B&W Layout drawings?

[Anonymous]

How can I make the drawings in my layout appear black & white? Ie. no colors or grayscale, just black lines and the rest white.

I tried to make ALL colors in the pen set white, still the drawing appears with filled areas in color, the rest is white. When I choose B&W the drawing appears in gray scale.

[Eduardo Rolon]

Three answers within seconds of each other.

and before you say that you want the same elevation placed one with Colors and another Without them. The solution is to define a Model View (MVO) for each. One with the Materials as set in the Elevation Settings another with the MVO that overrides it.

[Eduardo Rolon]

the result and to be clear this is not a workaround it is a feature.

[Anonymous]

Thomasx wrote:
Matthew, honestly, in most cases with AC, it's not that I make assumptions about how it should work, but rather that it should work. I don't care too much about how it works, as long as it does work.

My point is that by in large ArchiCAD does work and most problems arise from not knowing how to set up or use it. This is just as true of Revit, AutoCAD, Cinema 4D, Photoshop, inDesign and even Word and Excel to a point. There are some things that it cannot do or require workarounds but this should not be your first assumption when you can't figure something out.

In my world, any cad-program should be able to output plain b&w outline drawings, I assume AC should be able to too. So far I have found no way to do that.

The funny thing about this is that it used to be the only way ArchiCAD worked (back when color printers cost as much as a nice used BMW). What you are running up against is figuring out how to turn off some of the nice new features we now have for creating presentation drawings. I hope Eduardo's and others' illustrations are helpful. Part of the problem is that ArchiCAD has accumulated features for about 25 years and all the things that it can do are not immediately obvious. Of course everyone would like it to do what they want right out of the box and leave all the other stuff for later.

You seem like an AC-experienced person and yet seem somewhat surprised by the problem I am facing. I don't know if that is because I am failing with what is normaly a simple thing to do and the questions is what did I do wrong, or because I am trying to do something no-one tried before. The latter would surprise me because I've seen the same types of drawings in the states too, so they're probably not too uncommon over there either. My question remains, how do i get b&w outline drawings out of ac?

You were right of course to assume that ArchiCAD can produce B&W line drawings. It is in fact trivially simple once you understand the work flow and logic of how things are set up (which understanding is not so trivial nor easily achieved). As a new user it would be best when posting your questions to start with the assumption that there is something you don't understand and be very specific (with illustrations where possible) about the problem you are having. As I have said before there are many here who have used ArchiCAD to do everything necessary to design and manage very successful Architectural projects (with the occasional assist from Cinema 4D, Artlantis, etc) so the chances are that whatever you want to do there is someone on the forum who can explain how to accomplish it.

Thomasx wrote:

Matthew wrote:
The documentation at least is far better than the help files and manuals that come with Revit.

So, actually what you are saying is that AC is not the worst... 😉

Yes, I suppose favorable comparisons to Revit could often be considered faint praise. Just as there are times and places where a "good" builder is anyone who shows up for work sober.

[Anonymous]

Thank you guys!

Adjusting the fill uncut surfaces in the elevations view did the trick. Whether it's a workaround or not is a matter of defintion I guess. Having to make a setup change in a work view to get the right appearence in another one, like in this case the creation of a drawing, is in my opinion a workaorund. But it did the trick so I am happy for now 🙂 Thanx

[Eduardo Rolon]

Thomas,

To reiterate the point, it is not a workaround it is a feature.

You do not have to change the work view, you can define the settings for the print view only.

I normally do not work with Materials On in my Elevations or Sections therefore the original suggestion of turning it off in your model views is the easy answer to your question. Working in this way is a recommendation from one user who has been using the program for more than one week.

AC is flexible enough that if you want to do it the other way you can do it and my reason for taking the time and showing you the options to achieve this.

The main problem in this thread was that the question was not clear enough, once you mentioned that it was elevations and sections you got multiple answers of which setting to change.

If you keep using the program you will eventually hit the Workarounds.

[Mats_Knutsson]

Hi Thomas,
You know there is an excellent resource for knowledge in ArchiCAD in Sweden called Graphisoft...
Mats