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Thread: Plotting Line Weights in Revit

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    Certifiable AUGI Addict twiceroadsfool's Avatar
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    Default Re: Plotting Line Weights in Revit

    Working on the black background seems like a great idea.... Until you want to see something in a shaded 3d view. Then it feels like you hit the hash pipe and stared through a window of drizzling rain for too long...

    I have severe muscle strain in both eyes... And even i manage to do fine with the white background. And its monday, and im going on my 20th hour of the week already...

  2. #12
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    Default Re: Plotting Line Weights in Revit

    Just so you know,
    when a screen is inverted to show BLACK, certain Graphical Overrides do not translate properly, such as black poche walls, for example... The fills do not invert.

    So if one person on the team is using black fills to distinguish parts of the model, the person with black background will not not see this. And, of course, using white fills will not achieve the expected print result... food for thought. This was the final word in our office debate about background color...

    (as for line color, nah, everyone just takes to the B/W eventually... much cleaner and more visually appealing... to us.)

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    Certifiable AUGI Addict twiceroadsfool's Avatar
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    Default Re: Plotting Line Weights in Revit

    FWIW, i think everyone who "transitions" from autocad goes through an initial "i want black background, and i want color differentiation..." period. A few weeks in they all forget about it.

    The only time i wish for color differntiation, is between worksets. And even then, i only want it because im too dumb to keep things on the right workset, LOL...

  4. #14
    Revit Mararishi aaronrumple's Avatar
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    Default Re: Plotting Line Weights in Revit

    Quote Originally Posted by ntw_fox View Post
    Now you can't seriously tell me you find working on a white screen all day doesn't hurt your eyes?
    Seriously. No problem with the white at all.

    If black backgrounds were that much better on the eyes - wouldn't all the Word and Excel users which far outnumber architects have switched their setup to a black background?

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    Default Re: Plotting Line Weights in Revit

    Well my first experience using CAD in an office environment was Microstation back in 2001-02, which had a black background also, but then the line colors represented different element types, i.e. yellow for walls, green for doors and windows, blue for equipment, orange for callout lines and tags, red for door and window tags, etc.

    So then when I had my first (and only) experience with AutoCAD during my last year of school, I tried to set that up to emulate what I remembered from Microstation. I never got the whole color = line weight thing. That would SERIOUSLY confuse me. I always found myself switching on the true line weight button in CAD so I could actually see the line weight size.

    So I suppose that's why I made the Revit transition rather easily. I WANT to see stuff on the screen exactly the way they're going to print. That way I don't have to worry about getting 2 lines too close together in a detail that they appear as a single thicker line. WYSIWYG really is the best way.

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    Default Re: Plotting Line Weights in Revit

    Quote Originally Posted by aaronrumple View Post
    Seriously. No problem with the white at all.

    If black backgrounds were that much better on the eyes - wouldn't all the Word and Excel users which far outnumber architects have switched their setup to a black background?
    Quick fix for excessive brightness, tweak Brightness and Contrast settings on your monitor. Sure, being able to set the background to a REALLY pale blue might be nice. But setting it to black is just trying to make it look like something familiar, which I honestly believe makes it even harder to learn how Revit is SUPPOSED to work. The appearance of AutoCAD leads to AutoCAD like decisions, which are wrong in Revit about 99% of the time.

    And color on screen to mean lineweight means I can't use color on screen to represent something architecturally important, like red for rated assemblies in a code coordination view. THAT means more to me than knowing how heavy the line is going to be. Yes, it takes a little while to get used to, but once you start doing MORE you realize DIFFERENT isn't so bad.

    Gordon

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    Default Re: Plotting Line Weights in Revit

    Quote Originally Posted by Andre Carvalho View Post
    Even paper is not black. How did you deal with a bunch of black lines when drawing by hand on paper, if you ever did?

    Andre Carvalho
    Paper isn't black? How about that! I'm sure everyone will be happy to hear that. Seriously, what's the problem with working on a black screen, which is after all just a preference but one that long term Revit users (some would call them zealots) seem to consider contemptible. If someone wants to work on a green or pink screen that's a personal preference and one they are entitled to use so really, what's the problem? When I work on a black screen most programs are smart enough to know that the screen is black so they convert the black lines to white, which may be hard for many to get your head around but it's something I'm generally happy with and if I want to turn those white lines to a different colour then I can, easily.
    Oh yes I spent years on the drafting board but changed to CAD 27 years ago when the only choice was green lines on a black screen - you could actually count individual pixels making up lines onscreen back then. I know you probably think your sharp,but there are other knives in the drawer that may be just a little bit sharper so you don't have to resort to remarks such as the one you made.

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    Default Re: Plotting Line Weights in Revit

    Quote Originally Posted by gordon.price View Post
    Quick fix for excessive brightness, tweak Brightness and Contrast settings on your monitor. Sure, being able to set the background to a REALLY pale blue might be nice. But setting it to black is just trying to make it look like something familiar, which I honestly believe makes it even harder to learn how Revit is SUPPOSED to work. The appearance of AutoCAD leads to AutoCAD like decisions, which are wrong in Revit about 99% of the time.

    And color on screen to mean lineweight means I can't use color on screen to represent something architecturally important, like red for rated assemblies in a code coordination view. THAT means more to me than knowing how heavy the line is going to be. Yes, it takes a little while to get used to, but once you start doing MORE you realize DIFFERENT isn't so bad.

    Gordon
    I'll take your comment about a black screen as a personal opinion but for me it's a personal preference and nothing to do at all with trying to make Revit look like AutoCAD. I treat Revit for what it is ie a program that is totally different to AutoCAD and I'm not trying to turn it into something I know it isn't but please tell me what's the problem with someone wanting to work with a different coloured background as I simply can't see what the problem is and all I hear is that "Revit' looks better that way - sorry but a white screen doesn't cut it and all I get is eye strain (which I don't get working on black).

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    Default Re: Plotting Line Weights in Revit

    Quote Originally Posted by patricks View Post
    Well my first experience using CAD in an office environment was Microstation back in 2001-02, which had a black background also, but then the line colors represented different element types, i.e. yellow for walls, green for doors and windows, blue for equipment, orange for callout lines and tags, red for door and window tags, etc.

    So then when I had my first (and only) experience with AutoCAD during my last year of school, I tried to set that up to emulate what I remembered from Microstation. I never got the whole color = line weight thing. That would SERIOUSLY confuse me. I always found myself switching on the true line weight button in CAD so I could actually see the line weight size.

    So I suppose that's why I made the Revit transition rather easily. I WANT to see stuff on the screen exactly the way they're going to print. That way I don't have to worry about getting 2 lines too close together in a detail that they appear as a single thicker line. WYSIWYG really is the best way.
    I understand what you say about line thicknesses but you're not going to tell me that when you're looking at an entire drawing sheet your not seriously going to tell me that you can tell how thick a particular black line is? That's just not possible with all one colour lines but easy with colour even when viewing an entire sheet onscreen, though even then there are limitations.
    Relating colour to line thickness is not difficult and basically relates to the days when drafting pens were colour coded for line thickness. For example a pen with a white band was always 0.25mm, a red band was 0.18 and a yellow one was 0.35 and brown was 0.5. This system was used by AutoCAD to fix its colour codes. There is little need, and the standard here advises, that up to 4 pen thicknesses be used on a drawing so all you need to remember is what 4 colours mean, which I think is something that even a mouse could remember. When I use AutoCAD, which isn't often these days, I also use colour to emphasise something in particular and I assign specific pen thicknesses to them in the plot utility so it's a case of set then and forget them. There are of course pros and cons with working with colour as there is with working with black and white and neither is perfect... it's just a matter of preference. My preference at present is to work on a black background but that may change and I may at some stage decide to go to white and working with colour is then not an option. I don't think that Revit is so perfect that it has to force users into using it in only one way.

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    Default Re: Plotting Line Weights in Revit

    Quote Originally Posted by aaronrumple View Post
    Seriously. No problem with the white at all.

    If black backgrounds were that much better on the eyes - wouldn't all the Word and Excel users which far outnumber architects have switched their setup to a black background?
    LOL you're comparing an apple with an orange here and even I have seen colour used in both Word and Excel but at least in those programs the user has the choice of working with another colour background if they want unlike Revit where it's either black or white but even that choice seems to be too many for most long term Revit users.
    Look I like Revit a lot more than I like AutoCAD, which I've used since it was released, but really the user deserves to have the option of working in a way that's best for them not in a way that someone else decides.

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