To the McNeel (Rhino) and Asuni (VisualARQ) Development Teams,
I am writing to report a critical architectural limitation regarding how both native Rhino 8 Section Styles and VisualARQ Section Attributes handle boundary and hatch colors. This core issue severely restricts advanced, color-coded drafting workflows in Layout space.
Currently, when a Section Style/Attribute’s color is set to “By Layer” or “By Object”, it exclusively inherits the global 3D Display Color (Layer.Color). It completely ignores Rhino’s Print Color (Layer.PlotColor) and, most importantly, Detail Print Color overrides.
The Workflow & The Core Problem: In professional BIM and architectural documentation, we do not simply print everything in black and white. We frequently produce dynamic, color-coded layouts from a single 3D model. For example, in an MEP plan, we might want plumbing sections to print blue, HVAC sections green, and architectural walls light gray.
To achieve this, we rely heavily on Rhino’s powerful Detail Print Color overrides, allowing the same object to display different print colors across different Layout Details.
However, because the core Rhino 8 Section Style architecture (which VisualARQ relies upon) only reads the global 3D Display Color, any section cut through our model ignores these Layout-specific overrides. A wall modeled in bright red for 3D visibility will forcefully generate a bright red section hatch in every single layout, ruining the professional 2D presentation.
(Note: Suggesting the “Black and White” print setting is NOT a solution, as our core requirement is to output specific, layout-dependent colored drawings, just not the 3D working colors.)
The Flawed Workaround: To stop sections from printing in bright 3D modeling colors, we are currently forced to hardcode the Section Styles to a “Custom” dark gray/black color. But since “Custom” is a static, global setting, it completely destroys the parametric flexibility. We lose the ability to have a sectioned object change color dynamically depending on the active Layout Detail.
Expected Behavior & Proposed Solution: This is fundamentally a Rhino core SDK limitation that cascades into plugins like VisualARQ. We highly request the following implementation:
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For McNeel: Add a “By Print Color” option in the native Rhino Section Style definitions. Crucially, the section generation engine MUST intelligently respect Detail Print Color overrides when the section is viewed or printed from within a Layout Detail.
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For Asuni: Once supported by the core (or independently implemented within the VA engine), ensure all VisualARQ parametric objects can assign their Section Boundaries and Patterns to “By Print Color,” fully respecting detail overrides.
Bridging this gap between colorful 3D modeling and layout-specific 2D drafting is essential for modern BIM workflows. Thank you for your hard work, and we look forward to seeing this advanced drafting capability in a future update!
Best regards