Drafting quality ugliness

[Ignacio Azpiazu]

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?

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

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?

[Anonymous]

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......

[Ignacio Azpiazu]

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.

[Anonymous]

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

[Dwight]

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.

[Anonymous]

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

[Dwight]

My mother always said

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

She never had a boss.

[Rod Jurich]

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.