Structural Drawings

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I am trying to make the structural drawings for a project in the same Archicad model that the Architect is using. We thought it would save time and improve coordination.

Generally this has gone well but I have hit one problem that we cannot solve. In structural drawings, the sections need to show adjoining walls behind the front wall with a dashed line, as shown in the attachment.

The only answer I have found so far is to draw the hidden lines. This looks OK on the drawings but is time consuming, and if things move, the lines must be updated manually.

Does anyone know if it is possible to get Archicad to show hidden lines in sections?

Mark Ratcliff
Rambøll Norge AS
Bergen, Norway

[Anonymous]

The best I can think of off the top of my head would be to cut another (zero depth) section through the walls behind and overlay the two in the layout. I can't see anyway to make the lines dashed automatically though - they could be shown as grey by changing the pens.

[TomWaltz]

It's been WAY too long since I've messed with it, but didn't the Special Menu have something like that, "Show hidden elements dashed?"

[Link]

Yes, you can use the Special menu's 'Show Special Lines' command in conjunction with the 'Special Hidden Line...' command. It's all very special. Mixed results though - dashed lines tend to overlap.

Cheers,
Link.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Matthew wrote:
The best I can think of off the top of my head would be to cut another (zero depth) section through the walls behind and overlay the two in the layout. I can't see anyway to make the lines dashed automatically though - they could be shown as grey by changing the pens.

This is exactly what I was going to suggest...except that the dashing is possible by a trick that I use for a great many areas of drawings: the use of a masking diagonal fill that uses a fat white pen for the line and a transparent background.

Create a view of the 'walls behind' section that has the masking fill on top, then place both views on your layout sheet, aligned exactly to one another via either a common elemenet or a hotspot (placed with hotspot tool) at a known common point.

In AC 11, a nice thing is that you can use ths 'wall behind' section as the ghost when working on the foreground section...and use the 'switch active with reference' button to flip back and forth between them, should any changes be required to one or the other.

Karl

[Anonymous]

Karl wrote:
This is exactly what I was going to suggest...except that the dashing is possible by a trick that I use for a great many areas of drawings: the use of a masking diagonal fill that uses a fat white pen for the line and a transparent background.

Oops, that's right. I used to do that for foundations in sections and elevations. I forgot about it. Thanks for the reminder.

[Anonymous]

Ok , so what about the show hidden elements?

is it helpful ?

actually never used it or even know what it could be helpful for

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll give them a go.

To Tom and "Link"; Where do I find the Special menu? Perhaps I should have mentioned that I'm using Archicad 10.

and "Whatever", where is the option for Show Hidden Elements?

[Anonymous]

Mark wrote:
Where do I find the Special menu? Perhaps I should have mentioned that I'm using Archicad 10.

and "Whatever", where is the option for Show Hidden Elements?

It used to be as simple as holding down the command+option (Mac) or ctrl+alt (Win) at launch but I guess that was making it too easy for just anybody to mess around with it. You should know before you go any further that the Special Menu is for the development team at GS and includes commands that are being tested for possible future use, various tools for testing and debugging the program, and probably other stuff as far as I know. It is not supported by GS and there may even be ways of messing things up. I certainly wouldn't go trying the commands there "just to see what they do" on anything but a test file.

There have been times (well once) when I actually recommended using the special menu to a client. That was before the fills in elevation had been included in the program - but the feature was available in the Special Menu. That was at James Murray's office so the risk factor was low 😉

If you still want to try it the menu is enabled by editing the Registry in Windows or the ArchiCAD prefs file on Mac. I forget the details, but a search here for "Special Menu" should bring it up for you.