Transparency in glass when printing to pdf or 2dl

[Anonymous]

We've produced a 3d drawing in Archicad v8 with glass areas which allow what's behind to be seen in colour on screen. When printed out of Archicad this is printed accurately as the screen but when printed to pdf or saved as a 2dl drawing the glass area goes generally black but with the outlines of objects behind still to be seen however all the colour is removed. Can this be rectified to appear as the screen view ? Can anyone assist - it would be appreciated.
Thanks
Rob

[Aaron Bourgoin]

Try setting "Transparency in Shading" to "on" in the "3D Window Settings" - Image Menu.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Aaron for your suggestion. I've checked and transparency in shading is on so I'm still perplexed. We're using the Internal 3D Engine and shading mode is analytic.
Interestingly I have published out of Archicad as a jpg or tiff and then printed out of Photoshop to pdf and got a pretty good result which solves the immediate problem.
But its also the case that saving out of Archicad as a Plotmaker file has the same obscuring effect on the glass - it must be an issue associated with the composition of the material I suspect.
Would appreciate other suggestions
Regards
Rob

[Link]

Are you using pre-defined views to publish with? If so, you will need to redefine them with the changed settings as Aaron mentioned. These settings affect all views including 3D, photorenderings and elevations.

Otherwise you may want to check your OpenGL Options from the 3D Window Settings dialog. You may need to adjust your threshold slider.

Cheers,
Link.

[Anonymous]

Hi Link,
I was finding the problem initially when trying to print directly out of Archicad what I was seeing on the screen - this worked when printing hard copy from a printer but the glass printed black when I did the same but to a pdf file.
After that I tried the publisher which I'm not entirely familiar with and here I printed to tiff and jpg which was successful in portraying the glass and yes I was using pre-defined views - they were called generic perspective and generic axonometry. Is there guidance on the use of the publisher in help ?
Also if I adjust the threshold slider what should I do with it to improve the situation and where abouts is the slider located?
Sorry to be dense but seems like you GUys don't experience this problem and I've suffered from it for years so that sometimes we draw window frames without glass to get the transparency we look for.
Appreciate your advice

[Anonymous]

What rendering engine are you using to produce the error? Is it the same for the internal engine as well as OpenGL? I would have guessed that the problem was with the ArchiCAD to PDF connection but you say it is the same saving as 2DL. How is it if you print the views from PlotMaker?

BTW, what hardware & AC/PM version are you using? It is very hard to guess at the problem without complete info. You should at least put platform (Windows or Mac) and the AC/PM version you are using in your signature line.

[Anonymous]

Hi Matthew,
Thanks for your interest.
The internal 3D engine produces the problem whilst Open GL does not cause the same effect i.e. glass is transparent in pdfs under Open GL. However Open GL is crude in comparison to the internal engine in terms of sunlighting, colour and lines which are quite jaggy.
I would attach some examples of the particular drawings but they exceed the size limit.
Our AC version is 8.1 R2 (2284); PM is 3.1.0 R2(2284). We use both Macs and PCs using 10.3 and XP respectively.
Any thoughts ? Thanks again.

[Anonymous]

I no longer have 8.1 loaded so I can't do any testing myself, but this sounds like a bug. Have you tried this from PlotMaker? If that works, go with it until you upgrade. Printing from ArchiCAD is not recommended practice anyway for anything beyond in-house quickie review and mark-up.

[Anonymous]

Is there a reason you are not photo-rendering these images?

[Anonymous]

Thanks Guys,
I can't do it immediately but I will prepare a sample of the problem and attach it to my next memo to illustrate. Be good if you could show a succesful sample of the use of glass advising how its been produced. If this is a bug we've had it probably since v6.5 and its cross platform - so perplexing.
Mike We sometimes photo-render. Though when you say that do you mean using AC or Artlantis.
I love just producing the quick 3D sketch and going straight to print. What I was trying to do was model, take a great view and then whizz across to our engineers using pdf to explain a difficult aspect of construction
Rgds Rob