Basic 2d Line options

[Anonymous]

Quite often when producing plans to be used as title deed plans for the land registry, and location plans for local authorities, we need to define a site with a thick red or blue line. However, given that a thick line is not very accurate for denotation and we are usually asked to show the red line OUTSIDE the boundary. This is difficult to achieve in ArchiCAD so my wish is to have the ability to offest thick lines to one side or another. To a lesser extent the ability to have sharp not rounded corners would be useful, especially with dashed line which look terrible in a large thickness. See image below.

Thanks!

[alemanda]

You can offset very easily (group of joined) lines, polylines, etc ... it's in the pet palette.

[Anonymous]

I use a fill for that. Draw the fill to boundary nodes, then offset the required distance using "Offset all edges" from the pet palette. Then with the fill selected trace the boundary again to create a hole in the middle. Use magic wand if that works (doesn't in my case as the boundaries are parametric objects, not lines). You can make it as wide as you like, and get nice sharp corners.

[Karl Ottenstein]

A variant of Stuart's fill idea is to just draw the boundary with walls with the reference line on the boundary and wall 'mass' to the outside. Same number of clicks as doing the lines... undo/redo to select the walls just drawn, then use the 'explode' command to convert the walls to 2D lines and fills. Done. Optionally, delete the lines and just leave the fill.

[Barry Kelly]

Or you can just make the wall 0 (zero) height.
You will need to make them 'Symbolic' floor plan display as well as otherwise you will lose the fill (below the cutting plane).
They won't show in 3D but they will still be selectable so you may need to be careful with that (i.e. put them in a layer that does not show in your 3D views).

Keeping them as walls may make it easier to edit them if you need to.

Barry.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the replies. My concern with using a fill is how editible it would be going forward - a wall therefore seems like the best option.

[Aaron Bourgoin]

yet another variant! create a composite wall with your choice of poché, eliminate the outside boundary line.