Wall Type Displaying Wrong Line Type in View from Construct

[jonathonb6GQDY]

I've revisited a set of drawings for a project and noticed that demo wall types from my construct are showing up as solid lines in view instead of dashed. Doors and other blocks that are set on demo layers in the construct are displaying properly in the view, just not the walls. I've checked all the layer properties between the two drawings and they're all the same. I've checked my wall type display settings but I don't think anything is out of whack there, unless I should be checking a different setting in there.

If I copy the wall from the construct to the view it displays properly.

I've attached photos to show the difference between the construct and the view.

Multiple people in our office have looked at it and can't seem to figure it out. Really at a loss here.

If you need more info/photos please ask and I'll provide.

[David_W_Koch]

It is going to be hard to sort that out without having the files in hand.

Is the display of the components of the Walls to be demolished controlled by the display settings of the assigned Material Definition or by the display settings of the active Display Representation for Walls?  Any chance that there are different settings for Lt Scale in the controlling display settings in the construct file and the view file?

Try this:  Select the external reference in the view file, right click and choose Edit Object Display from the context menu.  In the Object Display dialog, on the Xref Display tab, activate the Override the display configuration set in the host drawing toggle and then choose Medium Detail from the list of Display Configurations in the Xref.  Select the OK button to accept the change.  The external reference should now be displayed using the Medium Detail Display Configuration from the external reference, rather than the view file version.  Does that result in dashed lines for the Walls to be demolished?  If so, then there is a difference of some sort in the display settings for the two files.

Do all of the items to be demolished use the same linetype, or do the Walls use a different one from the Doors and other objects (that remain dashed in the view file)?  If so, perhaps the linetype definition used by the Walls is different between the two files, with the view file having longer dashes, which end up being too long to show the pattern on the Walls.

[jonathonb6GQDY]

I tried your suggestion of changing the editing the object display in the view without luck.

LT Scale is the same between the two files and both layers are using the same line type. If I copy the wall from the construct in to the view it displays as dashed. 

I've attached the view and the construct... I'm not particularly familiar with AutoCAD Architecture so I'm not sure if I should've packaged them somehow.

How would I check if the display of the components are controlled by the display setting of the assigned Material Definition or by the display settings of the active Display Representation for Walls?

[David_W_Koch]

I assume this was not a problem earlier, when you made your screen captures, but the DLC-38-17-C-XP01.dwg is in the 2018 file format, while the DLC-38-17-V-DP01.dwg is in the 2013 file format.  When opening the latter file in ACA 2017, the DLC-38-17-C-XP01 external reference cannot be loaded due to the file format incompatibility.

When I opened DLC-38-17-V-DP01.dwg in ACA 2018, the external reference was able to load, and the demolition Walls showed with dashed lines.  Are you mixing file formats?  That may have something to do with the issue you are experiencing.

I tried saving the construct back to the 2013 file format, under a modified name, ignoring the warning about the fact that the AEC objects in the file cannot be saved back to an earlier format.  I then opened the view file in ACA 2017 and repathed the external reference file to the 2013-format file.  That worked, but there were issues with the AEC objects, as might be expected.  The Walls with the pink fill lost their fill.  Wall cleanups were more or less lost.  The Door graphics were very weird.  The demolitions Walls did show with dashed linework, but that is small consolation for what is basically not a workable file.

So what version of ACA were these files originally created?  Was the construct accidentally edited and saved in the 2018 format?  At this point, your only alternative if you do not have a backup of the construct file that is still in the 2013 format would be to move the entire project to the 2018 file format.

[jonathonb6GQDY]

I've fixed it. 

After initially saving DLC-38-17-V-DP01.dwg in the 2018 format it didn't work.

I edited the wall style override display properties so that all the display components were of the 'A-DEMO-WALL' layer and changed all the linetypes to be 'ByLayer'

I tried playing around with these before but I'm guessing I just didn't change the proper setting.

Through process of elimination I've come to realize that if my 'Shrink Wrap' had their layer set to '0' OR had their linetype set to 'ByBlock' it would display the wrong linetype in the view.

Maybe this was a product of updating the view file to 2018 format and editing those settings? or maybe I didn't change the shrink wrap settings before.

Regardless, I'm not sure I understand what the 'ShrinkWrap' is and it would be helpful for me to understand these display override settings more. Any chance there is a post that helps explain how they work/act that you could direct me to?

OriginalFixed

[David_W_Koch · Accepted solution]

Shrink Wrap is a component that becomes an "outline" of the Wall in a plan view.

If all of your Walls are single-component Walls, then there is no real difference in the linework extents of the Boundary 1 component and the Shrink Wrap component.  But if you have multi-component Walls, and you want the outline of the Wall to plot differently from the linework between the components (heavier outline, thinner components, for example), then the Shrink Wrap component will allow you to do that.

For example, the out-of-the-box US Imperial content Stud-6 Rigid-1.5 Air-2 Brick-3.625 Wall Style uses material definitions to control the display of the components; all of the Plan Linework components are set to plot at 0.25 mm and the Plan Hatch components are set to plot at 0.18 mm.  The Shrink Wrap component is on Layer 0, with ByBlock Lineweight, so it appears as if it were drawn on the parent Wall object's layer, with a lineweight of 0.50 mm, making the outline heavier than the linework between the components.

[David_W_Koch · Accepted solution]

Setting a component to Layer 0 and its properties to ByBlock works the same way that doing so to linework within a block definition works - the linework will behave as if it were placed on the layer of the parent object.

If your Walls were on layer A-DEMO-WALL, then setting a component to Layer 0 with ByBlock settings or Layer A-DEMO-WALL with ByLayer settings will produce the same results.

Move those Walls to a different layer, however, and the Wall with the component(s) on Layer 0 with ByBlock properties will pick up the properties of that different layer, whereas the one with the component hard-coded to Layer A-DEMO-WALL with ByLayer components will display as if it were still on the A-DEMO-WALL layer and will not pick up the properties of the different layer.

[t.pfiester]

David,

I have had a similar issue, except the difference in linetype display is between model space and paper space. In model space my demo walls, which are on the a-demo-wall layer, show correctly with dashed lines. However, when I go to paper space to plot my sheet, the walls are displaying with a solid linetype. I thought at first that it had to do with annotation scales not matching between model space and paper space. It isn't; they both match. Then I thought it might be something in the display settings of the wall style. No go.

I am now thinking that it must be a setting somewhere since it looks fine on someone else's machine, but on mine and a few others it is incorrect. 

Any thoughts?

[David_W_Koch]

What are your settings for:

1. LTSCALE
2. PSLTSCALE
3. MSLTSCALE

My recommendation would be to set both PSLTSCALE and MSLTSCALE to 1, and then to set LTSCALE to whatever you would set it to for full-size plotting.  That could be 1, or 0.5, or some other number.  (My office uses 0.375.)

[t.pfiester]

That doesn't seem to be it. MSLTSCALE and PSLTSCALE are set to 1. LTSCALE is set to .5 as always. No change in appearance.

[David_W_Koch]

In the properties of the Viewport on your layout, do the annotation scale and the custom scale match?  It could be that the viewport magnification is different than the annotation scale, and the combination is messing up the linetypes.

If that is not it, if you can post an example file that demonstrates the issue, I or someone else here can take a look at it and try to determine what the issue is.

[t.pfiester]

The annotation scale and the standard scale are both set to 1/8" = 1'-0". however, the custom scale is set to 0". they are all greyed out, so I can't change them. I have attached the file, with xref bound, for you to see. It will probably display correctly on your machine. We checked it on four separate stations. Two showed dashed lines and two showed solid lines. That is why I was wondering if it was a specific setting on the different machines.

. . . ?

[David_W_Koch]

Annotation and Standard scales being the same is sufficient.  And, as you predicted, it all looks correct on my computer.

Not sure why two machines would show it correctly and the other two would not.  Unlike hatch definitions, linetype definitions are saved in the file, so it should not matter if a given computer was missing the linetype definition.  (Not that HIDDEN2 should be missing on any machine.)

Is the same version of AutoCAD Architecture being used to view the files on all four machines?  Do all four have the same updates applied?  (Do all four have all of the available updates applied - both AutoCAD and AutoCAD Architecture?)  If different versions are being used (especially if the two that are not showing the dashed lines are using 2017 or earlier) or if they all do not have the same updates applied, that could be a reason for the difference.  I know that in the 2018 release, the 2018.0.1 update that fixed an issue where AEC object components that were set to display ByLayer and were in an external reference, they were showing with the attributes of the layer of the external reference, not the layer on which the AEC Object resided.  So if two machines did not have that update, and two did, that could affect the way Walls in an external reference are seen on those machines.

If the same version and same updates are in play, and still there are differences, do all four of the machines have similar hardware, or are there significant differences?  Perhaps differences in graphics cards/drivers might affect how linetypes are displayed.