Change line weights or transparency of wall style components

[gotphish001]

Been trying to figure this one out for a while. Is this possible?  Using ACA17.  So you got wall styles. I want to take a wall style and have the outline be the dark black, but I want to change all the inside components so they will print a light grey tone. It doesn't really matter what wall style. If it has rigid insulation in it then I'd want to have that print very light on the plans. 

Can you edit light weights of individual wall components? I can't seem to figure out how if it's possible even doing searches. It puts the walls on A-Wall layer so I'm assuming I can't really change an internal part of the wall to a different layer to accomplish this since ACA recognizes it as one object. 

Not a lot going on over the holidays so this is what I'm my architect is having me try and change for our plans. Architect,"Plans look great, but how about if you made it look like this." Me,"UGH" 

[dbroad]

It's been a while since I attempted any of that.  I prefer to use it in the default (OOTB) way where possible, since that requires lots less work.  That said, you probably should start with the default wall style.  Then proceed to changing other wall styles you use.  You may need to change the display representation settings for various views (elevation, section, plan, rendered, etc.).  For maximum flexibility, try to move towards making all the properties controlled by layer.  If that is not feasible, you may need to work with individual materials.

The presentation display configuration might be a good place to start if you just want a solid hatched tone for the inside. Make a copy of that and adapt it to your needs regarding transparency.  If you need to see the individual components, start with medium detail configuration and adjust that.

[gotphish001]

For test purposes I'm using a Brick-4 Rigid 1.5, Air 2, Brick 4 wall style.

Instead of trying to change the wall display styles. I figured out I can change the true color of each material to a very light true color like 219,219,219 and I get what I think we are looking for. I still haven't figure out how to change the boundary lines though as they aren't materials. They look good a little darker but I'd still like to maybe make them in between the wall outline and all the inner parts darkness wise to get a small contrast.

 If I change anything in the walls display style by unchecking by material then I get strange results. Like I'll uncheck by material on the brick hatch and change it to be a lighter color. It makes the brick hatch go all the way through the whole wall. Haven't figured that one out yet. 

I definitely would like to use as much default as possible. Changing the materials isn't too bad as it will change all the walls styles using those materials at once which is what I want it to do. I want all the wall outlines to be dark and all the inner materials to be a light tone. Once I get this figured out, I'll add them to our standards dwg as I go. That shouldn't be too bad adding 3-5 a project at most likely.

I can see where layers would be easier to control, but ACA makes so many layers now. I'd rather not add to that confusion. We have simple projects that I've made 7 layers and ACA made literally 100. Every time you add something slightly different it makes a new layer. At first I thought it was great that it did it on it's own, but after 4 months of using it. I find it to be wall overkill.

So my actual other question out of that is how would I lighten the hatch boundary lines since those aren't materials?

[gotphish001]

Here's what I did just experimenting. If you look on the layout tab. The wall on the left is what I want to happen. The insides a light grey but still show what's in it just faint. The right wall is what it looks normally. I realize the left wall is on medium detail and the right is on high detail. That's because I didn't make a copy of the style and just edited it directly. It didn't matter since I'll be deleting the file when I'm done anyway. After started I realized I should have made a copy so I could compare them, but too late. The high detail makes an ok comparison as I'm more comparing the grey tone of the lines more so that how detailed the hatch is. Now if I could figure out how to lighten the hatch boundaries a tad I think it would be perfect. 

[David_W_Koch · Accepted solution]

When a component is set to display "by material," the Material Definition assigned controls both the Boundary of the component and the Hatch of the component.  The Plan Linework component of the Material Definition determines how the Boundary component displays in a Plan (Top) view; the Plan Hatch component of the Material Definition determines how the Hatch component displays.  Keep in mind that in a properly defined multi-component Wall that has a component at every point across the entire width of the Wall (no empty gaps without a component), there are two boundary components at each transition from one component to the next.  One will be drawn on top of the other; when they differ, it appears that the component with the lower cleanup priority (higher priority number) takes precedence, which is the opposite of what I would have expected.

In your sample Wall, the Masonry.Unit Masonry.Brick.Modular.Running material assigned to the brick components and the Thermal & Moisture.Insulation.Rigid Insulation material assigned to the insulation component [Plan Display Representation for both] still have the original Color 11, 0.25 mm wide Plan Linework assignment.  The Thermal & Moisture.Insulation.Air material, on the other hand, has the true color 219,219,219 assigned to the Plan Linework component.  Your drawing is set up to use color-dependent plot styles, but the layout's plot style setting is set to None, so I do not know how Color 11 plots in your system.  When I chose the AIA LWT by Object.ctb file as the plot style, Color 11 plots Black, full intensity, with the object lineweight, which would be 0.25 mm, and so it is heavier than the boundary between the air gap and the insulation, which is governed by the true color assignment [which does not use plot styles, but plots in the assigned color].

If you want all of the inner boundary lines to be same light gray, then you need to assign the 219,219,219 color to the Plan Linework component of all of your Material Definitions.  The Shrink Wrap component will see that the outline of the Wall remains full intensity black (assuming Color 113 plots that way in your plot style), as it will overwrite whatever is assigned to the Plan Linework component of the Material Definition assigned to the components exposed to view on each side of the Wall.