Graphic Overrides – make them really useful, useably, practically

[snow]

Hi there,

I don't know – maybe all the things I'll write here are already mentioned in this forum... actually if not, I wonder why...

Anyway... I thought I bring this collection of issues about the graphic overwritings... hoping the tool will be reworked soon and get all (and maybe more) improvements in.

1. Differentiation of cut and uncut lines
   It is the absolute basis of every drawing (and in Archicad available for every tool) to distinguish between this kind of lines. Why "destroys" the GO this option?
   In case of renovation, we need red cut fills with black contour lines and red lines for the uncut parts.... but we can't have this currently and can't use the GO for this case.
   
   
2. Control of Building Material (Skins)  and not just complete elements
   Without adopting the basic settings of Materials, e.g. it is not possible to display composites for drafting properly. E.g. The difference between in solid material and insulation has always to be visible. To get that with overwriting, hatches to (black or gray) solid fills we've set the background fill to this color... but later on in construction planning black background is wrong.
   (An other method is, to use different pen sets to achieve correct displays... but It's another workaround  to organize this all... it could be easier and more universally...)
   
   
3. Control of GDL-Elements via GO
   We mostly have stairs... and because these are GDLs we are not able to overwrite them (just can use the workaround from the point above...)
   
   
4. Hiding elements (edges) completely also in ground plans
   Why could this function that came with Version 25-2 not have for elements in ground plans?
   (There is still no "invisible" line in the lines menu...)
   We could do so much more with this.
   
   That leads me to the next point:
   
   
5. Hiding surfaces without transparency setting in elevations and sections
   Transparency for glass etc. and hiding opaque surfaces are two completely different things. Why can we have it only together?
   We've to make glass opaque globally to get the option to hide, e.g. demolished building part surfaces.
   Why only this way? 
   
   

6. Hiding Skin Separators causes missing Contour Lines
   The last point here is really my biggest one.

   THE PROBLEM

   In the GO we’ve this checkbox. It’s a useful function to fade out these lines… we can use the same composite throughout…

   But the big bug is, that not just skin separators get hidden, but also contour outlines. So contours are missing and elements like floor structure and furniture, floor and slab, building and soil merge together.

   (Yes, in some situation there can be applied a workaround here, called ‘the thicker line wins’, to cope with this bug… but it is still a bug…)
   
   

   ARGUMENTS

   And yes, of course you will argue now, just the expression ‘skin separator’ doesn’t fit really. Because the checkbox has to be activated if lines between different materials are overwritten with the same rule, shall be hidden. (And this function is one of the most important I’d say…)

   But even if we can choose only to see separators of skins and different building materials or none of them, it is not acceptable that lines between different (overwritten) materials and different elements are (mostly) not displayed.
   Before GO came theres was this simple rule... that separators between elements with the same (overwritten) fills got eliminated… all other one remained. This worked fine. Why could we habe this not again?
   
   CONCLUSION
   This "bug" makes the whole GO unusable for drafting display in sections. (In every planning process we have sections. If we can't use GO there… we don't need it for ground plans either.)
   To get a clean drawing, I've to add a lot of 2d-lines there.

   
   Almost everything merges together... look at this example...
   
   

   

   
   So if you do nothing else with the GO, fix this first, please.

[Andrii Levko]

Very interesting. As for lines and materials, I had a workaround, I was creating additional Pen Sets in Template, then on drawings my core materials has black solid fill and other materials like insulation, finishing has gray solid fill, but this workaround required total control over pens in Building Materials. 

[Laszlo Nagy]

Many of these points have been wished before, but the post also contains a few new ones, so it is very good to have them collected into a single thread. I will forward it to Graphisoft for the Wishlist database.

[snow]

Yes, I mentioned the method with different pen sets above… I discovered it just recently.
As you wrote, it requires a strict organization, but it works to get a usable result even though there are the lacks, I wrote in my point 2 and 3. 
(…but allow me this question here: What's the intention of GO at all, if such cumbersome process ist necessary.?

And if you want e.g. every solid material replace with an other color then the contours of these elements (e.g. gray fill, black lines) you can not balance the lack in point 6.
To get a clean and finished drawing you can just use one single material for these structure…
… and the whole shining concept in Archicad, just zapping through different kind of display (draft, construction planning etc.) with the same model, doesn't work anymore.