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Plumbing: Visibility of Pipes through walls on Elevations?

Anonymous
Not applicable
Is there anyway to show plumbing pipes (soil and grey water installation) on elevations when it is hidden behind a wall?

Same goes for bathroom fixtures.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.
9 REPLIES 9
Anonymous
Not applicable
Yes.
Set the Walls as TRANSPARENT in Layers Settings.
Pipes in Walls - Visible on Elevations.jpg
Barry Kelly
Moderator
andro55 wrote:
Yes.
Set the Walls as TRANSPARENT in Layers Settings.
But be aware you will see everything behind the wall as well unless you limit the extent of your elevation.
And all walls in that layer will be transparent - you can't controll individual walls unless they are in their own layer.

Barry.
One of the forum moderators.
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Anonymous
Not applicable
Thanks Andro and Barry,

I will play around with the transparency, elevation extent and layer combos.
Anonymous
Not applicable
Barry wrote:
andro55 wrote:
Yes.
Set the Walls as TRANSPARENT in Layers Settings.
But be aware you will see everything behind the wall as well unless you limit the extent of your elevation.
And all walls in that layer will be transparent - you can't controll individual walls unless they are in their own layer.

Barry.
Would you suggest another way of indicating the Plumbing installation on elevations?
Barry Kelly
Moderator
I have never had need to do this.
All I can think of is to draw the plumb on manually with lines or create 2D objects that you can use as overlay objects to save manually drawing the plumbing all the time.

Maybe making the wall layer wire frame and then creating a patch object of the plumbing.
Place marquee then Document menu > Document Extras > Create patch.
This will create an object that can be opened and the 2D symbol view can be edited to appear as you want.
Turn the layer back to solid and place the patch object in the correct position.
Not a particularly good solution though - could get messy.

Maybe others have some solutions?
Barry.
One of the forum moderators.
Versions 6.5 to 27
Dell XPS- i7-6700 @ 3.4Ghz, 16GB ram, GeForce GTX 960 (2GB), Windows 10
Lenovo Thinkpad - i7-1270P 2.20 GHz, 32GB RAM, Nvidia T550, Windows 11
David Maudlin
Virtuoso
Shakie wrote:
Would you suggest another way of indicating the Plumbing installation on elevations?
Show just the plumbing elements in elevation (via layers), copy, then show all elements in elevation, paste: the plumbing elements will be pasted in as lines (which could have their attributes altered). You will need to remember to repeat this operation if there is a change to the plumbing elements.

David
David Maudlin / Architect
www.davidmaudlin.com
Digital Architecture
AC27 USA • iMac 27" 4.0GHz Quad-core i7 OSX11 | 24 gb ram • MacBook Pro M3 Pro | 36 gb ram OSX14
Anonymous
Not applicable
Thank you gentleman,

Your suggestions is a great help, I will experiment with the different methods.
sinceV6
Advocate
I would suggest you use layer combos and overlay the piping directly in layouts. I guess it would depend on the viewpoint you are using as an exterior elevation might need a different approach than an interior elevation.

If you are need exterior elevations but the depth extent is full, I would create a secondary elevation to only show the piping; if your elevation can use a limited depth, then all you need are layer combos.

In the case of interior elevations, the most probable scenario is that you need only layer combos, except on the event that the depth limit is an obstacle and other unwanted piping elements are shown. In that case, use a secondary viewpoint.

For assembly in layout, use the main saved view and overlay&align the view with the piping-only layer combo; I would uncheck "include in ID sequence" and remove the title for the main view, and use the title of the piping view.

Once set, should there be any changes, everything will update accordingly; provided you use the internal origin for the views placed in layout. There's a thread that explains this in more detail (for other purpose), but its the same principle.

EDIT: found it.
http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=34976

Hope you find this useful.
Barry Kelly
Moderator
sinceV6 wrote:
I would suggest you use layer combos and overlay the piping directly in layouts...........
There's a thread that explains this in more detail (for other purpose), but its the same principle.

EDIT: found it.
http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=34976
Now why didn't I think of that?
I am always overlaying layouts to build up plan views but didn't even think about doing the same here with elevations.

Barry.
One of the forum moderators.
Versions 6.5 to 27
Dell XPS- i7-6700 @ 3.4Ghz, 16GB ram, GeForce GTX 960 (2GB), Windows 10
Lenovo Thinkpad - i7-1270P 2.20 GHz, 32GB RAM, Nvidia T550, Windows 11