I’m currently working on the conceptual design phase of a project and need to output simple floor plans and sections quickly. I’m struggling to find a stable workflo and would appreciate some advice on which method is recommended.
In my practice, both common methods have their drawbacks:
1: Using “SetPlanView” in Model Space
Pros: linetypes, and lineweights seems display correctly as expected.
Cons: Having multiple PlanViews significantly slows down file responsiveness. Additionally, batch printing from Model Space is extremely tedious and inefficient.
2: Using Live Viewports in Layout Space
Pros: Much faster to set up and more convenient for organization.
Cons:
Display Accuracy: Linetypes/weights don’t follow parameters perfectly; square line caps and corner joins are often ignored in the viewport.
Lack of View Depth Control & Display Order: Since we cannot set a specific view depth for a live viewport, it is difficult to control the visible range of a plan. For example, ground-level site context or outdoor stairs from the 1st floor often show up in the 3rd-floor plan.
There are also issues with draw order—e.g., wall hatches covering column hatches,blocks with hatch on lower level appear on upper plan(though become normal when print)
Print Quality: Printing from a live Layout viewport seems to convert curves and arcs into polylines（May it’s a Rhino limitation?). Even at 900+ DPI, the quality is noticeably inferior to printing directly from Model Space.
Anyway the both workflows make me painful in some way, so any insights would be greatly appreciated!
1.The linetype issues disappeared after I readjusted the line weights and Rhino print settings. But now, the axis scale is correct in Layout prints while being oversized in PlanView prints. This also brings up a confusion: is Linetype Scale ineffective for guide lines? Changing the scale to 50 made no difference in either model or layout space.
2.Hiding lower level means hiding the lower stairs which suppose to show on plan.I don’t see a bottom offset setting on level panel, just top offset, and don’t really know how it works. Could you give more information?
3. You can go to ROOF page of the test file and see the blocks with white hatch on lower level show on the roof plan. The column-wall overlay problem(on the bottom of PDF) seems to because the wall&column are not snap to the upper slab and the gap happens to be the same value to the setting of top offset.Not sure, and still, don’t know how top offset works.
4.I tried 1500+ DPI and the outcome is decent, not sure if it still works on section with many curves.
It looks like the linetype scale of guides is not consistent in printing results. We will revise this.
I guess defining a custom plan view depth wouldn’t help you here because it would clip (partially) the stair in the level below as well.
What you can do is to select the stairs that you want to see in the plan view, and under its “Section Attributes”, in the Properties panel, uncheck the “Clippable status”:
Beware that this setting can’t be defined by view. That means that the stair will show up in other views as well. We can improve this in future versions.
I’m not sure what you are referring here. Can you share a screenshot and point what you seeing?
In any case, I’ve seen this in your PDF:
Is that what you mean by “wall hatches covering column hatches”? If it isn’t, Can you show a screenshot of how what you mean?. When I print your layouts, I don’t get this result, so I’m not sure how to reproduce this error. I’ve tried it with Rhino PDF and 1200 DPI:
Take a look at this video tutorial of the Level Manager. It’s old, but I believe it will help you understand how the Top and Bottom level offsets work (minute 2’): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYpR8j47sBo
About the white hatch item, when go to ROOF layout page,the 2D furniture blocks with hatch on the lower level show up by mistake, however it doesn’t influence the print result.
Hi @ZHUO, VisualARQ developers figured out that the reason why the hatches of those blocks appear in the wrong level is that there is some draw order applied on them. If you edit the block and clear the draw order ( ClearDrawOrder ) of the geometry involved, the hatches won’t appear anymore in the wrong level.
