WYSIWYG

[Anonymous]

maybe it us, and maybe this is not the place to question this...but we find, we meaning me...short on meds today....that AC is not very WYSIWYG friendly...OR is there setting we are missing....

[Steve Jepson]

In the interest of WYSIWYG, this is what i do with my pens.

because the pen matrix is a multiple of 10 units wide (20)
you can number your pens so that the last digit of each pen is that pens size in mm. I never have any question about what size the pen is. pen 33=.3, pen 55=.5 ...To do this set all pens in column 1 = .1, all pens in column 2 =.2.....so on and so on.

The colors of the rows don't matter except in row one which i set as black because these are my main drawing pens. With this pen set up, what I see is what i get. There isn't much reason to set the pen size to match pen plotters. They are all but extinct now.

I don't use very many colors when I draw and I set the background to a color that i would never use as a pen color. Also, it reminds me of the good old days when I still used my drafting table for something besides laying stuff on. Another reason is because I need to see black and white on my screen with out having to change backgrounds.

I prefer the mm setting since it is relative to the Koh-I-Noor and Pentel sizes I used to draw with.

[Anonymous]

sorry I haven't responded...been out of town...but I am glad it has gone in this diretion...alot of us are still new to AC will benefit from this feedback greatly.....

[Anonymous]

Link wrote:
To preview what the output will look like at full size, simply click on the Zoom Scale button to get it to 100%. Then you can pan around and see how things are going to look when printed/plotted - within reason (varies slightly with screen resolution), but is a pretty good representation.

Or are you saying it is still inaccurate?

Cheers,
Link.

It can not be done, it all depends on the screen resolution; am I missing a point?
Joseph

[Anonymous]

To Steve Jepson,

That is an interesting way of setting out your pens. You must use alot of colour for your linework.

I have a similar set up with the first 10 or so set up as black. The rest though I leave as standard AC colours unless I require a certain pen to be a different thickness. I draw mainly in black as mentioned previously. Some details I add to framing layouts, electrical layouts, with colour.

I like leaving the main pen colours as set out by AC so I can use fine colours for fills.

[Steve Jepson]

The first ten pens seem like enough to me and there are some good reasons to leave the other pens like they came. I can't remember why I didn't leave the rest of the pens as they are. I think it may be because when I first started using ArchiCAD I was x-reffing in a lot of blocks and drawings from ADT from a firm that had their autocad pens set up by color. Their cross section lines used red, items beyond, blue, notes white, dimensions green, etc....I think this was so they could work in hairline for accuracy and still have a visual clue as to if the pen weight was going to be correct. I probably didn't know how to configure the .dwg translator to take care of that for me.

In any case, I cant think of any good reason to change more than the first 10 pens like you are doing.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Actually, if anything, it is the first 10 pens that are best left alone ... along with pen 91 (white). This is because these 1st 10 pens are used by the library parts to distinguish the elements of their content.

Certainly, map them to black in PM ... but if you map them all to black in AC, you have no visual feedback that there is a possibility to alter certain aspects of library part.

I use a similar scheme, but with the 1st 10 pen colors 'standard', and then duplicating them downwards to increase pen width ... and define special pens.

I also have several widths of white pen, necessary for performing different levels of 'screening' operations with dotted or striped fills.

Whatever scheme works for your workflow is a good scheme, though! 😉

Karl

[Anonymous]

Hi Karl,

I understand about pen 91 (white) it is a useful pen colour however I havent had any trouble with my first 10 pens altering aspects of library parts.

You are no doubt correct about this but is it possible for you to give me an expample of the way a library part may be altered? I may have to alter my pen set up!

Thanks in advance.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Hi Graeme,

Attached is a quick example showing a window and door and a masonry block from the detailer library (2D).

The main thing is that the differen pen colors tell you that you can print the distinguished elements with different pen widths, depending on what you want to emphasize (or de-emphasize) in your drawings.

When viewed in black (pens 1 through 10 set to black), as at the bottom, you have no clue what can be modified.

The colors make it clear that the door swing arc is its own pen, so you can make it thinner if you want... that the glazing is its own pen, etc. With the block, you can emphasize either the outside contour, the inside contour or either one of the two fills by choosing different pen weights.

Only an editing aid, but useful when one is playing with widths and pen tables. 😉

Cheers,
Karl

[__archiben]

Graeme wrote:
I understand about pen 91 (white) it is a useful pen colour however I havent had any trouble with my first 10 pens altering aspects of library parts.

to add to karl's comment, graphisoft script all of their objects to make use of pens by-function rather than by-weight. for example, you will probably find all furniture contour pens set at one colour, frame contours another, glass lines, structural contours, etc, etc . . . so if you've you've changed your pens in a similar by-function method you probably won't see any problems in dropping a standard graphisoft object onto the floor plan without changing any of the pen defaults . . . if however (like me) you change your first ten pens by-weight, it's impossible to use standard objects without modifying their pen settings in some way.

i personally lean toward using the first ten pens as a by-weight setting (it's more natural for new users and general drafting requirements), but then set other rows of pen by-function for more advanced use. my trouble is that i can never remember the function of certain pens and fall back to using the ones defined by weight

i would like to see graphisoft publish a schedule of their different pen functions (or somebody point me to one if it already exists). i'm also waiting for the day that this schedule of functions existing as a master GDL script that all objects call from . . . so that i can redefine object 2D representation defaults in the master GDL file and have it reflected throughout my libraries . . . don't i make life difficult for myself!

cheers
~/archiben

[LiHigh]

Link wrote:
Well as you may know I have been a big advocate for pen mapping in PlotMaker for quite a few years now and still believe it is one of PlotMaker's most powerful features.

Below (on the left) is a typical pen & color table for one of my ArchiCAD templates. I like to keep it simple (stupid) and most people like to wotk that way too! It is based on using only the first ten pens for all plotted/printed linework. So only the first ten pens are used for all tools, and they are based on an increasing pen thickness, (eg. 0.0, 0.05, 0.13, 0.25, 0.35, 0.5, etc). Using that method it is very easy to tell predict how thick a color will plot no matter what it is used for.

Link,

Spot on! I've been practising same approach for many years.