Display Order - at the top and bottom?

[Anonymous]

I've got some lines that are being draw under zone text in my drawing, however when I try to move the lines to the front it says they're already at the top of the stack, and when I attempt to move the zone back it says the zone is already at the bottom. That being said ,the display order is still wrong, and I'm not sure how to resolve this.

Does anyone have a workaround for this bug?

[Anonymous]

You have thousands of zones? Perhaps the problem has someting to do with the size of the project. Just a wild guess but I've never seen this problem and even my largest projects don't have that many rooms.

As a workaround you could make views with just the layers you want on top and overlay then in the layouts.

[Anonymous]

The thousands was just hyperbole, I've got about 30 zones with 1 or 2 elements under the text in each zone, over 7 drawings so maybe 450 objects or so that I want the text to be under.

The overlaying might work, I don't have permission to create layer combinations because apparently this causes problems with the attribute file but I'll see if I can get one of the admins to work it out. Nothing like redundant work to keep me billable.

[Laura Yanoviak]

Just out of curiosity -- why do you have so many elements that you want to display ABOVE the Zone Stamp? I can't think of a single instance where we would want the Zone Stamp obscured by anything.

[Anonymous]

Laura wrote:
Just out of curiosity -- why do you have so many elements that you want to display ABOVE the Zone Stamp? I can't think of a single instance where we would want the Zone Stamp obscured by anything.

They're electrical schematics. The zone stamps are there to assist reverse lookups from the schedule and to show coverage areas for fire equipment and emergency lighting mostly for permitting purposes. However the main geometry in drawings is there to guide the electrician who is actually installing the devices, and they won't care about the zone information at all, so the clarity of the schematic is paramount. Since a break in a line has a meaning, an artificial break created by layering causes confusion in the field.

It should also be noted that all our symbols are scale invariant, so they have a much larger footprint than the actual object would, thus the collision with the zone stamps. This is a pretty standard practice in our neck of the woods.

[Anonymous]

Sounds like a the prefect place to use the overlay approach. I have often seen the electrical schematics in black overlaid on a grayed out floor plan. Very easy to do in the layouts with the right pen sets.

[Arcadia]

I don't think this issue has anything to do with the zones. I come across this problem quite often just working with 2d lines, fills and text. You would think that you could pull any object to the 'top' but sometimes it just won't go any higher even though clearly it is not on top. Also you would think that any new text or lines or whatever would automatically be placed on the top but this is often not the case.

[Laura Yanoviak]

Arcadia wrote:
I don't think this issue has anything to do with the zones. I come across this problem quite often just working with 2d lines, fills and text. You would think that you could pull any object to the 'top' but sometimes it just won't go any higher even though clearly it is not on top. Also you would think that any new text or lines or whatever would automatically be placed on the top but this is often not the case.

I know that Text and Dimensions brought to the top of the stack CANNOT be overlapped. Also, Bring to Front does not assign the element to a Display Order of 1, but brings it above all placed elements -- the opposite is true for Send to Back.

[Anonymous]

Matthew wrote:
Sounds like a the prefect place to use the overlay approach. I have often seen the electrical schematics in black overlaid on a grayed out floor plan. Very easy to do in the layouts with the right pen sets.

Yeah this is exactly what we're looking for, I'll move to the overlay approach as a home rolled layering scheme. We're going to be reorganizing our workflow for the next project and this will likely work better for us anyway.

Thanks for the help guys.

[Erika Epstein]

Arcadia wrote:
You would think that you could pull any object to the 'top' but sometimes it just won't go any higher even though clearly it is not on top. Also you would think that any new text or lines or whatever would automatically be placed on the top but this is often not the case.

There is a ranking to which elements have priority. If you can't put a line on top of something else e.g.a slab, you have to first send the slab backward. The line or lower order element can't bump a higher ranked element out of place. the higher element must be moved first.

Sounds Orwellian.

[Arcadia]

Its bloody weird if you ask me. If I can't get something to display on top then send something else backwards instead then it can mess up the order of other elements. I just want to be able to move any object or element that I want to the absolute top any time I want and in this way I can always get things to display correctly. I had this in my 2D software and miss it.