Question re: range of shading fills copied from 3D window

[Anonymous]

Hello,
When the contents of the 3D window are copied using the flat marque
and then pasted into the floor plan as lines and fills,
the fills do not have nearly the range of shading tones
as they have in the 3D window.
Archicad has a wide range of pen colors to choose from
but does not use them. Instead it uses only a few fill pen colors
making the drawing look simplified and brutal.

Is there some way of making AC use a wider range
of fill color tones when copying and pasting as lines and fills?

Thanks
Peter Devlin

MAC G4
450 MHz
1.2 GB MEMORY
ATI,Rage 128
MAC OS 10.3.3
MAC OS 9.2.2
AC 8.1 v1 (US) build 2275
AC 6.5 v4 (US)

[Djordje]

Peter wrote:
Is there some way of making AC use a wider range
of fill color tones when copying and pasting as lines and fills?

Not that I know of ... however, it would be good to know the purpose of your pasting into the plan; maybe the same result that you want can be achieved in PlotMaker by linking the view?

[Anonymous]

In my experience ArchiCAD does use all the pen colors available to approximate the RGB as closely as possible. Perhaps you could tweak the colors of pens you don't usually use to more closely match the material colors in the shaded view. Remember that lines and fills can only do flat shading since there are no graduated fills or transparency available.

[Anonymous]

Djordje,
In our AC projects we usually have a story or an
unlinked section/elevation window named "Model Views"
that we use to show perspective or axonometric views of the the building
and terrain pasted from the 3D window.

Your idea of a direct linked view of the 3D window
in PlotMaker did not occur to me. Good idea!

Part of the reason for my post was to find out if someone
knows anything about a statement in the User Guide 2, pp 63
at the end of the section on Pens and Colors which reads:

"You can use Shift- and Control-click to select continuous or
discrete ranges of pens, and change their width and
single step in the Edit Selected Colors dialog box."

When you hit the edit color button a window appears
where you can change the color of the selected pen.
At the bottom of that window there is a grid of small
white squares that is not mentioned in the manual.
I thought that these squares might have something to do
with "continuous or discrete ranges of pen".

I have done some experimenting since I posted my question
and my hope that there was some way to make AC generate
a more finely divided range of tones can't be done.
It can be done manually by editing the 256 colors but of course
this means that you loose the colors that were defined before
you edited them.

Your idea of a direct link of the 3D window to PlotMaker
solves the practical problem.
What appears in PlotMaker is a *.Pict type file isn't it?

Thank you for your reply Djordje,
Peter

[Anonymous]

Matthew,
My experimenting subsequent to my post
confirms everything you say.
Pity "there are no graduated fills or transparency available."
I did define a range of greens so that the terrain looked better.
I thought that it wasn't a good idea to loose the default colors
but for any given project one can, as you say,
change a group of colors not otherwise used in the project.
Thanks for the reply,
Peter

[Djordje]

Peter wrote:
Your idea of a direct link of the 3D window to PlotMaker solves the practical problem.
What appears in PlotMaker is a *.Pict type file isn't it?

Depends on the system; whatever it is, if the 3D window is in OpenGL, it is an image (just tried today, and it works - now if we only can fathom why it does not work for John Cassell!) and if the Analytic view it is a vectorial file, that is to say PMK, that will take longer to generate3 but can be set to proper scale.

If you ar eusing OpenGL view, set the 3D window to be biggish - as then you get more DPI for the image. However, if your sheets are over A3, and you have one view per page, I would go with Analytic.

Glad I could help

[Anonymous]

Thanks Djordje.
I don't use OpenGL because
my video card isn't up to it.
As soon as I get a better video card
I will do exactly what you say.
Peter