Interior Elevations

[kevin b]

I am trying to find out how the power users out there are doing interior elevations. Over the last few years (and versions of AC) we have tried a variety of methods, none of which seem perfect, and maybe there is no perfect answer yet.

In a perfect world, it would seem to me that you should be able to model something, (to keep it simple lets say a room that has a piece of casework along one wall base cabinet with sink and an open upper cabinet with shelves) apply materials to those objects so the model renders correctly, the lineweights and fills should all appear correctly in plan view (with that view linked/ imported directly to plotmaker), an interior elevation marker of some sort could be placed in the plan view which is linked to a generated elevation, the lineweights in that generated elevation would be correct (ie. edges of casework bolder than lines on face and so on) that elevation view is imported to plotmaker and moving its location in the layout book updates the plan symbols. You should also be able to place a section or detail marker on that elevation, wich generates a section detail through the cabinets, again with all the lineweights being correct, imported into plotmaker, with symbols linked, etc etc.

Maybe I am doing something wrong, maybe I was taught the wrong way and am missing something in newest version, maybe it just can't be done yet, but I can't get all of these things to happen at once without faking it. Some markers aren't linked and have to be tracked and updated manually, and/or lineweights of elevations are all the same, either have to trace over lines, redraw manually, place interior elevation generated lines in another window and change weights, etc., independent details are used but are linked to markers, etc etc etc.

I'd like to hear how everyone else is doing it, the results they get, pros and cons, etc.

Thanks in advance.

[Link]

Excuse me for jumping in here, but I think I can help you go a long way to achieving your goal. A lot of it has to do with a common misconception of PlotMaker. As it currently functions PlotMaker can and IMHO should be used for controlling lineweights, especially for unique situation like this. It's really very powerful.

Firstly, try taking a look under the 'Cut Elements' tab of your S/E tool. You'll see a checkbox to 'Use Cut Elements' Own Pencolors'. For your internal elevations, let's say you uncheck this and effectively override the pens with, for this example, pen 20 for your outlines and pen 19 for your fills. Then under the 'Model Effects' tab of your S/E tool there is a checkbox for 'Uniform Pencolor for Uncut Elements'. You could check that and assign the pen for all of these uncut elements to, for this example, pen 18.

Now when you place these interior elevation views in PlotMaker, you can select the drawing and edit it's properties (ctrl/cmd+T). But before you do that go to Options>Preferences>Drawing Attributes... and uncheck Pens & Colors. This effectively allows you to override pens & colors for every drawing placed in PlotMaker. Also make sure 'Uniform Pens & Colors for Drawings and Book' is unchecked in the same dialog, as that will allow you to define different pens & colors for different placed drawings.

So now you can select your interior elevations - and you can select them all at once, either on the sheet or in Drawing Usage. Edit their settings and under the 'Attributes Update Rules' tab make sure 'Same as in Preferences' is checked. Under the 'Attributes' tab hit the 'Edit Pens' button. In the next dialog, you can see all the pens that have come in from ArchiCAD. Now you can select pens 18, 19 and 20 and assign them whatever pen weight you like.

The key to this is to make sure that pens 18, 19 and 20 are not being used anywhere else in these views, so you may want to make them special pens that, as an office standard, are only used for this very purpose. Not only can you assign pen weights, but also pen colors. For this you will need to assign all pen colors and print/plot to color, so this will involve mapping a lot of pens to black, depending on how you have set up your pen & color scheme for your office. It may seem like a lot of work, but don't forget that this can all be part of an office template that can be set in place before the model is even built.

Hope that opens the box a little more for you.

Cheers,
Link.