Elevations in layout book ramdomly show transparency

[Chris Keen]

Why on earth does ArchiCAD 10 randomly decide one day to show transparency in elevations to glass windows and doors. When defining a view set for an elevation I ensure the tranparency is turned off and things are fine. With out warning it occasionally decides to turn the transparency on! Why dos it do this?

It then means re importing the drawing to the layout book.

[James Murray]

This is one of the most annoying bugs/non-features in the entire program. In 11 it is improved, since the transparency setting is the section/elevation itself, but that doesn't help you much at the moment.

I had to do some experimenting in 10 to refresh my memory about what is happening and it appears to be a bug. As you know elevation transparency is controlled by the 'Transparency in Shading' switch in the 3D window settings dialog. Real intuitive. From what I can tell the setting is working in the window itself. I can activate a view and the glass is opaque, then I can turn on transparency and it becomes clear, then it's opaque again if I reactivate the view.

The drawing, however, is hosed. The view comes in correctly, but if that 3D window transparency setting is switched on, and the drawing is updated, the glass in the drawing goes clear. Turn transparency off and update the drawing, still clear.

Of course there's no 'Redefine View' for non-3D views, so that's out.

You have to replace the drawing, but then that drawing is no less vulnerable to the switch.

Also, the drawing will use the state of the switch at the time the drawing is placed, so make sure it's off at that moment.

It's made worse by the fact that the transparency switch setting is saved with 3D views, so if you activate a 3D view that has the switch on, you can easily turn it on without realizing it.

And while you can redefine 3D views, there's no feedback on the state of the various options as you perform that redefine.

You basically have to swear to always make sure that switch is off before updating your drawings. You weren't busy thinking about anything else at that time were you?

So it's bad design (a 3D setting affecting a 2D view) + a serious bug (views and drawings not acting the same) + poor feedback (can't redefine 2D view, can't tell what's being redefined with a 3D view) + direct impact on output (ugly, wrong elevations) = software malpractice.

Sounds like a prime candidate for a critical fix, but alas it's in the previous version so don't hold your breath.

HTH, as if.

[James Murray]

PS, to round out the topic: In 11 the transparency setting is within the section or elevation itself, but it isn't saved with the view. None of the model effects are, and they all should be. Vectorial hatching is somewhat view dependent; the switch has to be on but elevation fills are now cover fills, so their display is additionally connected to that setting in Model View Options. In 11 it's less broken but it's still not right.

It should be a top development priority to keep the path between the model and the documents clear, direct, and reliable.

[Anonymous]

Hopefully it's not too little, too late, but when my office was in 10, we had the same random switching to transparency problem. What we did as a workaround was to change the glass material of the windows and doors to a light blue, opaque material. We never did any super-fine renderings for the client from AC10, so it wasn't a big deal not having "glass" be transparent.

good luck
Zolli

[Jefferson]

James give a thorough and accurate description of how AC acts with elevations. It is VERY frustrating, and a piss-off to hear it isn't remedied in 11. Maybe this will have someone's attention in 12.

Still working with 10, I recently ran up against this again, [even though my elevations are saved absolutely correctly in my template!], and found a semi-quick effective fix. Regenerating an elevation, any one actually, [with the correct window settings], then returning to either the elevation sheet or the drawing manager relinking them individually, rebuilt them correctly, about a minute's time each with extensive fills and shading. Previously I had even gone so far as to delete originals, thinking I couldn't shake this bug any other way, and then reimport them. This method at least saves me that bull s....

It'll be interesting to see if this works for anyone else........