Changing the scale of a view for drawings that are on a sheet

[gdford]

Hopefully I have just always been dumb about this....
When i change the scale of the view of a drawing that has been placed on a sheet, the part of the view of the drawing that has been cropped on the layout relocates when the scale of the view is changed and typically it takes longer to find it then it does to just replace it from scratch. The problem with replacing it is that if any linked marker is referencing the drawing then replacing it will break all of those links... This becomes a nightmare in a large project. For the life of me I can not understand why the view in the drawing doesnt at least remain centered in the drawing as I expect that it should.
I have accepted this as a fact of archicad life for years and years, but I have never asked - Is there a solution for this? Have i just been stupid about something?
Gary

[Lingwisyer]

Have you tried turning on "Use Internal Origin"?



Ling.

[Barry Kelly]

gdford wrote:
When i change the scale of the view of a drawing that has been placed on a sheet, ....

I have never changed the scale of a drawing on a layout.
I create a 'View' in the View Map, that shows what I want at the scale I want.
If I need the same view with another scale, I just create a new view.

Then they go on the layout and that is it - nothing to worry about except their position and maybe some cropping.

Barry.

[DGSketcher]

Ling has pointed you to the right place but you probably need to do the opposite. If your image is disappearing it is rescaling from to the origin, if you untick “Use internal origin” BEFORE you change the view scale it should stay centred. It can be a pain switching between the two at the right time but it works. It does help if the view frame is fit to drawing but I appreciate that isn’t always suited and you need to update It manually.

[gdford]

Just to be clear, i was not talking about changing the scale of the drawing in the drawing settings on the layout - I never do this as it is just bad practice in my opinion.
I was talking about changing the scale in the view that controls the drawing for a drawing that has previously been placed on a layout and framed (cropped) to how it needs to be seen on the layout.....
Example - I start with a view for a section with the scale in the view set for 1-1/2" and then after getting a sheet full of these the boss tells me to make the scale 3/4" instead of 1-1/2" .... so i go to the views and change the scale. When i go back to the layout the part of the section i had framed (cropped) in the drawing when be view had been set for 1-1/2" has now shifted out of sight in the drawings on the layout after the views for those drawings were see to a smaller scale.

I have tested the origin setting - it makes no difference what this setting is for sections and elevations.
Please test this yourself.
Every version has worked this way.
Gary

[Barry Kelly]

Experimenting a little, it seems the drawing on the layout uses the project origin for the elements in that view.
This is different to the anchor point of the of the drawing itself (in the drawing settings).

To begin with, you place the view and crop the frame to show what you want - all good.

Now you change the scale of the view.
The distance from the origin is the same in real world dimensions, but the scaled distance has now been changed - just as the scaled size of your elements have gotten bigger/smaller..

So the scale of your drawing has gotten bigger/smaller as you would expect, but it has also gotten further away / closer to the project origin (by scale).
However the frame of your drawing on the layout does not move.

If your drawing frame on the layout encompasses the project origin, you will see your elements get further away from or closer to this origin as you change the scale of the view.

Only if the original view was centered on the project origin. would it stay in the same place - just getting bigger or smaller. You would still have to adjust the drawing frame size.

So the further away from the project origin you are, the more it will seem to move.

So you either need to place the view as a drawing again or just switch to 'fit frame to extents' and re-crop the frame as necessary.

Essentially it is like saving two views of the same detail with different scales.
You would place each separately on the layout and crop to suit.
So changing the scale of a view once you have placed it, you basically have to place it again.

Barry.

[Laszlo Nagy]

I also experimented since there are about 4 different factors in play when we change the scale of a Drawing placed on a Layout. It will be long, but I tried to write down everything that I found.

I have created a little matrix that shows the results with all the combinations of these various factors:



Let me explain all that is on the above image. First, the scale of a Drawing placed on a Layout can be modified in 2 different ways:
Method 1 (upper half of the above image): By modifying the Scale field of the Source View of the Drawing. This affects all Drawings with this View as their Source View.
Method 2 (lower half of the above image): By changing the Drawing Scale of the Drawing placed on the Layout. This does not modify the Scale set for its Source View. It affects only the Drawing elements for which the settings are modified.

To test how setting the various relevant fields affects the result, I created a very simple geometry consisting of a few lines, plus a large red cross marking the Project Origin, and saved a View with a Scale of 1:100. This is how it looks on the Floor Plan:


Then I placed this saved View as a Drawing on a Layout, which looks like this:


Here I added a few viewing aids for easier tracking of what happens.
The GREEN SOLID LINES are elements located in the Source View.
The RED X is also located in the Source View and designates where the Project Origin is located.

The RED DASHED LINE is the boundary of the Drawing.
The BLUE SOLID LINES mark the corners of the Drawing to help indicate the size of the Drawing before the change of Scale.

The intersection of the two diagonal BLUE DASHED LINES marks the position of the Project Origin in the Drawing.
The BLACK CIRCLE designates where the Anchor is located based on the Anchor setting of the Drawing.

Method 1
Let us first look at scale change method 1, where we open the Drawing's Source View setting and change the scale from 1:100 to 1:200. The upper left quadrant shows the state before the scale change and the upper right quadrant after the scale change.
When we change the scale of the Source View, naturally, all content of that source view will be resized.



A) The Drawing Frame's behavior is set to "Fit to Frame" (top row):
In this case, we will see that the Drawing Frame is resized to half its previous size because of the scale change. This is because, with the "Fit to Frame" option, the Frame is always as large as the boundary of the Drawing's content's bounding box. If the content changes to half its size, the Frame will also shrink to half its size.
Also, we can see that the position of the Drawing will be different based on the Anchor Settings.
1) If the Anchor is set to "Use Internal Origin", then the Project Origin of the Drawing will stay put.
2) If the Anchor is set to the "Middle Point", then the Middle Point of the Drawing will stay put.
3) If the Anchor is set to the "Lower Left Point", then the Lower Left Point of the Drawing will stay put.

B) The Drawing Frame's behavior is set to "Manually Resized Frame" (second row from top):
In this case, we will see that the Drawing Frame was not resized, which is the expected behavior. Here, Archicad assumes that you have set the size and shape of the Drawing Frame and you do not want it to change just because the size and/or position of the content it displays has changed.
However, in this case, the position of the Drawing content does not vary based on the Anchor Settings.
1), 2), and 3) (Anchor is set to "Use Internal Origin", "Middle Point", and "Lower Left Point", respectively.) Regardless of what we set for Anchor, the Project Origin of the Drawing will stay put in all 3 cases.

I think that this is not correct behavior. It should reposition the Drawing's content the same way as in A) above so that the Anchor stays put, wherever it is located. I will report this to Graphisoft because I think that this is a BUG: when Frame's behavior is set to "Manually Resized Frame", the Drawing's content does not take into consideration the "Anchor" setting.


Method 2
Let us now look at scale change method 2, where we select the Drawings we want to resize, open the Drawing Setting Dialog, and change the "Scale" field from 1:100 to 1:200. The lower left quadrant shows the state before the scale change, the lower right quadrant, after the scale change.
With this method, the change is made to the Drawing settings, so we have to select all Drawings to which we want to apply the scale change.



A) The Drawing Frame's behavior is set to "Fit to Frame" (third row from top):
We can see that both the behavior of the Drawing Frame and the position of the Drawing's content will be the same as with Method 1.
However, with this Method, Archicad arrived at the same result by taking a different path.
In Method 1, it resized the Source View content, generated the Frame around it, then positioned it so the Anchor stays put, whatever position is defined for it ("Use Internal Origin", "Middle Point", and "Lower Left Point", or other).
In Method 2, the boundary box of the Source View content defines the Frame, and when the Drawing's scale changes, the Drawing is resized (not its Source View), including its contents and its Frame, making sure that the Anchor stays put, wherever it is.

B) The Drawing Frame's behavior is set to "Manually Resized Frame" (bottom row):
We get the same result as in A) of Method 2 above.
Here, the Manually Resized Frame is defined by the user, and when the Drawing's scale changes, the whole Drawing is resized, including its contents and its Manually Resized Frame, making sure that the Anchor stays put.

[DGSketcher]

LaszloNagy wrote:
I think that this is not correct behavior. It should reposition the Drawing's content the same way as in A) above so that the Anchor stays put, wherever it is located. I will report this to Graphisoft because I think that this is a BUG: when Frame's behavior is set to "Manually Resized Frame", the Drawing's content does not take into consideration the "Anchor" setting.

Laszlo, thank you for your research on this. I have in the past just accepted this as "designed" behaviour, but the way you have set it out does a good job of highlighting the inconsistency between Fit and Manual frames and it should, if fixed, save a lot of time recovering views. I do think the option to reference the origin is an important priority preference to stop overlay views moving around so I hope that isn't changed by any fix!

[Laszlo Nagy]

You are welcome, I am glad you found it useful.

[gdford]

WOW Laszlo - this is amazing!!!
Thank you!!!