Polygon outlines when exporting to PDF

[PWest]

Hi there,

I was wondering if anybody else has been experiencing issues when exporting drawings to PDF? As you can see in the PDF attached, every polygon has a outline with a slightly different color from the element that its a part of, which becomes especially noticable when using shadows. The elements are all morphs.

When in any view or layout - the outlines doesnt show. Only in exported files.

I have tried this which did not solve it:
- changing the edge types of the morphs to hidden
- changing every single individual elements lines to match its surface color

I am using archicad 26 Edu.

Thanks in advance

[runxel]

All shapes are getting split up in those triangles.

This becomes very visible because of how PDFs are anti-aliased. It will not be visible in print.

If you want to get rid of it you can open it in Illustrator and join those shapes.

[PWest]

Thank you for your response runxel!

So do you mean to say that every shape that is exported as a drawing from Archicad has visible outlines around every polygon? They are visible when exporting to png too. Are you having this problem too? 

Its good to know that prints will be ok, but there must be a solution for this. Most of the drawings that are exported will be displayed in digital format. Changing every single line in a high polygon model will be back breaking work. 

Best wishes

Pontus

[runxel]

Yes, everybody experiences that.

It's not really an outline, its just that the algorithms for the anti-aliasing have shortcomings, so while these triangles' edges touch each other, the background bleeds through.

I am not aware of any solution for this, besides manual joining the seperate shapes of the same color back together in Illustrator or similar apps.

[PWest]

Yes, I've tried it now and it does seem like merging each "polygon" in illustrator does work like you say. I mean, Archicad must have a way of handling the elements surfaces as one surface instead of just triangles...

I just cant believe this thou. So everybody who uses Archicad and makes drawings (this is what it's for no?) sits and manually merge every single "polygon" in their often complex buildings in illustrator? I have a hard time wrapping my head around this. Why am I seeing this as a major problem when there seems like no one else does? I cant find any earlier posts about it...

[ryejuan]

It usually depends on the element that you are using. For example if the surface is flat or a floor no need to use morph you can use slab to represent it correctly then you won't have issues with the representation. There are a lot of ways Archicad handles drawing representations (you have layering, you have fills to cover up things) instead of bringing it to other software. You need to think what purpose the element you are using for and as much as possible try to simplify things. Hope this helps 😎

[PWest]

Thank you ryejuan! 

You are totally right of course. What makes this a major issue for me is that I was trying to develop a Rhino to Archicad workflow. Modeling in rhino and getting the documents in archicad. The live connection plugin is fantastic actually, it works perfectly but for one thing: even planar surfaces comes out as high polygon elements. Its a little better if one imports the file instead, but then one looses quite a lot of benefits from the live connection. I can simplify the meshes in grasshopper but its far from straightforward and does not resolve the problem. 

Im still hoping that someone have a magic cure here, its such a little issue but a dealbreaker. Love Archicad as a software - its a perfect complement to rhino.

Best wishes

Pontus

[PWest · Accepted solution]

Hi again,

To anybody who is interested, there seems to be something akin to a solution. What one can do is to make a worksheet out of the view, select all of the geometry and then click edit - reshape - fill consolidation. Then you'll have to try out which combination of the settings will do the job in each case.

Best wishes 

Pontus