Screening

[Stephen Dolbee]

Does anyone have any ideas/suggestions for simulating screening in elevation view? Partially hide what's behind?

Thanks,
Steve

[Karl Ottenstein]

Stephen wrote:
Does anyone have any ideas/suggestions for simulating screening in elevation view? Partially hide what's behind?

Hi Steve,

Just use a 25% fill with no border and a white pen for the dots (for starters). This fill alone may serve your needs if you also create several additional white pens that are fatter and fatter and combining the fill and pen to get the level of screening you want.

I use screen-fills like this to partially obscure foundation elements in elevation.

HTH,
Karl

[Anonymous]

Steve

I use a similar system to Karl, with a borderless fill of 45 degree white stripes to partly block the foundations of elevations which are generated straight off the model, makes all the lines look dashed.

Tip: Make the fill by pasting stripes made of 'Solid Fill' into a new symbol fill, then you do not have to worry about the pen weight of individual lines, the stripe width being part of the fill.

regards

[Karl Ottenstein]

Bill wrote:
a borderless fill of 45 degree white stripes to partly block the foundations of elevations which are generated straight off the model, makes all the lines look dashed.

Great tip, Bill. Picture says 1000 words.

My first reaction was "but the fill will completely hide some of the foundation linework that shows stepped foundation footings or struts" ... and the answer is (duh), to have a 135 degree version also. I'll still use the uniform screens in other places to fade elements at different opacities, but I'm going to switch to your technique for foundations.

Thanks!
Karl

[Stephen Dolbee]

Thanks! That does the trick.

Steve

[Link]

Has anyone figured out a clever way of using this method while also using vectorial sun shadows? Obviously we don't want shadows below grade.

If not, I'm guessing it's one for the wishlist, but where does it end??!

Cheers,
Link.

[Pete]

If you unlink, Link, you can draw a polyline for the grade level. Then select all below the line and Split. That way, the shadow fills are split at the grade line and you can delete the lower portion. You can also select the foundation lines that are below grade and simply change the line type to dashed.

I hate unlinking though.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Pete wrote:
If you unlink, Link, you can draw a polyline for the grade level. Then select all below the line and Split. That way, the shadow fills are split at the grade line and you can delete the lower portion. You can also select the foundation lines that are below grade and simply change the line type to dashed.

I hate unlinking though.

I hate unlinking, too, Pete.

In any case, there's a problem with the way that GS implemented the split operation with fills IMHO.

Take a look at the attached image where two fills were split using the very simple line shown (avoided curve just to make this more obvious - but it happens the same with curves) ... and then the bottom pieces were dragged down for illustration.

Note that the first fill is split at the first intersection point and using the angle of the line at the point (or tangent I believe when it is curved) ... rather than adding additional points and giving a polygonal split. The second fill, being split only by an unchanging line, splits fine of course.

I suppose I'd add proper polygonal splitting to the wishlist if I did this often (go for it, anyone who does!), but haven't so far ... however your tip on breaking out sun shadows might encourage me to do so in the future, even if I just paste the unlinked shadow fills back onto a linked elevation.

Thanks,
Karl

[Anonymous]

Don't use split, use subtraction on the pet palette.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Matthew wrote:
Don't use split, use subtraction on the pet palette.

Subtract only works for one polygonal element at a time - whereas split works for multiples. If you select multiple fills (or slabs, or ...) and try to do a subtraction, only the first one is affected.

With the split command, as Pete suggested, all fills can be selected, invoke split, then just click on the polyline and select a side. Quick and simple ... except for the split bug shown in the screen shot.

Karl