8.1 Fill Definition Question

[Anonymous]

We have noticed a significant slow-down when we generate an elevation that has the standard Stucco fill on the exterior. The only way I can think of to help the problem is to redefine the Stucco fill using two lines in an X instead of the circles that the standard Stucco is defined with.

Will this speed things up, or am I better off leaving it the way it is?

(I would experiment myself, but I'm swamped with other projects)

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure what you mean by circles. Are they actually circles or dots? Circles would require a symbol fill which would explain the slow performance.

I use a dot fill with a fairly large spacing for stucco, and select the pen size to get big enough dots (I like a very fine pen for line fills).

Remember that section/elevations and 3D hidden line views with fills turned on will take significantly longer regardless of the pattern. The basic rule is the fewer lines, dots, etc. the better, and symbol fills are much slower than the standard ones.

[Anonymous]

You might consider turning off vectorial hatching in your sect/elev settings dialog box for general work and turn it back on before importing drawings to plotmaker. This would be a good display options feature for the wish list. I do a similar thing for shadow generation.

[Anonymous]

Mike wrote:
This would be a good display options feature for the wish list. I do a similar thing for shadow generation.

Excellent idea! Please be sure to post it to the wish list.

[Anonymous]

Matthew wrote:
Are they actually circles or dots?

I copied the fill pattern from the Fill definition box and they are all actually circles. Late last night I had time to do an experiment. After copying the Fill circles, I drew a single line across the diameter of every circle, then deleted the circles. A made a new Fill out of the lines. Then I applied the original Stucco Fill to a huge wall and watched how long it took to rebuild the elevation. I did the same thing will the my new stucco pattern and it took almost the same amount of time.

Mike wrote:
You might consider turning off vectorial hatching in your sect/elev settings dialog box for general work and turn it back on before importing drawings to plotmaker.

This has been our approach so far, but I was hoping we could avoid yet another work-around.

[Anonymous]

I copied the fill pattern from the Fill definition box and they are all actually circles. Late last night I had time to do an experiment. After copying the Fill circles, I drew a single line across the diameter of every circle, then deleted the circles. A made a new Fill out of the lines. Then I applied the original Stucco Fill to a huge wall and watched how long it took to rebuild the elevation. I did the same thing will the my new stucco pattern and it took almost the same amount of time.

It sounds like it is still a symbol fill. Symbol fills allow you to paste in elements from the clipboard to create the fill. A dot fill as Matthew was refereing to does not allow you to paste in drawing elements. I am personlaly unexperienced with these but they are defined with spacing set in the fill type dialog box. Many of the predefined fills from Graphisoft represent this latter type of fill. Anyone who is more knowledgeable with editing/ creating these fills want to chime in?

[Anonymous]

There are several fills among the default pattern that use dots. Carpet, Plaster, Stucco, Cut Stone, etc. in the US version.

If you don't have any of these loaded, create a new file with the option/alt key depressed (the menu command changes to New & Reset). Save this blank file as "ArchiCAD 8.1 defaults.pln" or whatever. You can then use Attribute Manager to import any of the default attributes that you need.

I often delete all unneeded attributes from a file to simplify management and speed production and then use this method to add or modify attributes as the needs arise.