Special Use Lineweights

[ron.sanpedro]

So I knew that lineweight 1 was used by all hatches in materials, but I just discovered something interesting, and also perhaps buggy.
So I placed an exterior brick on CMU wall, and when I changed the value of lineweight 1 to .001" all the hatch thinned out as I expected. Then just for fun I changed the value of lineweight 2 to .001". All the lines between materials in the wall got thinner, but seemingly not as thin as the hatch. So I zoomed in, and while the lines between materials and the cut profile got bigger, the lines of the hatch did not. I also tried changing lineweight 1 to .003" while leaving lineweight 2 at .001", and after exporting to a 300DPI PNG, it looks like the So I have three questions I guess

1: Given that lineweight 1 is a special use thing for hatches, and lineweight 2 seems to be the same with materials in walls, are there any other undocumented special use lineweights like this? Factory, can you comment?
2: In the PNG, the orthogonal lines of the insulation hatch at .003" seem to match the material lines even though lineweight 2 is .001" So perhaps there is a lower limit to what those material lines can display, no matter what the setting of lineweight 2? Again, Factory, am I on the right track?
3: Are hatches displayed in a not so WYSIWYG way? Perhaps for performance reasons? Not sure that it matters, but it would be nice to know that I can't totally trust the screen when it comes to extreme zooms.

In the end, I think this makes me want to set lineweight 1 to .001", lineweight 2 to .003" and then use lineweight 3 for my Thin lines, at probably .006". I will keep lineweight 1 totally dedicated to hatches only, and lineweight 2 totally dedicated to material seperations only, then I can monkey with my own lineweights from 3 on down. The result should be a much cleaner drawing when hatches are really very thin as they should be, and also a much cleaner drawing when the divisions between materials in walls and such are less muddied by overthick lines. By also using a Medium lineweight 4 for tags and symbols and such I will finally be close to a drawing that actually looks like I want it to. Sure wish this was documented somewhere!
And I really don't understand the defaults. I mean, is there really a single architect on the planet that wants their floor material hatch, furniture, and annotation symbols all one lineweight, and super thin at that? Somehow I doubt it, and yet that is Revit OOTB. Nutty!

Best,
Gordon

[aaronrumple]

1. The edge between materials is actually controlled by the wall object style settings and is not predefined or special. Look at the subcategory "Common Edges". It is also worth looking at the "Override Host Layers" dialog to get more information on how you can manage these internal lineweights based on their function.


So the hatch is the only "special" object tied to a preset lineweight you need to worry about. All others are configurable thru the object styles.....

[LRaiz]

I don't know if 2008 still behaves this way but in the old days (up until 7.0) there was a hard limit on how thin a line could be drawn. This limit was set to 1/300 of an inch. So even if user set pen thickness to 0.001" Revit would still draw corresponding lines 0.003333" thick. The reason for selecting this particular limit had to do with functioning of lower resolution ink jet printers.

[ron.sanpedro]

1. The edge between materials is actually controlled by the wall object style settings and is not predefined or special. Look at the subcategory "Common Edges". It is also worth looking at the "Override Host Layers" dialog to get more information on how you can manage these internal lineweights based on their function.


So the hatch is the only "special" object tied to a preset lineweight you need to worry about. All others are configurable thru the object styles.....

Aha! I thought I was seeing a trend, and failed to verify the other option. THanks for the correction. It does still leave me wanting to use 2 only for the common edges, as I really want them thinner than my own thin lines, but thicker than hatch. Of course as a sub-category I could change their color too, and lord knows some architect is going to figure out they can, and thus want to. Might even be me, but I am ... fighting... the... urge.

But it does seem like there is some sort of lower bound to lineweight 2, as even when lineweight 2 was .001" and lineweight 1 was .001" (and Common Edges was using lineweight 2) I still got a big delta between the two. I wonder if everything but lineweight 1 still has the old .003" limit? Probably doesn't matter, as only 1 would ever need to be that this, I would think. But someone somewhere probably wants a lineweight 2 of .002". ;)

Thanks,
Gordon

[ron.sanpedro]

I don't know if 2008 still behaves this way but in the old days (up until 7.0) there was a hard limit on how thin a line could be drawn. This limit was set to 1/300 of an inch. So even if user set pen thickness to 0.001" Revit would still draw corresponding lines 0.003333" thick. The reason for selecting this particular limit had to do with functioning of lower resolution ink jet printers.

Leonid,
I hope that approach isn't still being used. I would much rather see the option allowed, with documentation explaining that those with low resolution printers should never use a lineweight smaller than .003, rather than limiting the whole product, and taking away a lineweight that I may have bought my very expensive laser printer specifically for (among other things). Even setting a default of .003", then documenting that you can go lower, but here are the caveats would be ok.

And while I have you in a thread ;)...
Can you offer any insight into the default lineweights? Is this an old performance thing also? Or more of a "We know we aren't going to satisfy everyone with the defaults, they are Architects after all!" and thus making a default category mapping that is pretty neutral? This seems like something that could be added to the Customization section of the manual, letting people know what kind of possibilities the product actually offers.
Then again, maybe it is in the 2008 manual, I haven't had a chance to read that monster cover to cover yet, as much as I think I actually need to.

And also, thanks for lurking. It is great to get the occasional nugget from the Revit Brain Trust.

Best,
Gordon

[aaronrumple]

I don't know if 2008 still behaves this way but in the old days (up until 7.0) there was a hard limit on how thin a line could be drawn. This limit was set to 1/300 of an inch. So even if user set pen thickness to 0.001" Revit would still draw corresponding lines 0.003333" thick. The reason for selecting this particular limit had to do with functioning of lower resolution ink jet printers.
The hard limit has been adjusted downward in 2008 to 0.001". However I see little need to set it this low as you mention. Most CAD files will print at 300 DPI which means that your thinest printable lineweight will be 1/300" (0.00333") Even that will appear somewhat poor quality when rasterized along an angle.

If you print mostly 600 DPI half size sets then maybe 0.001" is of some use as the lines will then print 0.001665"

[ron.sanpedro]

The hard limit has been adjusted downward in 2008 to 0.001". However I see little need to set it this low as you mention. Most CAD files will print at 300 DPI which means that your thinest printable lineweight will be 1/300" (0.00333") Even that will appear somewhat poor quality when rasterized along an angle.

If you print mostly 600 DPI half size sets then maybe 0.001" is of some use as the lines will then print 0.001665"

I guess I see using Revit as a design tool, and I have consistently had complaints that the hatch patterns are just too fat and come to dominate an image inappropriately, which I agree with (for design drawings). And for design drawings, we do often use a 600 DPI inkjet plotter that gives lovely thin lines, great looking solid fills, etc. and would like to have Revit push the plotter to its limit, rather than treat that really expensive plotter like something a tenth the cost.
I do wish there was a way to make the hatches us lineweight 2 in some views, and 1 in others, then I could have super high resolution presentation graphics, and lower resolution but reproducible CDs. But I get close by setting the hatch to .001", and then getting a .003" line out of the fast but lower resolution plotter. I assume the low cost printers that caused the issue failed to gracefully deal with lines below their threshold? Thus far I have not seen a problem, but I guess I could have just been lucky so far.

Thanks,
Gordon

[aaronrumple]

I guess I see using Revit as a design tool, and I have consistently had complaints that the hatch patterns are just too fat and come to dominate an image inappropriately, which I agree with (for design drawings). And for design drawings, we do often use a 600 DPI inkjet plotter that gives lovely thin lines, great looking solid fills, etc. and would like to have Revit push the plotter to its limit, rather than treat that really expensive plotter like something a tenth the cost.
I do wish there was a way to make the hatches us lineweight 2 in some views, and 1 in others, then I could have super high resolution presentation graphics, and lower resolution but reproducible CDs. But I get close by setting the hatch to .001", and then getting a .003" line out of the fast but lower resolution plotter. I assume the low cost printers that caused the issue failed to gracefully deal with lines below their threshold? Thus far I have not seen a problem, but I guess I could have just been lucky so far.

Thanks,
Gordon
You can set different lineweights to Pen 1 based on scale.

[ron.sanpedro]

You can set different lineweights to Pen 1 based on scale.

I have done that somewhat sucessfully for residential stuff, where all CD plans and elevations are 1/4", and all presentation stuff is 1/8" (and printed to 11X17 brown paper with shadows on and some prismacolor over the top!). But for the large projects the office does, presentations and CDs are often at the same scale, or at least there are drawings in the CD set that are at the same scale as the Presentation drawings. If people continue to have issues I will probably create a CD lineweight mapping, and an SD lineweight mapping, and have people Transfer Project Standards. On the off chance they really need to do another Presentation print after CDs start, they could import the SD lineweights, print, then import the CD lineweights again.
But it does rais one more question about how to do multiple, sometimes at odds, "sets" in one Revit file. Here we are dealing with the lineweights issue between SD and CD, but there are also issues like totally different DD packages for Design Review, which are required by jurisdiction to use the same sheet numbering as the CD package, and often must be revised and reprinted well into the CD process. Revit offers no mechanism to have multiple sets with duplicate sheet numbers, and that really is important. It would also be nice to have SD and CD elevations and sections, with separate tags for each, so you can graphically differentiate the sets.

All tangential, and wishlist items.

Best,
Gordon

[DaveP]

The hard limit has been adjusted downward in 2008 to 0.001".
That's great to hear. I've had a few requests for an "Extra Thin" line weight. For example, things WAY in the background in elevations, or some less-important items in a Detail. Admittedly, not much uses this line weight, but, you know, "We used to use it"

Since so many things are already built using Line Weight 1, I didn't want to mess with its weight, so I'm using Line Weight 16 as super-thin. I know it kind of violates the purity, but - seriously - are you really going to need a Line a half-inch thick?

[ron.sanpedro]

That's great to hear. I've had a few requests for an "Extra Thin" line weight. For example, things WAY in the background in elevations, or some less-important items in a Detail. Admittedly, not much uses this line weight, but, you know, "We used to use it"

Since so many things are already built using Line Weight 1, I didn't want to mess with its weight, so I'm using Line Weight 16 as super-thin. I know it kind of violates the purity, but - seriously - are you really going to need a Line a half-inch thick?

So when you say "Since so many things are already built using Line Weight 1" do you mean in the hard wired way hatches do? Or just Categories that use Lineweight 1? I'm playing with moving everything that uses 1 to 3, and everything that uses 2 moves to 4, so I can then have dedicated control over hatches and common lines.
But if you mean the former, and there are other lineweights like 1 then I might want to rethink my approach a bit.

Thanks,
Gordon

[DaveP]

So when you say "Since so many things are already built using Line Weight 1" do you mean in the hard wired way hatches do? Or just Categories that use Lineweight 1?
Yes, I'm talking about categories that use Lineweight 1.
I also had considered bumping everything up a weight or two, but then what do you do with OOTB families and especially Annotation families? I decided I've got enough work to do when I need to upgrade to the newest version without manually editing every family that comes with Revit. People here also (shudder) tend to download stuff, & most of that stuff would not print right if we messed with the "standard" Line weights.

[ron.sanpedro]

Yes, I'm talking about categories that use Lineweight 1.
I also had considered bumping everything up a weight or two, but then what do you do with OOTB families and especially Annotation families? I decided I've got enough work to do when I need to upgrade to the newest version without manually editing every family that comes with Revit. People here also (shudder) tend to download stuff, & most of that stuff would not print right if we messed with the "standard" Line weights.

I think this still works. Say you had furniture that was printing lineweight 1. In your template you remap Furniture to Lineweight 4 (because thin was too thin anyway!), and then any OOTB Furniture family works because it will be defined by Category, and the Category has a lineweight set in the Template. Annotations are the same way. I have already bumped all our Annotations to use Lineweight 3, so now I just change them again to use 5. As long as Families are Category driven, all is good.

Gordon