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!Restored: Controlling Distant Elevation Pens

Anonymous
Not applicable
I spent the entire day yesterday decoding the mystery of how ArchiCAD determines what pens to use to represent objects in the Distant area of a section or elevation. How completely bizzare! ArchiCAD needs to add some form of control for how this is achieved. They have pen settings for just about everything, how about a "Distant Section Pen" option?
7 REPLIES 7
Anonymous
Not applicable
Err ... would that be something like a tick box 'Use one pen for all elements' (with a choice of pen) under the 'Distant Area Options' part of the dialogue box??

I must confess to not having spent much time with this - we just set to a mid-grey and bumble happily along

- Stuart
Anonymous
Not applicable
We played with that, but we prefer having the vectoral hatching be hairline and the element contour lines be slightly thicker. By not checking the "one pen thickness" box, ArchiCAD selects a pen for you by choosing a pen with a color slightly lighter than the fill color for the element. I find this behavior to be pretty strange becuase ArchiCAD doesn't appear to know or care what that pen's thickness is.
Anonymous
Not applicable
I was looking forward to using this function when 8's new features were being promoted. When I received 8 I was really disapointed how it worked. You could control the pen of the section lines but not the pens of the elevation. This needs to be improved.
Anonymous
Not applicable
But at least it is not completely random. It will always substitute one pen # for the same #. As long as you don't edit your pen colors often, which is bad idea anyway. Once you know the pen associations, then you can modify the pens as needed in PM or even in AC in your template so that it is correct from the get go. In our office, we have template PMKs off to one side of our master layouts that contain the correct plotting pen colors and weights. Simply use the eyedropper and syringe to set the correct line weights.
Do you really want to map 255 pens to their distant pen equivalents?
Anonymous
Not applicable
Here is a new idea for an old topic. I would like to see the following changes (or something similar) to the Section/Elevation Tool Settings. In this scenario the foreground can have separate contour and fill lines, and the distance can have its own contour and fill lines. That would allow 4 different pens to be used to indicate depth and detail. Add in the shadows and you have an elevation that even an overly-artistic architect might like.
Better Section-Elevation.png
Anonymous
Not applicable
Add the ability to place staggers in the distant area line and the horizontal limit (similar to the section/elevation cut line) and you really have good control.

I'd also like to see the tool not draw a solid line at the edge of an elevation that continues off to the side beyond the extent of the marker. I always want to put my own cut line there, and I don't want to see AC's lineweights or deal with cover fills or other workarounds. The cut line doesn't cut the object or see the end of the wall, yet I see a line as if the wall stops. This isn't right - if one were to draw the elevation by hand, you wouldn't draw those lines. Why does AC?

Wes
Anonymous
Not applicable
I'd like to know why solid shadows on distant areas obscure material fill assigned to wall material. This is on a fully linked elevation, using solid fill for shadows (different shades of grey in foreground and distant area settings) and materials have a fill also. Anyone know a way around this? Also, why does the shadow fill sit on top of lines making them only half width? If you want elements to stand out in foreground this stuffs it up.
Any help appreciated.