electrical plans questions

[Anonymous]

is there a simple way of turning your floorplans in to a grayscale floor plan so you can draw your electrical plans over them. I want my plans to plot much lighter than the electrical symbols and text.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Single drawing approach: Use a custom penset for your electrical plan. Requires using a custom range of pens for only electrical elements.

Two overlaid-drawing approach: Or, use a custom grayscale penset for the underlay, and a different penset for the electrical info, and stack both drawings on top of each other on a layout.

Cheers,
Karl

[Anonymous]

Karl wrote:
Single drawing approach: Use a custom penset for your electrical plan. Requires using a custom range of pens for only electrical elements.

Two overlaid-drawing approach: Or, use a custom grayscale penset for the underlay, and a different penset for the electrical info, and stack both drawings on top of each other on a layout.

Cheers,
Karl

Karl,
Could you elaborate on this first approach a little bit. I have my electrical plans set to the Electrical Plan pen set in the drawing setting on my layout and everything is gray which is cool but I don't understand what you mean about using a custom range of pens for only electrical element.

I see that this is a post from 2003 and maybe there's an entirely better way to do this by now so any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

[Anonymous]

Wrathchild,

In all your pensets dedicate a specific range of pens just for electrical items. Don't use these pens for anything else.

In your electrical penset everything currently goes to grey. You should edit this and change the pens you have dedicated to the electrical stuff to a different colour and/or pen weight to make them stand out from everything else.

This setup is also useful for drawings like reflected ceiling plans where you might still want to see the electrical items, but don't need them highlighted, so in your ceiling plan penset change just the electrical pens to grey (or whatever).

Hope that helps!

[Anonymous]

Peter wrote:
Wrathchild,

In all your pensets dedicate a specific range of pens just for electrical items. Don't use these pens for anything else.

In your electrical penset everything currently goes to grey. You should edit this and change the pens you have dedicated to the electrical stuff to a different colour and/or pen weight to make them stand out from everything else.

This setup is also useful for drawings like reflected ceiling plans where you might still want to see the electrical items, but don't need them highlighted, so in your ceiling plan penset change just the electrical pens to grey (or whatever).

Hope that helps!

I get the general idea of what you're saying but how do I dedicate a specific range of pens just for electrical items in all my pensets? I looked at my pensets in element attributes under the option menu and don't see how to do this.

[Anonymous]

I guess the question is - how have you set up your pens at the moment?

I use a slightly modified version of the standard INT version that came with ArchiCAD. I understand that the USA version is arranged slightly differently, but I'm not too sure of the details.

Mine is set up in 'columns', with each column set to a different type of element. All the second row are the 'cut structural' pens. The third row is for cut non-structural. The fifth is the outline pen... and so on.

I have dedicated column 17 to electrical stuff. I have a pen for the 3d, a couple of pens for 2d, a pen for fills, and one for the background.

If you need further information on editing pensets, have a look at the help files and also http://www.archicadwiki.com/Pen%20Sets for the standard setup of the INT version.