First topic and off we go,
I wonder if there's any opportunity to resolve a small but significant problem related to (linked) sections / elevations : vectorial hatching appears exploded and hard to handle once in 2D environment.
Our office is expanding quickly : 3 out of 13 co-workers, myself included, know to handle the Virtual Building very well. We are trying to get some others in learning process. They manage there first models with succes.
We teach to add vectorial hatching and shadows to sections / elevations.
Despite there efforts, it's absolutely necesarry to detach sections / elevations to seperate 2D drawings when entering construction phase to remove or modify certain mistakes.
>>> all vectorial hatching will be exploded to single lines. For example : windows are represented with fill dashed-dot, brickwork is added to elevations, ... Nice drawings in design but finally we have to compete with several thousands of seperate dots and small lines.
The resulting 2D drawings are worse then single DWG files! Even some work-arround export-import via DWG contains more usefull information concerning fills.
We know how to handle other work-arrounds (presentation with solids / having hatches off / ...) but why all the effort of matching fills to materials to get nice drawings, when further on returning to different appearances or poor and empty drawings?
The managers doubt if ArchiCAD is the perfect solution for there practice taking the cost / return on investment into account. Much cleanup time wasted, although everyone 3D quy knows better!
It seems we can best forget handling vectorial hatching until all of us have a similar level of experience and just put seperate fills on top of the drawing. Less interesting in early design but far more reliable further on.
I don't like to say, for a program I find far the best on the market, that it's disappointing to see it can't have these hatches act like fills once in 2D environment.
We model 80% as virtual building, we dislike 2D drawings, but for first in years we feel the need to get often down to 2,5D. It's wishfull thinking everyone can handle a Virtual building at once!
At last, the co-workers I'm talking about are all AutoCad users and it was hard work to get them listening to ArchiCAD. It's quiet annoying dealing with this silly issue of hatches within 2 days and having 1,5 or 1D as result !!! Please solve this minor bug so we can defend the fantastic world of 3D BIM.
Maybe this must be seen together with a new way of assigning materials in ArchiCAD!
Still hopefull and waiting for AC 10, thanks,
Joeri
