forum.datacad.com

Can you render a front elevation (2D) in O2C without having to convert it to 3D ? What is the quiickest process ? We purchased O2C and now need to get some help on to use it to best fit our firm.

Thank You.
Amy

Greetings Amy,

You can render an elevation, but you don't need o2c; since o2c only works on 3D. Just use solid fills, and/or bitmap fills. A background bitmap would also be relatively easy to do.

[shameless plug] I have an RGB file, available from Cheap Tricks, that is the Benjamin Moore Historical Colors palette, that is good for this. [/shameless plug]

I am also very interested in rendering 2D elevations & plans within Datacad. It would be great if O2c could be used to render 2D images because of the tools that it has ie. the ability to create translucent or glass like properties, applying color to bitmap images of materials, creating reflective surface qualities etc...

Can anyone e-mail me a sample DataCad file & PDF image of a 2D elevation that was rendered within Datacad using only 2D methods. I would greatly appreciate any samples that I can learn from.

Thank you,

Giuseppe Barberio

2D render of the DataCAD would be interesting if it made possible to create rays of light in the texture, control of transparency and dynamic edition of the dimensions of the image of the texture. And still adds to this list the gradation of values of tones.

At the moment that this is not possible, it has powerful edition programs that can complement the work of design of the DataCAD for 2D render.

I have used o2c to create colour elevations, which were just for presentation and it had no notation, if you generate a colour elevation, with shadows, you may be able to save that image and import that into datacad set it in behind your drawn elevation.. just a thought.. might have to try it out to see if it would work..

Emc Downunder wrote:I have used o2c to create colour elevations, which were just for presentation and it had no notation, if you generate a colour elevation, with shadows, you may be able to save that image and import that into datacad set it in behind your drawn elevation.. just a thought.. might have to try it out to see if it would work..

This sure does work. I've been doing this for a couple of years - (since the ability to import bmp's) You just need to "enlarge" the bmp or jpeg using the CalDist enlarge command to get the bmp to match the elevation scale.

This is made much simply if you create your elevational hides from the model as well as the bmp. Great for presentations.

Make sure the jpeg image is on a layer before the elevation layer in your layer list so that the linework is "drawn" over the jpeg when you refresh your screen. (Assuming your Display/Layer Order is set to "first")

Giuseppe Barberio wrote:Can anyone POST a sample DataCad file or PDF image of a 2D elevation that was rendered within Datacad using only 2D methods?

-Redd

Hello,

Here is a very simple, colored elevation that I did in DataCAD:


[Click on image to see larger version. These are both from the Signature Architects, Inc. project page.]

On an earlier version, I had used a bitmap of blue sky and fluffy white clouds "across" all the windows, which I liked better, but we decided to keep it simpler, since this is a very early conceptual drawing.

Neil,

Thanks for the example. Looks like you used solid fill hatch. Looks really good. Would love to see more examples with BMP textures as wall surfaces i.e. Brick, Glass, Wood, etc.

Thanks again for the sample project Neil.

Giuseppe

Hello Giuseppe,

Yes, I used both solid fills and hatches to make this. The challenges with textures are getting the scale right, and tiling -- both are rather tricky! I worked completely within DataCAD 11, and I did not even have to use o2c.

Here's the same elevation with the sky bitmap in the windows:



The way I did this is to make one pane a Master, and all the rest of them are "Voids" (in the polyline menu). Then when using the bitmap fill, you can use Entity, and the bitmap is "spread" out over the whole group -- you can try it with a fixed aspect ratio, or with it stretched to the extents of the group. I used the fixed aspect ratio on this elevation.

Also, the repeated portions of this elevation are XRef's, and so you can maybe pick out the extents of these, by where the bitmap "repeats". I also kinda' like how the trees are "transparent" -- this would be less obvious if we had used a bitmap of a tree, instead.

Hello Guys (& Girls),

Sorry for the image size, but I guess it worths.

Here is an image by the office of Franklin Moreira Architects, from Porto Alegre, Brazil, who uses DataCAD since the early 90's.



Symbols were remade with alternate settings, using several curved polylines, filled by colored solid fills, in varied shades, pretending to be gradient.

The use of symbols with bitmaps is a bit less handy because it requires that the source bitmap to be at a unique reference address.
If you transfer the drawing to another machine you should take care of this.

The ground surface is filled by inserted bitmaps handled by Move/Down/Up.

The .PDF ready sheet is really great, because it takes all the adjusted appearance from your original workstation, and the customer loves it.

Thanks,
Miguel

Very nice! It would be really nice once parametrics come, to be able to toggle between say a line work view (standard cad) and a textured version using the same symbols, by just toggleing a view setting. Or maybe we could do it via layers once a symbol is inserted and the fills could live on specific layers. Hmmm, got some good ideas going... I need something to play with! Hint! Hint!