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Keeps Spaces at back of draw order ??

9 REPLIES 9
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Message 1 of 10
tx51210
270 Views, 9 Replies

Keeps Spaces at back of draw order ??

Has anyone ever found a way to keep spaces at the rear of the display order? They seem to keep popping in front of other objects and this presents problems for editing walls and when we plot for presentations we always have to send these to the back manually so they will not hide objects even though we set lines to merge in the plot settings spaces seem to ignore this setting.
9 REPLIES 9
Message 2 of 10
cadpro78
in reply to: tx51210

I usually just freeze them so I don't have to see them...or do you want to see them?
Message 3 of 10
tx51210
in reply to: tx51210

When we are creating design drawings, spaces are utilized to color the rooms and remain on during plotting.

I have created a button to send all the spaces to the back but having to remember to do this for every plot is a problem.

If the plotting options were not so erratic this would not be a problem. Traditionally setting lines to merge in the plotter settings would prevent this from occurring. It is no longer dependable and linework for objects and entities can be completely obscured by the solid color areas of the spaces. It won't do any good, but I plan on reporting the issue as a bug. Autodesk will likely blame this on plot drivers, but it is too widespread among print devices to be blamed on a plot driver.
Message 4 of 10
eviele
in reply to: tx51210

Every release seems to require a change in process.
With this release and associative spaces I can see the desire to have all spaces in the file with the walls.

In the past we made the spaces their own construct for ease of modification of scheduling and such. Another benefit was that the spaces could be xrefed into a view and then sent to back. As long as SORTENTS was 127 then the xrefed spaces were always behind the walls and text in the view file.

I still think we'll keep this structure with ACA8, but if you choose to have the spaces in the file with the walls then you'll probably want to write a lisp or script to move the spaces to the back before closing, or plotting or something.

e.
Message 5 of 10
tx51210
in reply to: tx51210

We have found that associative spaces are too unreliable to utilize and have them set to manual. They continually lose track of the object they are associated when significant editing that moves rooms pat the centroid of the space.

The amount of work required to maintain updates to the spaces in a separate x-ref file seems to labor intensive as you would have to move or stretch a wall and then go to another file to adjust the space. It they could be associative and follow the updates, this might be workable.
Message 6 of 10
eviele
in reply to: tx51210

its a whole lot less labor intensive to update the spaces in a separate file than to keep moving them to the back IMHO.

if your spaces aren't associative you'll need to update them anyway regardless of what file you're in.

e.
Message 7 of 10
tx51210
in reply to: tx51210

When we stretch and move walls the spaces are edtited at the same time so we don't have to do the work twice.
Message 8 of 10
eviele
in reply to: tx51210

true.

i guess i'm thinking in terms of our process and when our walls change.

usually the moves we make don't involve stretching which would allow us to simultaneously grab the space.

a lot of the things we do involve actually moving a wall that is probably too crowded to effectively run the stretch command, or we change the wall type which changes the dimension of the wall.
those kind of processes don't allow us to simultaneously update the space, but require us to update the space after modifying the walls.
so in that sense our process isn't more labor intensive, it just means working in two different files.

the two file method proves to be an advantage for us when dealing with the display order and when we need to modify the spaces for room finishes, or room tags, etc.
we usually have someone working on the plan while someone else is updating the schedule.

YMMV.

because every office process is different i'm always amazed at the problems we're having that no one else seems to be having and vice versa.

the joys of CAD....
Message 9 of 10
tx51210
in reply to: tx51210

I find, the only thing consistent among different offices, is that we all seem to struggle trying to find a process to make the software function in real world environment. So often software feature A works OK but will never work when also using software feature B.

I can change our process to put spaces in 1, 2 or 3 files, if I can just find a methodology that works consistently. I have been on the road and not had time to test your suggestions and will work on this over the weekend.

I have found that SORTENTS set at 127 does not work to keep xrefs at the back of the display order. When an xref is updated, it goes to the front of the display order. You have to manually resend the xref to the back prior to plotting or you have to close and reopen the file. SORTENTS only seems to function when you first open the file. I will have to dig out a book since the geniuses at Autodesk decided not to include SORTENTS information in the programs help menu. Message was edited by: tx51210
Message 10 of 10
chrishaarmeyer
in reply to: tx51210

I just had a simliar experience but I resolved it.  I found that there were some items with differing Z coordinates in my xreffed plans.  Once I "flattened" them since they were not needed, my display order finally worked correctly.   We had drawings from another engineer that had z coordinated 734' from the block itself; I had to resolve those as well.

 

Maybe it will help.

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