Layout & Drafting: What's the plan?

[Eugen]

@jsbzh

Archicad struggle with working with medium size STL files that have more than 50k faces

Oh boy, you are right! Struggling with this, too. ArchiCAD is cool, but how come such a highly developed software can be brought to it’s knees by importing some stupid mesh with a polycount every cellphone is comfortable with…

@jsbzh

other information about the object (not depending on the layer; already a bit in rhino) that can be added with a plus and minus button or for future smart planning developments, such as cost or other relevant factors.

You mean Attribute User Text? Create key/value pairs to your liking.

VisualArq brings ‘real’ custom parameters, though:

@mary

Section Style controls the fill style that the object is clipped with.

Please include the colors of the section, too! Really.

But wait! I sniff a chance here to really boost Rhino’s drafting capabilities…
A proposal:
Why not generalize ‘Section Styles’ to ‘Styles’? These ‘Styles’ would be applicable to objects or layers, and would contain all the usual parameters for an object’s appearance:
Display Color, Display Mode, Material, Linetype, Linetype Scale, Print Color, Print Width, Clip, Section Pattern, Section Pattern Rotation, Section Pattern Scale, S.P. foreground color(!), S.P. background color(!).
You mentioned a Section Style Manager (btw. the link is private). Make it a Style Manager, where a list of styles can be defined.
Every object parameter would then have an additional value ‘By Style’, so it can either follow a style or have a local override.

The great advantage of this would obviously be to have a central hub to change many object’s params at once.
Some time ago I uttered the wish for global colors. These ‘Styles’ I just mentioned would deliver global colors as a by-product!

To take this even further, Layouts/Details could have this Style parameter, too, to globally override what’s shown. This would make things possible we know from the ‘big’ architectural apps like ArchiCAD, Revit etc.

Think about it: there’s a Style defined, maybe ‘shop drawing 1:500’, where you define the complete looks of what goes to paper (or DWG output, please). Change maybe a color or a linestyle in the Style Manager, and pling!, the complete drawing changes. Pretty much what Display Styles already do for the viewport appearance, but for print.

Not that I have thought this through fully (how could I), but doesn’t this sound tempting…
Thanks!

[jsbzh]

@Eugen

Oh boy, you are right! Struggling with this, too. ArchiCAD is cool, but how come such a highly developed software can be brought to it’s knees by importing some stupid mesh with a polycount every cellphone is comfortable with…

That’s hilarious! It’s so true, too.

@Eugen

Why not generalize ‘Section Styles’ to ‘Styles’? These ‘Styles’ would be applicable to objects or layers, and would contain all the usual parameters for an object’s appearance:
Display Color, Display Mode, Material, Linetype, Linetype Scale, Print Color, Print Width, Clip, Section Pattern, Section Pattern Rotation, Section Pattern Scale, S.P. foreground color(!), S.P. background color(!).

That’s what I was referring to with classes. If we can modify each section parameter, then I’m on board.
(Some countries require specific line thickness for building applications, so you may need to draw everything twice in 2D + photoshop for color to meet the requirements.)

[Eugen]

@jsbzh

That’s what I was referring to with classes.

Looks like the time is ripe for something like this!

Please, McNeel, don’t get lost in details with this topic, but look at it from a meta-level!

[18010059285 (Archi-BC)]

For architects’ node drawing work, such as 1:50 or smaller scales, we have some more detailed drawing requirements.
For a finer slice thickening effect, we want the edge lines of the solid we slice to be offset inward instead of being thickened directly. This makes the display more accurate.
In addition, we usually need flexible section material overlay function, solid seams of the same material should be hidden and not thickened, and cut lines for high-priority solids should completely cover low-priority solids.
The following image is a very simple demonstration. The drawings come from the AutoCAD plugin.