Section settings...

[Anonymous]

I want to achieve a section ' render ' to look something like the attached image ( from a book ). I've altered many, many settings in my section settings but I can't get the same look...I've tried changing the wall colour, vertical sun shadow settings etc. Also, my section takes around 10 minutes to update, even if I just change one line for example, similarly it takes around 10 minutes to update on the layout book, is this normal ?

Thank You

[Bricklyne Clarence]

NStocks wrote:
Could I used the gradient inside Illustrator as well to create glazing effects ?

I want to export a section and sheet layout to use inside Illustrator or Photoshop but when I save as a PDF, the lines become somewhat poor quality. Is there a better file format than PDF that I can save from ArchiCAD ? I've heard EPS is better but ArchiCAD doesn't do that anymore (?)

How could I convert a PDF to a Vector that I can use inside Illustrator incase ArchiCAD can't export anything better than PDF ? I really want these prints to be good, but Photoshop rasterised the document and Illustrator made it a bit jagged.

When I'm done editing in Illustrator, would it be a good idea to import that back into ArchiCAD to place on a sheet with my other drawings, would I lose any quality ? Then once that s done, should I save to PDF for printing/plotting ?

Thank You

Well, if you really want to use Illustrator to do gradient fills and hatches one alternative would be to export it as a DWG file instead. Illustrator can import DWG file format. This way, the line weights and colors are kept separate and consistent and you can adjust them accordingly in Illustrator. But the downside to this is that gradient fills from ArchiCAD don't export well, and there might still be issues with the linetypes, line scales.

Alternatively you can go from ArchiCAD in dwg format to AutoCAD, to clean-up and then to Illustrator to add your shadows and whatnot.

As for bringing it back to ArchiCAD for printing (if you have to do that), then the suggestion would be for you to either rasterize it (export it from Illustrator and/or Photoshop in a flat image format like Jpg or tiff) at the highest resolution you can to preserve quality or resolution (I suggest .tiff)
and import it as an non-editable drawing in ArchiCAD. Otherwise you're just bound to run into more problems.
PDF is also fine but that can sometimes cause problems with legibility.

But I would personally be against the whole back-and-forth kind of workflow where you keep switching between software because you always bound to lose information, resolution, and/or quality in one way or another.
The best way is to try to learn to do the most you can from one software or 2 at most so that you can get a handle of the quirks of importing-exporting between the 2, and if possible try to ensure that the last software you work from is the one you print from.

You'll save yourself so many headaches and problems trying to keep your workflow as simple and as linear as possible, especially with tight deadlines. Trust me.

[Bricklyne Clarence]

I forgot to mention.

once you're done laying everything out the way you want it, print them to PDF, and then if you have the time, rasterize and flatten those pdf's into high resolution JPGs, or preferably Tiffs (which is a lossless format).

This way, you will save yourself (and your fellow students) the trouble of waiting for ever for the pdfs to vectorize properly as the fills, hatches and gradients load slowly, while you're printing. A flat image prints all at once, but you have to make sure that you're happy with the resolution (dpi) and that the lines and edges are not jagged too much - which is why I suggest saving it as a really high resolution raster image.

I saw you post in another thread regarding how much printing you have to do, and having been through this kind of thing before, try to limit as much as possible opportunities for technical errors (and if you can afford to, have a back-up plan for printing elsewhere since you will not be the only one experiencing printing issues).

Good luck in your presentation.

[Anonymous]

Well I got everything printed on time, though it cost me 3 times as much because other students messed up the print que ( which was 65 on each Printer x3 )...

I've read on another post that ArchiCAD lines do not print as clearly as AutoCAD lines. I found this to be true... my lines are somewhat jagged compared to other students who use AutoCAD. To resolve this should I save it from ArchiCAD as a DWG (?) then import it into AutoCAD then save as a Vector ? Will this improve the line quality without having to re-draw everything ? Also, a vector will work better in Photoshop.

I have one weeks left at Uni, though I don't have to do any more work so I'm going to take the next 4 months to learn a lot more software ( such as rendering ) to prepare me for the second year of Architecture !

Thank You