Pensets....Pensets...Pensets..and viewmap settings!!

[rob2218]

hubboy.
see attached.
I need some opinions here.

[Anonymous]

ArchiCAD is giving us more control for pen sets then we actually need.
1.Every view can have its own pen set
2.When placed on layout, view becomes a drawing and you can assign other pen set to it
3. Above all , in you can override it by changing color in drawing setting to grayscale, black and white, or color...

In your case, as I can see, view has already "all black" pen set, so changing color option on drawing settings will have no effect...

[rob2218]

Here is where I can see a sheet like this taking advantage of the settings I've specified above.....where you have 2d viewmaps that print in "Black and White" and where you have viewmaps that will contained "rendered" (color) imagery....whether they be rendered from AC or come in as JPG's from a field report or whatever.....point I'm trying to make is "what's better for viewmap pen setups"?

[JaredBanks]

Here's my thoughts:

http://www.shoegnome.com/tag/pen-sets/

I believe you should always print in color (ei by pen set), with your pen sets controlling what is black, white, grayscale, or color.

[JaredBanks]

ps - nice renderings! Lightworks?

[Anonymous]

I like to create a pen set for each type of view. Also layer combination, view options and all the view filters.

My personal trick is to give to each filter the same name, which is the name of the view, so it is very easy to manage views on the view schedule - google translate this: http://architruques.blogspot.com/2010/05/indice-de-vistas.html

For instance, if I have an Inverted ceiling plan, I also have a layer combination, a pen set, a view option etc that are called "Inverted Ceiling Plan". Through the schedule I can quickly make sure every filters are rightly applied to every view.

[rob2218]

All good points folks....now here's my other delima also associated to the pensets and thicknesses issues of objects...see attached image.

The renderings were indeed done with Lightworks but out of the AC15 box lightworks.....yes...

[Anonymous]

The simple answer is if you want to show different line thickness you have to use a different pen number.

Here's how my pen sets work:

I have a pen set for the model, and one for the layout. They have identical line thicknesses, but the Layout set has pens 1-10 print black. I can see what thickness I am going to get quickly in the model by colour*, knowing they will be black when on the Layout.

So that's my two main pen sets.

I also have two more that have pens 1-10 set to thinner lineweights, (but still black on Layouts) for things like Electrical plans, Framing plans, etc. and use pens 11-20 (excluding 19 of course, as that is always "white") for specific elements (light fixtures, etc.) which are set to thicker lines, and black on Layouts. This way my walls etc are thin, and fixtures "pop out".

My Views are always set to Colour, so I can easily see if I have a rogue coloured line in there somewhere, and also as we often use colour in Elevations.

Simple but works for me.

* colour (NZ) = color ('merica)

[Karl Ottenstein]

Rob,

There are lots of posts about pen sets and standards with critical information here. But, you and others have my sympathy for not being able to find them as the forum "Search" link above will not search for anything with 3 characters or less ("pen") among other deficiencies.

Use Vistasp's custom Google search page to search for topics concerning pen sets:

http://archicadstuff.blogspot.com/

In the posts that you'll find will be some by Link and me noting that certain pens are used as the defaults by library parts in the standard library. Minimally, pens 1 through 10, 19 and 91. Plus the gray scale. Link noticed another dozen pens by thoroughly examining the entire library.

Changing the thickness of these pens in your pen sets will change the default appearance of those lib parts. In general, it might be best to leave them alone and to use any other pens as your custom color/widths.

In the case of the light symbols and cabinets, as Stuart notes, your only real option is to use a different pen for one or the other - e.g., change the parameter for the placed object(s).

(You can play games with overlaying a cabinet view - with one version of pen 4 - on top of an electrical plan view - with a different thickness for pen 4. But that gets unwieldy pretty quickly.)

In the (hundreds of) posts about pen sets, you'll find some people who assign pens-per-function, and others who use a small number of pens-by-width. Depends on the amount of complexity you want to manage, as well as how many different ways the same item needs to appear in different drawings.

Cheers,
Karl

[Steve Jepson]

in addition to some of the options already listed I like to do one more thing.

If you select all the pens in the first column and set them to .1mm
all the pens in the second column and set them to .2mm
all the pens in the third column and set them to .3mm... so on and so on for columns 1-9 so you can know the pen weight of any pen in these columns just by looking at its pen number. The last digit of the pen number will be the pen weight.
Pen 135 will be .5mm, 121=.1 247=.7 152=.2 etc...
I set column 10 to .01 mm so I have a hairline in each color as well.

I set all the rows to a different color, the top row to black.
This way I have a pen of every size in any of the row colors.

Most plans only use a few black pens for the top row.

The advantage is that I always know what size the pen is just by looking at the number. And I can can have that pen size in every color which helps in sorting things and making things visible. More importantly for me is that when I set to mm it gives me a reference to something I know. Remember the Pentel leads we used to use? They came in .3mm, .5mm, .7mm, .9mm. There was a time when we had to set up our ArchiCAD pen sets to match the pen plotters which were also in these same familiar sizes. I have no intuition for Pt pen size. The other 1/2 of the pens I never use except I do use a white pen and also the grey pens.