiCAD, in the knowledge that a carefully executed plan yields a multitude of carefully executed elevations and sections.

A slow start but a quick finish.

Re: Drafting quality ugliness

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 20:47:46 GMT

When people tell me "it doesn't have to be perfect" I answer "what's wrong with perfect?" I'd rather spend a bit more time doing things accurately than rushing thru' thinking "she'll be right" and regreting it later when you try to adjust something and can't work out why things don't line up. (hope my colleagues are reading this, and my bosses).
Get it right, be accurate, makes for less frustration further down the line.

Cheers

Re: Drafting quality ugliness

Dwight — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 20:54:54 GMT

My mother always said

"Everybody sees how good it is. Nobody asks how long it took."

She never had a boss.

Re: Drafting quality ugliness

Rod Jurich — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 00:18:32 GMT

Dwight wrote:
My mother always said

"Everybody sees how good it is. Nobody asks how long it took."

She never had a boss.

Dwight, this and your earlier post deserve to be quotes of the week.
Oh how right you are.

Re: Drafting quality ugliness

Anonymous — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 00:26:28 GMT

Very frustrating problem and it depends too on what stage a job is at.

Archicad is only partly to blame as is any CAD package. It is (and always has been) the person doing the work. It is hard but if you keep on their cases about it they may change or move on (yipee).

Our office is eventually going to implement a quality assurance auditing system to get over this. Oh happy day....

Roolio

Re: Drafting quality ugliness

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 13:12:27 GMT

Sorry I didn’t get back sooner…but here goes….I will be a little clearer on what I am talking about…in this example….. here is a floor plan and I am cutting an elevation…if I cut an elevation/section….there is hardly any control over the line weights… especially when it comes to elevations…at least I have one option when cutting sections…..so what generally happens….a elevation/section is cut….my draft person copies the cut within that view and the elevation/section become dissociated with the model and this doubles my work….…..so this really needs to be addressed…examples below...

Re: Drafting quality ugliness

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 13:17:10 GMT

here's the cut....

Re: Drafting quality ugliness

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 13:18:11 GMT

this what we should be getting....some line weights...

Re: Drafting quality ugliness

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 13:33:07 GMT

I sympathise with R Benbenek's problem.

Our practice always draws elevations in 2D, using Archicad's automatically generated elevations as a template, but then disassociating the elevation from the model. I'm sure this is not a good idea - and can lead to discrepancies between the plan and elevation (which is what Archicad is supposed to eliminate) - but how else to obtain the drafted quality?

I'd be interested to hear what other practices do.

Re: Drafting quality ugliness

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 13:33:39 GMT

have you tried using the 'marked distance area' setting for the s/e tool?

this should do exactly what you want

bill

Re: Drafting quality ugliness

TomWaltz — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 13:39:18 GMT

I hate to be the one to bring this up, but this entire thread to be handled with nothing more than a little training, or even a little Archicad-Talk archive reading. This is pretty basic stuff which has been discussed a lot.

Section markers give you limited near/far control, which does a lot when combined with using the "model" pen settings for walls, and a couple polylines to darken up the overall outlines/groundlines.

These may not solve every situation, but go a long way towards line weight control in 3D views/.

Re: Drafting quality ugliness

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 15:49:13 GMT

"limited near/far control" only provides for one additional line weight...I wish there where more....or maybe it should occur in part......unless there's something I am missing....

Re: Drafting quality ugliness

Dwight — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 15:50:41 GMT

and how many levels would you like to have, oh draftmeister?

Re: Drafting quality ugliness

TomWaltz — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 16:00:17 GMT

My personal preference would be a generation algorithm which allows users to specify "for every <xxx> feet, adjust pen number <yyy> positions in the <zzz> direction. Anything that reaches below 0 is not shown"

This would give an endless variation in pens based on depth, and allow the user more control.