Smart dashed lines for roofs

[Rick Thompson]

This is an old wish, but still sorely needed. Any time roofs join you end up with a solid line on other stories. We need that fixed. It is not acceptable to have solid lines pretending to be dashed. Dashed mean above or below. Solid means something else entirely.

[Geoff Briggs]

With the advent of the (clumsily named) Symbolic Soft Insulation (SSI) feature in AC13, which solves another age old problem—the proper display of directional fills in roofs and canted walls—the dashed line “bug” has moved decisively into the top three of my LTWBI* list.

I realize this is the perfect example of a no-win for Graphisoft. Devote precious resources to fix it only to be left with a “feature” that, while welcomed and celebrated by existing users, is hardly something you can sell to prospective users. “Look everyone, it works like it should now.”

Either way it’s essential and we should keep bugging the boys and girls at GSHQ until it’s fixed.

*Little Things with Big Implications, coined by our man ML.

BTW, the other two are leading and trailing text in associated dimensions, and autotext in schedule fields.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Geoff wrote:
“Look everyone, it works like it should now.”

Either way it’s essential and we should keep bugging the boys and girls at GSHQ until it’s fixed.

Agree!

Karl

[Erika Epstein]

Karl wrote:

Geoff wrote:
“Look everyone, it works like it should now.”

Either way it’s essential and we should keep bugging the boys and girls at GSHQ until it’s fixed.

Agree!

Karl

I agree as well. shame I can't vote twice.

[David Larrew]

I also agree on this wish.

[Barry Kelly]

Erika wrote:

Karl wrote:

Geoff wrote:
“Look everyone, it works like it should now.”

Either way it’s essential and we should keep bugging the boys and girls at GSHQ until it’s fixed.

Agree!

Karl

I agree as well. shame I can't vote twice.

That is why Graphisoft should respond to these wishes and say it will be sorted as soon as possible, or it's in the "to-do" list or it won't be happening.
Folks from GS-HQ do read these forums and we all appreciate it when they respond to certain posts.
It would be really nice to know what was being done about all our wishes.
Barry.

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure if this is an easy fix, or whether it is possible;

The problem is the polygon of a roof plan has an outline that has one start point and finish point(possibly one of the nodes)

we need to tell the outline of the polygon to have independant outlines, that start and finish on the two nodes (respectively) of each edge of the polygon.

assuming that two edges of 2 different polygons will almost always align(in length) e.g. a hip or valley of a roof.

said edges will both have an outline that aligns...

on the same issue if each node on any polygon has the (dashed) outline begin at the centre of one of those dashes you will achieve at the corner's of a hip or valley equal length dashed outlines splaying along the hip or valley and the outline of the roof.

a solution to both problems solved...


summary:

at the moment a roof polygons (for example) outline has one relative line start to finish, what we require is a roof polygon to have an outline that start at one node finishes at the next and begins again at that point.

so if there were 4 sides to a polygon you would have 4 independent outlines begining and ending at the corners, assuming that the adjacent polygons have the same line type we would not have the over lapping that occurs....

[Anonymous]

Shingleback wrote:
...at the moment a roof polygons (for example) outline has one relative line start to finish, what we require is a roof polygon to have an outline that start at one node finishes at the next and begins again at that point.

so if there were 4 sides to a polygon you would have 4 independent outlines begining and ending at the corners, assuming that the adjacent polygons have the same line type we would not have the over lapping that occurs....

Yes, if it could be programmed to deal with one segment at a time, and behave more like the normal Line Tool by starting and ending a segment with a dash, you'd be halfway there.

The only trouble is if you drew the adjoining roof in the opposite direction (clockwise/anticlockwise) there would still be a mismatch as the spacing of the linetype starts from the end drawn first. It would only work if the linetype was actually centred on the segment.

[Anonymous]

correct but as I mentioned,

If each segment of the polygon were to start and finish exactly half way between what would be a full dash of the dashed line/segment...

..this would also occur on adjacent polygons...then the both segments of the polygons sharing the same line (hip or valley) would align...

this would also resolve the issue that sometimes on a corner there is no line as the outline wraps around the sometimes coinsiding with the gap between the dashes;

when the outline changes direction (often 90 or 45 degrees, not that the angle matters), the 2 lines representing the outline of the roof and 2 lines sharing the same hip or valley would extend the same distance, leaving the corner always having (what would appear as) 3 lines meeting at the corner...

[Barry Kelly]

It is a long time since I have used it but I am sure that Autocad rescaled the line slightly so that it always started and ended with a solid line.
Overlapping roof lines (of the same length) would then be rescaled by the same amount and would therefore show correctly (assuming they start and end with the same sized dash).

So it must be possible to write this into the prograam but I have no idea how difficult that would be.
Even my old $200 2D cad program displayed lines correctly - but then being 2D we wouldn't double up on roof lines!

I still think my idea of a white or screen background coloured line for the gap sections is a good idea.
It could be implemented now in a hotfix and as far as I can see would not affect any existing plans so long as the user can define what their white pen number is (or I guess it could be hard coded as white).
As a screen background pen colour there should be no problem at all that I can think of.

It won't solve the starting or ending with a gap problem but at least overlapping lines will always display as intended.

Barry.

[Anonymous]

So, Graphisoft still haven't made a move on this. How very disappointing.

Its been a year since the last post on this, just letting Graphisoft know we're still here and we're still screaming for a fix. And your woeful excuse for a way around
....
http://www.graphisoft.com/support/archicad/archiguide/roofedgelines.html
....
is not a fix, especially if your using more than 2 roofs elements.
The whole point of Archicad is to avoid doing 2D as much as possible.
Get off your behinds and fix this