Quality of 2D lines

[Anonymous]

Hello,
This has annoyed me for a while. Is there a way to improve the quality of 2D lines in archicad and in particular their ends and junctions. When I look at my friends prints from autoCAD the quality and crispness of the lines is far better than mine from ArchiCAD. We use the same plotter and im aware of line weights etc. so im not talking about that but more the fact that if I have a thick line of say 0.5 or larger you can see that the end of the line is rounded and not square like my friends. This causes problems when thick lines meet thinner lines and actually protrude past them slightly due to the rounded end. I don't use plotmaker - does that help with line quality? Im using ArchiCAD 9.

I hope people know what im talking about! - and there is an option to get crisp lines with square line ends!

Thanks, Rob

[Barry Kelly]

rob wrote:
Hello,
This has annoyed me for a while. Is there a way to improve the quality of 2D lines in archicad and in particular their ends and junctions. When I look at my friends prints from autoCAD the quality and crispness of the lines is far better than mine from ArchiCAD. We use the same plotter and im aware of line weights etc. so im not talking about that but more the fact that if I have a thick line of say 0.5 or larger you can see that the end of the line is rounded and not square like my friends. This causes problems when thick lines meet thinner lines and actually protrude past them slightly due to the rounded end. I don't use plotmaker - does that help with line quality? Im using ArchiCAD 9.

I hope people know what im talking about! - and there is an option to get crisp lines with square line ends!

Thanks, Rob

No way of changing the lines that I know of.

A work-around though is to set up a bunch of walls for various thicknesses and use those with the reference line in the centre.
Not very productive though!

Barry.

[Petros Ioannou]

You cannot do it but if you are desperate to do that then you can use a wall composite with solid fills on both sides acting like line widths.
You will need to add wall-ends and use cavity closure for windows doors in order to appear correctly. Keep in mind that you have to create composite for each wall width needed.
Either way it is a work-around but I don't recommend it.

Petros

[Thomas Holm]

The "true weight" option in Archicad was originally intended to be used on (raster) printers to mimic the output from pen plotters. That's why the line ends are rounded. GS hasn't yet allowed us to access this parameter.

This procedure will give you exactly what you're asking for:

1. In your pen/color table, set up a pen with 0.00 width. It will print with the highest resolution (sharpest edge) your printer allows. Set up one pen like this for every color you want to use.

2. Use an ordinary wall (not composite) with
- fill set to solid and
- fill pen to the above
- edge lines set to continuous and
- edge pen to the same
- reference line to center
- wall ends to both
- thickness to your desired line width to scale (1mm is minimum)
- set up walls like this for every line width and color you want (make a palette on a layer that you hide when printing)

3. Use these walls to draw what you want

4. Print to scale. Example: A 1 mm thick wall will print as a 0.1 mm wide line at scale 1:10, if the printer can handle it.

It sounds more complicated than it is. Lines created this way will print wysiwyg wether you use "true weight" or not. Remember that lines created this way will be visible in 3D too, unless you hide their layer.

[Petros Ioannou]

This issue was also discussed here:

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=8568&postdays=0&postorder=asc&&start=0



Petros

[Anonymous]

Petros wrote:
This issue was also discussed here:

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=8568&postdays=0&postorder=asc&&start=0



Petros

There is also an old wish about that somewhere.
I also miss the "correct" way of drafting architecture, especially for details, but probably our old wish is not so simple to fulfil

[Petros Ioannou]

I am not so sure it is so difficult to achieve that in ArchiCAD, since it recognizes the sectioned part of a wall and places a fill inside it!
Probably it has to do with what Thomas said about pen plotters (draw on the axis to assure accuracy), but there aren't many pen plotters around these days, am I correct?


Petros


PS if I remeber correctly there was an print option in AutoCAD 12 to achieve that but it didn't always work. And I think it is not around anymore

[Anonymous]

I bet the main difficulty is about the orientation of the "line". When you draw a wall, actually, you have to define if the axis is on the left, the right or axial. This is why you can easily fake "correct" drafting.
Imagine, you should define that for each line of each object? You need global rules and flexibility. Example: the wall: global rule could be: thickness inside the wall. It's quite easy because a wall is necessarily a closed polygon. But there are more complex situations. I heard that Bentley solved that a long time ago, have no idea how successful it is.

[Petros Ioannou]

You don't need this for every line width.
Up to ,35mm the line can be placed on the axis.
It is thicker lines that need this adjustment and these are needed for section elements. Maybe an enchancment to the BoldCutLines display option would be enough?

Petros

[Anonymous]

Petros wrote:
You don't need this for every line width.
Up to ,35mm the line can be placed on the axis.
It is thicker lines that need this adjustment and these are needed for section elements. Maybe an enchancment to the BoldCutLines display option would be enough?

Petros

Maybe. First time I heard about that is probably 10 years ago (my reseller). As you know, GS developers rarely answer why they cannot achieve something. But I don't want to contradict Djordje about how hard they work , so it should be hard.