Draw order in wall styles

[kevin.bell.72378]

Description: Draw order in wall styles to give the user greater control over what lines of each component appear on top.

Currently wall components are drawn strictly based upon the order of the components in the components tab in wall styles, the problem is that if I have a wall which is Brickwork, insulation, cavity, blockwork I would want green lines for the brickwork and blockwork with a thin red line in the middle for the insulation / cavity boundary.

Currently in ACA each component comprises of two lines, and so if you set up the wall I mentioned above you would get a red line on the inner face of the blockwork. By being able to set the draw order I would be able to tell ACA that the insulation / cavity is behind and so the green lines of the Brick / Blockwork would be in front.

(I know you can use shrink wrap - but this is a blunt edged tool and will not produce satisfactory results if you have several components which you want behind)

How Used: This would be a simple column addition to the components tab in the wall styles, users would just need to put a 1,2, 3 etc in this column with 1 being in front and higher numbers behind.

Feature Affinity: Wall styles

I attach a drawing showing the problem and a mock up of the desired results.

[H-Angus]

There is already control of the draw order of components within the display properties.

It just takes a little bit more thought on what priorities to assign to components.

It's not perfect but tends to work quite well.

[kevin.bell.72378]

There is already control of the draw order of components within the display properties.

It just takes a little bit more thought on what priorities to assign to components.

It's not perfect but tends to work quite well.

mmm - Not tried this - but the problem I forsee is that I base my priorities on those which AutoDesk use so that my wall styles will work / join with theirs. (Essentially I copy a AutoDesk wall style out of the content browser and use its priorities).

So I cannot guarentee that the component I want will be low enough to be displayed behind the one which I want on top.

[H-Angus]

mmm - Not tried this - but the problem I forsee is that I base my priorities on those which AutoDesk use so that my wall styles will work / join with theirs. (Essentially I copy a AutoDesk wall style out of the content browser and use its priorities).

So I cannot guarantee that the component I want will be low enough to be displayed behind the one which I want on top.

Yep agreed, it's not perfect and could/should be more intuitive.

Do you use the priorities in the attached (taken from the help file) ? It seems to me that this is taken into account to a certain degree, for example in the attached there are four different Air Gap priorities depending on the wall construction. I can't immediately see where there is a conflict (which means nothing ;) )

On a side note, I tend to have the shrinkwrap boundary turned on and then show all inner component boundaries in a thinner line, so it's not a problem that I run into too often.

[kevin.bell.72378]

I did not know the help file listed out the priorities!!

I just load a style from the content browser and copy its priorities - these look to be the same as those you have listed. :)

Like you I actually use the shrink swap and then all inner components on a thin line and this works well.

But I just think the whole thing could be improved and simplified if priorities were listed in the component tab - its always a pain trying to explain to a user why their red line is not being shown...

[H-Angus]

I did not know the help file listed out the priorities!!

I just load a style from the content browser and copy its priorities - these look to be the same as those you have listed. :)

Like you I actually use the shrink swap and then all inner components on a thin line and this works well.

But I just think the whole thing could be improved and simplified if priorities were listed in the component tab - its always a pain trying to explain to a user why their red line is not being shown...

It would be nice wouldn't it?

It seems that draw order in general (ie in Autocad based objects as well) is a feature that is a popular choice for improvement. There is some general discussion regarding draw order in this thread (http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=73899&highlight=draw+order), perhaps similar functionality could also be included in ACA when it makes its way into Autocad.