Shaded windowns on elevations

[sbrown]

Someone must have thought about this before, but it took me a long time to figure it out, just change your glass materials surface pattern to solid fill and the color to grey and you have nice shaded windows on your elevations.

[jbalding48677]

Now the avatar fits!!! :P :wink: :lol: :D :wink: :roll: :wink: :mrgreen:

[sbrown]

thanks Jim. You wouldn't beleive all the work arounds I've tried.

[jbalding48677]

I can imagine, thankfully we don't shade our windows here...

[Alex Page]

Note that this doesnt seem to work with shaded views - only hidden line

[adb]

Nice, I also like to go into my window family and add a few slanted model lines on the glass as well. This gives you a nice look of hand drafted glass even in a 3D view. Just make sure you draw them on the exterior plane of the glazing and not the interior. Doesn't do much for a realistic rendering but adds a nice touch to elevations and 3D views.

[SCShell]

Hey there,
We were just discussing this very topic at our last meeting. If there are any "hand drafting" folks around here, they too will remember the days when we would use pink or red pencils applied to the backside of a sheet, then blended it smooth (or to fade) for object that we wanted to "punch" on the drawings.
(ie, grade, concrete in section or plan, windows, cabinetry or countertops etc.)

I still use this technique which has been described in this thread, only I use it for more than just windows...just like the "old days". It really helps to make one's drawings more graphic and they tend to read better.

Part of the trick is to experiment with the colors used since I do use some sheets for presentations in color. But, mostly it is for the CD's. Since my working drawing sets are always printed in B & W, I tend to select colors which print well as shades of grey, just like the old 'Pink Pencil' color did (only in blue!....lol).

I add surface pattern solid fills to the following: (not complete)
Concrete
Cabinetry
Windows
Storefront Aluminum
Wood doors
Anything cut in section
Toilet Partitions
Mirrors
Wood trim
Certain Floor Finishes

When you add this technique, to "profiling" the drawing with an appropriate line weight, you end up with a really nice drawing which reads well I think.

These are just what I like to do and doesn't mean that it is either right or wrong....it is just my preference for making the drawings appear more "hand drawn" and artistic....which means that they communicate better hopefully. And, isn't that what we all do for a living?

Just my 2cents....
Good luck
Steve

[Alex Page]

Steve, Im in the middle of working out techniques to make our drawings 'sexy' - mind if you post a PDF of some of your work? Would be good to see an example

[SCShell]

Steve, Im in the middle of working out techniques to make our drawings 'sexy' - mind if you post a PDF of some of your work? Would be good to see an example

Hey there,
Here are a few examples of my CD's.
(Please excuse the JPG format; however, the PDF files all exceed the 1MB limit here.)
Hope they help.
Steve

[ejburrell67787]

Thanks for sharing those Steve, nice looking drawings! 8-)

[patricks]

Have you had any problems with those shaded areas "bleeding" together when the drawings are reproduced at a print shop? It seems that some of the drawings we have done with gray shading end up nearly black once they are reproduced into the actual sets sent out to the jobsite. :(

Right now I'm working on a historic building renovation, with thick masonry walls all shown as a solid gray fill, and I'm concerned about things like leader lines getting lost if they cross those gray walls, because the walls might end up black or something.

[tomnewsom]

Have you had any problems with those shaded areas "bleeding" together when the drawings are reproduced at a print shop? It seems that some of the drawings we have done with gray shading end up nearly black once they are reproduced into the actual sets sent out to the jobsite. :(

Right now I'm working on a historic building renovation, with thick masonry walls all shown as a solid gray fill, and I'm concerned about things like leader lines getting lost if they cross those gray walls, because the walls might end up black or something.
We use solid Red (100R 0G 0B) for existing fabric. This used to be a drawing convention about 100 years ago and makes rather handsome looking drawings. It also photocopies much lighter than 50% grey :)

[SCShell]

We use solid Red (100E 0G 0B) for existing fabric. This used to be a drawing convention about 100 years ago and makes rather handsome looking drawings. It also photocopies much lighter than 50% grey :)

Hey there,
So does that mean that the red pencil technique that I used on the back of the velum sheet is 200 years old?......lol
But, you are correct in that certain colors reproduce better than others.

Good luck
Steve

[SCShell]

Have you had any problems with those shaded areas "bleeding" together when the drawings are reproduced at a print shop?

Hey there,
It has not been too much of a problem. Every once in a while, the sets print dark. But, it is rare. I might recommend setting up a test sheet with a graded scale of colors and lines over them, with the names of the colors below so that you can identify them for future reference.
Good Luck
Steve

[patricks]

Hey there,
It has not been too much of a problem. Every once in a while, the sets print dark. But, it is rare. I might recommend setting up a test sheet with a graded scale of colors and lines over them, with the names of the colors below so that you can identify them for future reference.
Good Luck
Steve

Well it's not a problem when we print on our Oce plotter. The problem is when the print shop scans in the pages and prints many sets. Those sometimes come out dark, like the contrast has been bumped way up or something. Gray stuff (128-128-128 RGB) will sometimes come back as solid black.

[SCShell]

Hey there,
It sounds like your printers are lowering the quality of the printing to speed up the process for many sets maybe?

I have not seen this; however, I can see it if they are scanning a sheet and not printing from the original PDF.

In the meantime, here is a sheet that I am right in the middle of noting up.

Hope it helps
Steve

[ejburrell67787]

Well it's not a problem when we print on our Oce plotter. The problem is when the print shop scans in the pages and prints many sets. Those sometimes come out dark, like the contrast has been bumped way up or something. Gray stuff (128-128-128 RGB) will sometimes come back as solid black.We get some bleeding with printshop copies too. Possibly caused by lower weight of paper I suspect also - the standard stuff we get from the printshop is slightly lighter than what our office plotter uses.

[patricks]

Nice looking sheets... the only issue I have is the text font looks just a bit "too" hand-drawn. We use a font called Architext that, in my opinion, still has that look but is a bit more legible.

[SCShell]

Nice looking sheets... the only issue I have is the text font looks just a bit "too" hand-drawn. We use a font called Architext that, in my opinion, still has that look but is a bit more legible.

Hey there,
That's actually kinda funny.......That IS my hand lettering! I paid a company to convert my hand lettering into a TTF font....
I guess that you didn't know that I jumped from Hand Drafting to Revit.....without ever doing the "autocad" thing! (I still don't Autocad....)
Thanks for the kind words however, I do appreciate them!
Steve

[dbaldacchino]

Love the handwriting! I was gonna sk you for the font haha. I like those casework drawings, they're really sharp. We do just B&W all the time as we have the same reproduction issues as Patrick described. I just don't understand why they scan the darn drawings instead of just printing them from the digital file directly. I think it has something to do with the fact that by scanning, they also enter the drawing info into the database, but I still don't see it as a valid excuse.

[SCShell]

Thanks Dave.

Let's see....the score for my chicken scratch is:

In favor: 2
Against: 1

(Have to qualify this....I am not counting the possible 25 "Against" votes which would include the City's plan check folks, my Mother and Girlfriend, and most of the Contractors who have to read it!)

But, in my defense.....it is at least now "consistently" hard to read vs the way it looked around 3 am, pushing a morning deadline!

Here are the nearly finished Cab & Mill drawings, printed as colored PDFs, which I use to send to the Client for his review. When complete, I will print everything in B&W like the earlier example I posted of some of these sheets. But, the important thing to remember is that these are still just Hidden Line drawings...not Shaded with Edges which take up lots of memory and take forever to print.

Thanks
Steve
(Can ya tell that I am procrastinating and not working on what is due tomorrow!?)

[dbaldacchino]

What might make it slightly non-legible is the thickness of the "ink", not the actual style of handwriting. I still like it and don't see much of that around nowadays.

Our casework drawings don't look pretty....we just tag each piece of casework with the size and model number and give some heights. And they're just linework. I like how yours stand out with those solid fills. I'd use that technique (and shaded & shadowed views for other drawings) if I worked on my own :)

Now go back to work!

[ejburrell67787]

Love the handwriting! I was gonna sk you for the font haha. I like those casework drawings, they're really sharp. We do just B&W all the time as we have the same reproduction issues as Patrick described. I just don't understand why they scan the darn drawings instead of just printing them from the digital file directly. I think it has something to do with the fact that by scanning, they also enter the drawing info into the database, but I still don't see it as a valid excuse.You're serious that the printshop scans them?? We upload PDFs to a website for our printshop (only 4 miles away) and then they print and deliver them back to us... they can also accept electronic print files I think... (*.plt pehaps..)

[dbaldacchino]

Yes, I'm serious and I don't get it! This is a very conservative State haha