Cover fills

[Anonymous]

I have used a cover fill for a 6x6 tile in a bathroom. When I elevate the walls the fill overlaps the bath fixtures. Display order isn't solving my problem. What else can I do?

[Gerald Hoffman]

Have you checked to make sure the 'Fill Background Pen' in the 2D symbol of your fixture is set to Pen 91 (White)?

[Anonymous]

Yes, it is set to white. My understanding of cover fills was that they are associated to elements so if this fill is associated to the wall then why would this even be an issue? Clearly I don't understand very well.

[Anonymous]

Don't forget that the floor plan is not a true projection of the 3d building.

There are actually 14 'levels' that fills can be displayed on. Elements as standard display only on the middle six. This page details how they work fully. http://www.archicadwiki.com/Display_Order?highlight=%28Category%29%7C%28Bugs%29%7C%28TechNotes%29%7C%28FrontPage%29%7C%28Category2dDrawing%29

It is symbolic and so this lets you do stupid things with the display order. For example you can bring the fill of a wall over a the top of a roof, even though the roof may actually be much higher.

I think this is an annoying weakness and needs to be addressed in future versions of AC. Another annoying 'feature' is when you adjust any settings of an element it brings it front of any other element on the same level.

The simplest way to solve your problem is to think logically. Reset the display order for all the elements you have adjusted.

Try bringing the bathroom fixtures forward one step at a time or send the tiles back one step at a time until they display properly.

Remember you are not moving the object, you are adjusting the order in which the fills are displayed.

If you still have problems, post a screenshot here so people can see exactly what you are refering to.

(Btw I have wished for changes here - http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=16424
Please vote if you feel it would be useful or not. )

Cheers,

Pete.

[Anonymous]

I went through the exercise you talked about but I am still not getting the lines of the hatch to recede behind the fixtures. I have attached a screen shot per your suggestion.

[Anonymous]

If your tile pattern is drawn on an elevation (rather than assigned to the material) it has no way of knowing what is in front and what is behind. The fill pattern is not in 3D space. Think of it more like its drawn on a sheet of glass in front of your model. You cannot determine the position of the "glass". You can bring it right to the front, or send it right to the back, but it would be very difficult to place it "somewhere in between".

A solution might be to model with a material that has the tile pattern assigned to it, and aligning the 3D texture origin. An overlay wall might be easier to manage and would represent the thickness of the tiles too (possibly on a layer that only displays in the elevation's layer combo?). This could be a very involved process, depending on how many of these elevations you have to do.

[Link]

Display Order does actually work in Section & Elevation, but you will need to set the S/E to 'Fill Uncut Surfaces with: Uniform Pencolor' and set that to your white pen. You can find that under the Model Effects Panel of your S/E.

Cheers,
Link.

[Anonymous]

Well done Stuart! A picture tells a thousand words!! I didn't realise SLW was drawing actually in elevation using a 2d fill, so sorry for the confusion!

By the way SLW, if you do build thin walls with tile textures on, don't forget to turn on vectorial 3D hatching in the sect/elev settings otherwise you wont see any tile effects at all.

In responce to Links post, any setting on 'fill uncut surfaces' seems to work for me, not just 'uniform pencolour'.


Best of luck!

Pete.

[Link]

Peter wrote:
In responce to Links post, any setting on 'fill uncut surfaces' seems to work for me, not just 'uniform pencolour'.

Yes - that's right. I was just trying to explain a way to get SLW the exact appearance they were after.

Also SLW, you may be taking the Cover Fill a little too literally. I would have classed such a fill as a drafting fill, simply because you are drafting it on the elevation. Of course there's nothing wrong with assigning it as a cover fill, but these are usually considered fills that are assigned to the fills of Slabs, Roofs, Meshes and Zones on the floor plan, within those tool's settings dialogs.

The ability to define a fill as Cut, Cover or Drafting within the Fill Settings dialog is so that you can control it further in your Model View Options and placing them onto their own layer during DXF/DWG conversions. If you don't need that level of control, it may be easier just to consider and assign all such fills as drafting fills.

Cheers,
Link.

[Anonymous]

Thank you Thank you Thank you! I had originally started with applying a materiality to the wall and assigning it a 6x6 vectorial hatch pattern. 30+ elevations made it time consuming because there are so many different heights of tiles and a lot of them right next to each other. Aligning 3D texture wasn't available for some reason. I didn't problem solve through it because you can see how detailed that process was going to be. Thanks everyone for your input!! I really appreciate it!