Line Weights

[J-G]

I am wondering how many offices customized the line weight settings that came with Revit? I have been using them as they were, but as I continue to fine tune everything I have been thinking about changing the line weights to equal those which we were using in autocad.

I started to do this, but then wondered if I was digging myself into a hole. It would be nice to have the same look and feel of our old drawings, but it would probably be easier to just find Revit settings which are pretty close.

So, how many of you have changed those settings anyway :?:

[mlgatzke]

Jonathon,

The only tweaks that I've had to make regarding lineweights is that I've had to create a Med/Wide lineweight and a Thin/Med lineweight (for Drafting Lines and Linework Tool). I had to create these to match up with some of the existing lineweights that Revit was giving me in some of the views. Other than that, everything is as it came and it's been working GREAT.

[jacob chavez]

We have also ran into this problem extensively with our details. Architects in our office is wondering what is wrong with us as draftsmen. We may be using an old template or something, but as far as I know, there are no presets for large scales (such as 1-1/2" =1' , 3"..etc.) I knew that there must be some logic behind setting these up, and so I actually developed a way to determine what these lineweights should be.

Now, in my opinion, the lineweights should "grow" as a drawing is displayed in different scales. This is because you may use a detail item that is viewed in 1"=1', 1-1/2"=1', 3"=1', and 6"=1'. If the lineweight of that detail component (determined by their object styles) stays the same across all scales, then the line stays the same weight. However, it would make sense that as the scale increases the line should grow a little thicker. Knowing this, I first wondered if the lineweights should increase directly with the scale. I quickly realized that this was not the case, as line began to appear as large blobs at the larger scales. This relationship appears to be a slight curve to which I have found a definate logic.

If you are interested, I have developed an excel file that calculates the lineweights depending on the amount that the line should increase (in thickness) as a function of the scale that it is viewed in.

This also takes advantage of the 16 object styles that revit comes equipped with. After setting these up you will have to go in an adjust your object styles for pretty much everything. Do this in your template file, and you won't have to worry about it much in the future.

JC

[PeterJ]

I think some real care is required when considering line weights at larger scale detail level.

Take a concrete slab with a curtain wall passing by it at the perimeter of a building....

When we worked with pen and ink the standard practice was to pencil, then line at say 0.1 mm then block in inside that fine line with a 1.0 mm or similar. This gave the characteristic pattern of fine construction lines and crosses at the corners of each orthogoal element. Everyone remember that?

When one works with CAD rather than repeat this three fold process we simply draw a fat line (1.0 mm) to show the edge of the concrete, but this line is in the same position that the 0.1 mm line used to be in so the concrete slab has just increased slightly in thickness.

Perhaps this is not a major issue but it is sufficient that it stops me endlessly scaling up line weights. Where greater presence is required by an element I now prefer to use a denser hatch.

P

[sbrown]

I would love to see your work(file)

Here is our delemia with lineweights. we have an hp1055 plotter and it plots very dark in my opinion, when we make plt files for our cdsets we send those to a print shop that uses an oce9800 which prints very light, so I have had to make all our lineweights heavier to compensate for the final product, that makes our check sets out of the hp very muddy. I almost need a print setup for diff. printers(can you say autocad 2000)

Another lineweight issue we have had is with text, since revit uses windows ttf fonts on the oce they printed very light almost unreadable so we had to switch our font to a heavier looking font and then bold it to get a readable print from our printshop.

[bclarch]

I agree with Peter. The use of line weights is not as simple as just scaling them up and down. Imagine how thick the lines would be for a drawing done at full scale. I like the fact that the same line weight in Revit can be set to show slightly differently in the various scales. It might take a bit of tweaking to get things the way you want but it is very powerful and it goes a long way toward making the drawings look consistent.

Peter, you also touched upon one of the reasons that CAD drawings will never (OK probably never) look like hand drafting. A thicker line that expands to both sides of the center will make a 12" foundation wall look like its 13"± @ 1/4" scale. When poche'ing concrete etc. by hand we also used to make the pattern denser toward the edges to make it "read" better. These small things definately added to the character and readability of the drawings. They could also be a time consuming pain in the a**. There are always trade-offs. I do find myself wishing that CAD drawings could look more lively but I don't miss the mind numbing boredom of doing all of the fiddley bits by hand.

[jacob chavez]

Ok everyone, here's the key. Check out the attached excel file.

I have an excel file that would answer everyones questions regarding this topic. Does anyone know if you can attach such a file to a posting. If not, does anyone have a place where we can put the file for others to download?

JC

[Scott D Davis]

ZIP it, then attached it. ZIP files are allowed.....

[jacob chavez]

As I metioned earlier, due to this phenomenon that lineweights should increase in thickness as the scale gets larger, a collegue and I developed an excel spreadsheet that generates the values for you. Download the attached file and check it out. It works great.

Instructions on how to use it:

The excel file is a handy tool. Basically what you do is under the Y and maximum value, you enter the minimum pen weight that you want for that object style (how a line associated with that object style would appear at the smallest scales such as 1/16" =1' The second value is the thickness that you would like that line to be at 6"=1'. The 0, and .5 represent the scales (0 being infinately small scale and .5 being 6"=1') The app then calculates the slope of that line and calculates the values for the pen weights on the right. Pretty cool no? I thought it would be super cool if Revit had something like this already built in. So, instead of having to put these values in manually, when you click lineweights, you encounter a series of curves that can be stretched manually. Much like photoshop does in many of its functions.

There is also a tab that shows these values plotted to show how much the lineweights increase as a function of the scale. These can be tweaked to get an exact, and accurate gradiation between your object styles. Note that the "series" number refers to the object style value.

[jacob chavez]

Has anyone gotten a chance to use this tool yet? Though it works great to calculate the lineweights for me, there's still something about this phenomenon that I can't quite figure out. Though I would like my object styles to scale up slightly, I don't want to leave my small scales (1/6",/1/8",1/4") with super thin lines all the way up to object styles 7 or 8. Even at the small scales, you need a good gradiation in your lineweights. I was thinking about breaking my object styles up into two categories, 1-8 being fairly static accross the scales and 9-16 having quite noticable gradations, but it seems like more of a workaround. Currently, my idea doesn't seem to be working all that well,as my gradations are so slight that I'm not seeing a very noticable increase in lineweights between scales. In theory, it should work well enough that you could put a metal stud detail component into a 1/4" section and it wouldn't read as black smudge.

If anyone has figured out some logic to how this should work, I'd love to hear.

JC