Wide Transparent Lines

[Steve Jepson]

All of my final drawings are made into a .pdf for final printing.

I am using the Acrobat 8.0 Pro so I can do some editing if needed to the .pdf, and I add a lot of non print data to the file. Hotlinks to ArchiCAD details, original ArchiCAD drawings of the plan it was made from, etc...

And, wide transparent lines to surround areas for demo, Fire separation zones, lots of things.

Has anyone figured out a way to make transparent dashed lines in ArchiCAD?
I am thinking that we should be able to do that now with the new Reference Drawing features since the reference drawing is trans parent and can be placed on top or behind.

The problem will be getting them to work in a Layout.

Has anyone been able to get transparent things to work in a Layout?

[SeaGeoff]

Can you please post an example of your PDF so we can what you're looking for. Thanks.

[Steve Jepson]

Here is a poor example but it show some wide transparent lines.

[Anonymous]

The only transparency in ArchiCAD (unless they've snuck something in without my noticing) is the absence of a background fill (100% transparency). There is no translucency (partial transparency) as you show in your example.

Well... on further thought. You can use the new (in AC10) 25%, 50%, & 75% fills to get halftone transparency. Set the foreground color to whatever you want the shade to be and the background to the null pen. This is not true transparency but is probably good enough for technical drawings.

[Steve Jepson]

It also looks like it works on screen better than it does in final plots too.

[Anonymous]

Steve wrote:
It also looks like it works on screen better than it does in final plots too.

That will depend on tweaking the settings for your printer. It may be functional but I doubt it will be beautiful.

[Dwight]

Have you considered a flat"X" line type?

[Anonymous]

Hello,
Matthew Lohden wrote:
"The only transparency in ArchiCAD (unless they've snuck something in without my noticing)
is the absence of a background fill (100% transparency). There is no translucency
(partial transparency) as you show in your example.

Well... on further thought. You can use the new (in AC10) 25%, 50%,
& 75% fills to get halftone transparency. Set the foreground color to whatever you want
the shade to be and the background to the null pen.
This is not true transparency but is probably good enough for technical drawings."

Every body probably knows this but I found that you can get true
transparency in Archicad by drawing a rectangular a radial gradient fill
and stretching the concentric circles outward beyond the limits
of the figure you want to cover with transparent fill. The attached
image was made with this method and does no employ percentage fills.
Peter Devlin

[Anonymous]

With a little more experimenting, it turns out that these
gradient fills are not quite true transparency. If you bring
the fill to the front it will obscure the lines behind it.
Peter Devlin