Very often, for representation purposes, an architect needs to use different colors and line weights to represent variety of elements that fall outside the standard representation system—where the pen-based system works perfectly well.
The current system where a pen define always both the color and the weight of the line is limiting.
Let’s say I’m doing a color study for a polychrome façade, or a garden design with different plant species distinguished by color. If I create many pens with custom colors for my color tests, I also have to remember not to use those pens in other contexts, otherwise changing a color could affect other objects in the drawing. Moreover, if I need two line weights for each color, I end up having to create twice as many pens. There’s also the risk of not having enough pens to manage everything. It can happen, especially considering that usually you don't want to mess with the default pen structure defined by Graphisoft, so the pens actually available are few.
There are also cases where you want to change the color of just one element: to highlight, for example, the presence of a special door. You could simply assign a different pen to that element, but in reality it's preferable to keep the original pen for the door, since the pen sets are already organized to handle the line weights of the doors at different drawing scales.
Proposal
The idea, therefore, is to maintain the current pen system but add a color option every time i have to choose a pen. By default, this option is set to “by pen” meaning it uses the default color associated with the pen. However, if modified, it can take on any color. The pen sets will work as usual, except they won’t change the color of objects with custom colors, but only the weight.
P.S. I know graphic overrides can provide a solution in many cases, but sometimes they’re more complicated than simply having the immediate freedom to change a color.
Open