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]

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

[Anonymous]

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...

[Anonymous]

here's the cut....

[Anonymous]

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

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

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

this should do exactly what you want


bill

[TomWaltz]

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/.

[Anonymous]

"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....

[Dwight]

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

[TomWaltz]

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.