slow printing Shadows got you down? try this!

[hand471037]

OK, so I came up with this because I've got this sheet of Shadow Impact Studies; nine plan views showing the shadows throughout the year. I like to use perspective Camera views for this, so that you get that 'floating above' feeling. Anyways, it was taking an ungodly amount of time to print that sheet, and so I came up with a trick to make it go a lot faster.

For non-keyed views, like these shadow studies, if you open the view, set up your shadows and everything, and then export that view to a high-quality jpg, you can turn around and place the image on the sheet in place of a viewport. If you do as I do, and drop it into a drafting view first, you can even have it titled just like the other viewports. However, being a graphic, it prints much faster, for the computer doesn't have to calc out the shadows at print time anymore...

Obviously this isn't the best solution for everything, but for Schematic sets and such it seems to be helping out a lot...

[beegee]

Good tip Jeffrey, thanks.

[narlee]

Jeff McGrew: "...the computer doesn't have to calc out the shadows at print time anymore..."

I find this statement curious. I assumed the shadows were calced (sp?) out before "making" them. Why does the computer have to calc out the shadows at print time and not other thing? I'm not questioning Jeff McGrew's assertion, for he is a very, very :) smart fellow!! I just don't understand and am perplexxed. I would assume the Factory would resolved this in future releases. In the meantime, Jeff's solution is excellent. Thanks for that!

Thanks in advance for enlightenment,
Geof Narlee.

[hand471037]

Well I don't know if what I said is still the case. With the first build of Revit 7, you had to print raster to have the shadows pop up. When you print raster, your computer takes all the Revit linework and turns it into raster graphics prior to sending it to the printer. This adds time, for it must convert the linework to graphics for each view that's not already a graphic. The more complex the view, the longer it takes, and when you add shadows into the mix it could take a long time to print one out.

However, if the sheet is already made up of mostly raster graphics, i.e. imported images, then the computer has a lot less work to do to get it ready for the printer. Hense why your titlesheet with the big rendering on it spools faster than your floorplans.

But now you can print shadows using the much-faster vector settings. When printing Vector, your computer is feeding the linework directly to the printer, no conversion.

However, not all printers were created equal, and therefor there's a higher chance that something may not work right with Vector. If everythings just a raster image, it's pretty fool-proof, for it's just printing a big 'snapshot' of your sheet. Vector is letting the printer figure out the lines & fonts instead, which sometimes doesn't work out.

For example, at our office, the color laser printer vastly preffers the Raster mode, for then you don't have strange font issues or doors missing off the plan and things like that. But the HP plotter and b&w laser don't care...

So, now that you can print shadows under vector it has really spead things up for us, except when printing to the color laser. So this 'tip' would be good for when you have to print Raster, like we do to the color and the Adobe PDF writer.

[narlee]

Thanks very much, Jeff.

[Scott D Davis]

Another tip to piggy-back on Jeffery's tip:

Still want to do production work in 6.1, but really like those shadows in 7.0? After making changes, save your model in 6.1. Open it in 7.0, turn on shadows, export the views to JPG. Now go back to 6.1, open your project, and add the JPG images to drafting views as Jeffrey suggests! BAM! Shadows in 6.1!

[SCShell]

Scott, simply genious!
Steve Shell

[Haden]

Still want to do production work in 6.1, but really like those shadows in 7.0?
Are there Revit users out there who have good reason to want to continue to do this, even now after the new build of 7.0 has addressed most if not all of the question marks which appeared in 7.0?

[Allen Lacy]

Are there Revit users out there who have good reason to want to continue to do this, even now after the new build of 7.0 has addressed most if not all of the question marks which appeared in 7.0?

Yes. I'm working on a project with worksets (one user) that's just going into Construction Documents. I haven't wanted to switch to 7.0 for a couple of reasons. One, I haven't had time to upgrade families, annotations, etc. to 7.0 and I don't want the slow down each time I need something. And two, I'm not that comfortable switching versions with worksets yet.

[Martin P]

BAM! Shadows in 6.1!

Unfortunately not BIM! ;) (not parametric) good idea though.


Are there Revit users out there who have good reason to want to continue to do this, even now after the new build of 7.0 has addressed most if not all of the question marks which appeared in 7.0?

We have made it office procedure to finish a project in the build it was started in. (ie we do not upgrade projects) Just incase there are any quirks - not to say there will be but you never know..