Discover how to create view templates and maintain graphic consistency in building sections using a 3D modeling software. Learn how to add room tags, create templates, and refine views for a detailed and organized model presentation.
Key Insights
- The article outlines the process of creating view templates to maintain graphic consistency across different building sections. This involves refining the crop region and level lines in the view before creating a template which can then be applied to all other building sections.
- The writer emphasizes the importance of adding room tags for an extra level of detail in building sections. Room tags can be added using the annotate keyboard shortcut or via the architecture tab in the software.
- One strategy offered to clarify graphics involves the use of depth queuing. This feature allows users to set a distance at which elements start to gray out, providing more information while keeping the section clear. Settings such as the fade limit and near and far thresholds can be adjusted to get the desired effect.
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Now that we have a basis for what we want our Building Sections to look like, I can go ahead and I can actually create a View Template from this view that I can then apply to all my other Building Sections. So you may notice that I'm just kind of refining the Crop Region a bit just so that it looks the way that we want it to and then just more refinements to the level lines. So again, I maintain graphic consistency throughout the model on all of my views.
The next thing we can do here, you may notice as I've been moving the mouse around that we're hitting these rooms here, which means that we can actually add Room Tags into this space. And so the keyboard shortcut for Room Tags is Annotate or you can grab it from the Architecture tab and it says Tag Room here. And so I can actually add my Room Tags into these spaces to add that extra level of detail into my Building Sections.
Now that I have the views set up the way I want, I'm going to go ahead and go to my View tab and View Templates. And I'm going to look at what View Templates I have available to me because I don't like to have multiple templates in the model that represent the same thing. So I can see here that I have one that's called Architectural Section.
So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to delete that because I'm going to make a new section template. And so the last thing I want to do is have more architectural templates than what we actually need. Now I can do the Create View Template from View that we've used previously.
So I can go to Create Template from Current View and I'm going to call this one Building Section. And I'm going to include all of these different elements because we want them both to be exactly the same. And just like we did previously with the Area Plans, I want to go in and I'm going to assign the View Template for this view to Building Section, which means anytime everything changes, it's going to be updated on this view automatically.
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Then I can go into Section Two, which is this one here. And I can do a lot of the same things that we just went through. So I can go in and I can first assign the View Template Building Section.
And then next I can go in and I can check to see if everything looks the way it needs to. So I can see here that maybe there's a wall that didn't attach to the roof. And so I'll just double-check to make sure it's attached.
So I'll click Attach here and have it attach to the roof, which is like it's supposed to. And then I can go in and I can use my Join Geometry tool to clean up the geometry between the walls and the floor. And same thing with the slab and the walls as we go through.
So every time I see one, I'm just going to kind of grab it and double-check that it makes and make sure that it looks correct. And one more here. And the same thing applies for the exterior walls attaching to the roof.
And just a simple change like that, you can see that it looks much better after we get that into place. When we look at what we're seeing here with the ceiling and the Design Option that we created, we'll need to go ahead and we'll need to uncheck the Exclude Options here. And then we can use our Join Geometry for these walls as well and the ceilings.
And since this would be a full-height wall, we do want to make sure that this is attached to the roof above. Just like we did with our other section, we will want to go in and add in our Room Tags. And so the keyboard shortcut for that is RT.
And I can go in and I can add my Room Tags. And notice how I'm making an effort to keep these things lined up as we go across here. And adding them to the different spaces helps as well.
One of the things that we could do to help clear up the graphics since we are seeing some of these walls beyond is we can do one of two things. We could cut back the view so it doesn't show these elements beyond. Or we could set a distance that we want everything to be to start to gray out as we go beyond.
And this allows us to show more information on the section, but it also keeps the information clear because then we can still show it, but it's just grayed out in the background. So what I'll do is I'll go into my View Template settings and then I'll look for Depth Cueing. And this is going to allow me to show depth by checking this box.
And then essentially I can establish the fade limit, which is the percentage of how light it's going to get when I hit these near and far thresholds. So with the near and far settings, one thing that's important to keep in mind is that the near setting is the point at which the blending is going to occur from whatever the setting is to the far. If you were to leave this at zero, immediately you're going to start seeing it begin to fade with those elements.
If you push it further out, that means it's going to start blending 24% of the length of the view. The far setting will be when it's fully hit to this point. If we have it at light at 0%, then it's going to go to a very light gray, and that typically doesn't work out so well.
So I'm going to put it at about 50%, and then I'm going to move this one back a little bit so we have more of a falloff for where things start to blend. Like I said before, this is definitely one of those push-and-pull settings that you want to get right because not every situation is exactly the same. So this here is what I would call my best guess for what we want it to look like on this particular elevation.
So I'm going to hit OK and hit OK again. And when we look at it, you can see there wasn't too much of a change, and that has to do with the fact that when we look at our section here, the distance between our cut and our total view depth is very short. And so when I go back to that, I'm going to go ahead and adjust my Depth Cueing again.
And then maybe I do want this to start. Typically on elevations, you probably wouldn't want that to occur. And then I could bring the far back a little bit, which would again narrow my band so that it's closer to the view where it starts.
And I'm going to leave the fade limit. Maybe we'll go down to 40%, but we'll set that as we see here. And then if we hit Apply on this, we can start to see a little bit of the gray taking into effect on these windows.
But I think we want it to be a little bit more. We'll go back into those Depth Cueing settings and then I will change these so that we have a really narrow band here at the front. And so 16—this could be a little too light—but if you want it to be more dramatic, what we could do is we could set this fade limit to an even lower value.
And so I've been walking you through the steps of how this actually works, because the reality is you're not going to have a set limit that you're going to use for this type of a setting. And so you can see here with those settings, now the lines beyond are very much faded and in the background, which is a neat look because it does give us more information to see within our section. And so since that was a View Template section edit, I want to make sure that I look at my next one, which is the section that's part of Section One here and make sure those changes that I made didn't turn it into something we don't want it to be.
With the new Depth Cueing setting that we added, I can now move this over so that we can see the door and it won't be as much of an interruption in our view as it would have been if it was a full line weight view. And you can see that entire wall, including the parapet beyond at this location.
