Model hatch pattern goes gray at higher scale

[twaldock]

I have just discovered that model pattern hatching changes from black to gray when the view scale is changed from 1:100 to 1:200. It goes even lighter gray at 1:500. This is in addition to any scale related line weight settings we may have defined for the project.

The problem with this is that it looks fine on screen or on a laser printer, but on a large format printer the gray lines start to break up or even disappear from the plot once it gets onto paper. A copy of that original plot will certainly lose them.

Is this a hard-coded system setting or is there some way to control it?

[rkitect]

If you zoom waaaaaaay in does it stay grey or is it appearing to be grey because of the relative scale to the screen?

[twaldock]

Yes it is gray regardless of how close you zoom in. As I said, it plots gray too.

Any ideas anyone? Better still, does anyone know of any tricks to change the line weight of pattern hatching from 1 to any other number.

[m20roxxers]

Depending upon filters view, filters and so forth it will either read the value of 1, 2 or 3.

Past 2009 this changed to the object style of an object when filters are applied, but also I believe when VG or particular views are created. I spent the time when 2010 came looking but once it was compliant with our drawing standards we stopped there.

Do u have various standards for your line weights based on scale? i would start there with what category the object, filters and VG overrides.

[twaldock]

This has nothing to do with line weights, object styles, VG overides, view filters. The same thing happens with OOTB Revit. It appears to be a system controlled effect, which I cannot override:

It only affect model pattern hatching (not drafting patterns).

It changes the intensity of the colour of the surface/cut pattern lines only (not perimeter or cut lines of the object itself); It appears to make the pattern lines halftone; and as the scale increases, it goes to quarter-tone.

For example:

At all scales from 1:1 up to 1:100 model pattern lines are black (or red for example)
At 1:200 model pattern lines are mid-grey (or pink for example)
At 1:500 model pattern lines are light-grey (or light pink for example)

View filters do not stop this effect - revit applies the filter then the half/quarter-tone after that.

[m20roxxers]

Ahh sorry I thought you were referring to line weights and hatches.

Sounds like a fun issue.

I got nothing sorry. :)

[Ning Zhou]

can Autodesk people here confirm if it's hardcoded stuff and no override at all?

[JakubG]

April 2012 - this thread is still valid :| Can anybody from Autodesk explain how to deal with that?

[joanell.mueller]

Sept 2012 - I am having the same issue as discussed above...has anyone found an explanation, or better yet a way to correct/override it?

[Griswald]

This problem is still happening in Revit 2016. I have perspective views showing walls with OOTB brick, and ceilings with OOTB 2x2 ACT. It turns out the lines get lighter depending on HOW LARGE the modeled elements are. That is, a small section of wall displays the brick surface pattern as black, but a large piece of wall displays the surface pattern gray. Same for ceilings. The bigger the ceiling/wall, the lighter the gray of the surface pattern. I'm going to have to open a support case with Autodesk directly.

[david_peterson]

When you create the pdf are you using Raster or Vector?
I've never trusted the Screen. The PDF's always seem slightly different.
If there's a lot of information on the view/sheet, Vector may not like it where Raster will.
Just a thought.

[anthony.intensify]

Still a problem in v2017.1

[twaldock]

This 'Problem' is likely to be never fixed as it is hard-coded into Revit quite deliberately. The original developers obviously thought it would be cool if model hatching gets lighter at higher scales. We have no way to change or control this ourselves.
Check out my blog post on RevitCat to see more detail on exactly how this works. (http://revitcat.blogspot.com/2016/04/revit-hatching-pattern-line-weights.html)