As for the shadows in sections I might not have made myself clear - I was refering to the fact that AC cuts the model and then casts shadows, rather than casting shadows and then cutting the model. The result being you get shadows cast on the interior of the building which just wouldn't exist - such as light/shade in a lift core or fire stair (well actually it would ALL be in shadow). So apart from the time issue of shadow casting, this is the reason you can't use automatic shadow casting on sections ... they need to be cleaned up.I haven't seen many users apply shadows in their sections before, but I can see how it would be a problem for you.
The method we use is fairly straight forward. Generally S/Es have shadows turned off. If any major changes are made to the envelope we rebuild with shadows turned on, module out the view, delete everything but the shadows in the module, then copy this back into the live S/E which has shadow casting turned off.A popular technique is to simply to select the contents of your live, copy it and paste it a set distance above the model in the S/E view. Then you can drag any of the now 2D elements down the same set distance to overlay your model.
This would be made much simpler if as I said previously you could actually select the shadows in a live view (i guess they would be locked fills on the archicad layer) in order to copy them (module from clipboard, so no cleanup) and then be able to hotlink the shadows module back into sections/elevations (hotlinking into S/E's is another of those old wishes i think).
Still doesn't solve the original problem though!
Cheers,
Link.
Link wrote:
A popular technique is to simply to select the contents of your live, copy it and paste it a set distance above the model in the S/E view.
As long as you are unlinking the section from your main file, this is the best way of handling shadows (which sometimes creep up in unexpected places, like window panes, and sometimes just act dumb, like ironwork projections made with objects):
Move all the shadows to a different story, and use story transparency to visualize shadows and lines simultaneously.
This way you can edit either shadows or lines (also some errors, mostly resulting from shoddy modeling but sometimes also unavoidable), but still see how they look together.
After editing everything, you return the shadows to their original story, and voila.
One last thought. Having had so much trouble with imperfect and heavy shadows on elevations, I resorted to 3d line views.
I explain: The main reason for using shadows on your elevations (besides aestetically ones) is to make the drawing easier to understand. What is in front, what is second or third plan, and how far apart is everything in the hidden dimension.
So, and as long as you have a working 3d model, you might just as well put a small hidden line perspective beside every elevation, even beside every seccion.
Putting shadows on our 2d drawings is 2d thinking. You can do better.
Oh dear yet again I learn not to assume a certain behaviour with AC just because it makes sense. I use copy/paste all the time in a live section to explode copies of 3D elements, but I had never even thought to try it on shadows. I guess I assumed if you cant select it, how can you copy it? But it works ... copy the wall, and it copies the unselectable shadows ...
Anyway, this really isn't a big issue - if shadows are some of the little 2D information we need to apply to our S/E's i think we (and AC) are doing ok
But back to the original piont I think the Unify command could be fixed to work on fills, shouldnt be that hard
Anyway, this really isn't a big issue - if shadows are some of the little 2D information we need to apply to our S/E's i think we (and AC) are doing ok
But back to the original piont I think the Unify command could be fixed to work on fills, shouldnt be that hard
Mike wrote:I would set this to a default behavior!
It would be a nice feature if shadows had the ability to be placed on a separate layer versus the layer of the element that created the shadow.
