Black Background

Black background so I do not have a glaring white monitor burning my retinas. Enough eye strain staring at it for hours on end without it being white! Black seems to be the least obnoxious to my eyes anyway.

Brian

Black for me, less strain, Ticks when doing building work and arrowheads when doing Mechanical. Zoom in to make sure snaps are where they should be and take not of Z position carefully when working in 3D. It isn't really rocket science.

JD

JG a écrit :

I use a light grey background, since 1990. i still have 10 and 8 for my eyes. I prefer light grey it's WYSIWYG, and also because it's much beautifull to see ! y don't want to spend 35 years of my life watching a borring black background ...

What makes damage to eyes isn't the color of the screen, it is refresh rate : Check it, it *MUST BE OVER 75Hz

*Many time, when i work on someone else's workstation, i see *it's working at 60hz* ! Even on brand new computer ! Recently, i experienced a linux Kunbuntu installation, and the default refresh rate is 60 Hz, and you cannot change it with a graphical interface ! It is very dangerous for eyes !

I come from mecanic, now i work in water equipement and pipes: i use both methods for my drawing :

- For the concrete structure, i use ticks and centimeter units.

- For the pipes, i use arrow and millimeter units.

Not at all. Those simply aren't reasons that have any validity. If you say that ticks are more effective in small areas because they don't intrude, or they make the drawing more legible, then it is a valid reason. Saying I want to be an artist rather than a professional is not a valid reason. I'm just used to it that way is a cop-out. Why use cad? Use a drawing board with a Mayline and a pencil. Weren't you used to it that way at one point? The set of drawings that an architect produces are supposed to be accurate and functional. Art does not have functionality. That is where you miss the point. Good schools of architecture are affiliated with engineering departments. The bad ones are part of the fine arts department. (Unless you think that non-functional monuments are architecture) To quote Le Corbusier "Form follows function" and if you forget about the function, no body will build your artistic form.

Greg,

Too unfortunately most people agree with you.

I import ACAD drawings to make 3D surfaces & simplified linework for construction layout. I'm interested in the model, not the paper.

What a pain in the ass all drawings I get are in some point or other. I have never gotten one yet that had all the stuff on the right layers. By that I mean one that was consistent. There's always a piece of curb or 2 that is on a layer other than "curbs". There's a HUGE difference in function of "edge-of-pavement" and "back-of-curb", but most often they are all on the same layer.

I'll be happy when the legal requirement is updated to include a correct model, not merely something that looks okay on paper.

BTW:

Light burns out eyeball tissue. Less light is better for less eye fatigue/wear & tear. White background = light. Black background = lack of light. I like black.

Melanie

Force of habit, or bad monitor settings. I have long used a white background with refresh at 85 Hz and brightness turned down. I can work all day with no eye strain or fatigue. The eyes can resolve detail much better and easier with dark markings on a light background. Imagine reading all your printed drawings with white or colored ink on black paper....

You are right, and arrows show the direction of every dimension, ticks do not. However, even if done entirely on a computer, architects want to show they are are practicing art, not engineering. Maybe some would prefer arrows, but they risk the bad reaction of clients or other architects. But if you get a drawing file made with ticks, you can change the dim style and see arrowheads.

Melanie,

The statement of mine that you quoted was about the printed product. In my original post, directly after the part you quoted, is where I mention working with the cad file. The printed product and the cad file, as we all know, are two totally different things.

It is disconcerting to hear a fellow cad operator disagree with the fact that your printed product must be easy to follow. This is *basic* drafting.

As far as making the cad file easy to follow for other cad users, that is *secondary* to the printed copy being easy to follow. The ability to create a cad file that other cad users can follow easily *AND* have it also easy to follow when printed is what separates a good cad user from an excellent cad user... and this ability only comes with experience.

Greg

Happy Trails wrote:

Thanks ; )

Greg:

I think you missed the point. It is possible to have a high quality printed product AND have the line work and layering be correct. It really doesn't take any more time to do the job properly the first time if one is paying attention.

Sloppy workmanship is sloppy workmanship no matter what the medium.

I fully agree.

My point was that they are different. One could create an entire drawing using one layer and still have an excellent quality print. That drawing would be very difficult for another draftsman to manipulate, but it still serves its basic function. That function being an easy to read print.

BTW, the above is playing devil's advocate, I would never create a drawing that didn't serve its purpose to both the client and other draftsmen.

The quality print is for the client. The quality cad file is for other cad users. Understanding bath and implementing both into ones work is crucial to ones job function as a cad draftsman.

True statement. I come across *way* too many people that could care less about the quality of their work.

Greg

IT'S A DATABASE !!!!!!! I feel better now. 2d, 3d, paper, standards, other people's standards (and limited comprehensions) very many considerations.

a good engineer or a good architect or a good computer geek, each can do cad, but they need to understand more than just one piece. drafting is usually the ultimate goal in my world, but i conceive that we may one day have electronic as-built drawings which will NEVER see paper, and still be quite valuable for doing things like the base data base for fire alarm systems, lighting systems.

or the eventual demolition of the structure. you should be able to extract the steel data for when you want to tear it down.....

exacting quality control of input. YES ! (or, put it in the right layer, damn it.) and the right elevation, yada yada yada.

happy Friday to all.

roy

Greg:

I am pleased to see we are on the same page as to what a quality product is.

It shouldn't be such a hard concept to grasp, but as you say, "Way" too many people don't seem to care if they turn quality work or not.

Keep up the good work! Other drafters (and even some engineers ) will thank you for it.

Doesn't layer selection have to be done manually? As you get more and more layers doesn't that get to be a cumbersome chore? I guess a lot depends on if your good and you can put all of the information down in a layer in one go around, opposed to draw 2 items on layer 132, switch layer draw 3 things, switch layer draw one blob, then back to 132 for some more items, and so on.

Doug T

Doug:

Yes, it does take a few seconds more time to switch layers. If you have your tool bars and layer names set up properly it only takes a few clicks to make the switch. This would be somewhat akin to changing pencils if you were drawing with pencil and paper.

In other words it doesn't take long and the final product will be much better.

And a trick to make it easier is to draw a filled rectangle as a block on the sheet (could even be in your template) for each layer. then use the select layer tool to switch to the desired layer. All you would have to do is zoom all, select layer, zoom previous. You can set a script with a pause or set quick-keys to do the zooms and select. When the drawing is done, if the blocks are outside the viewports they don't get plotted, or you can delete the blocks.

I'm glad that my little rant got a good discussi> >> Doesn't layer selection have to be done manually? As you get more and

Isn't this as LISP board? Many years ago I wrote one that added dynamic text to the leader. And I wanted the leader to be a polyline. Nailed it with lisp. When I do a leader, it comes in in my text layer without me doing the switching. Lots of my routines work in a specific layer.

It's a wider world outside of the box. Canned software is powerful, but can be SO limiting.

Jump into LISP, the water's fine.

And the simple little things that make life so much easier are usually PRETTY DARNED SIMPLE.

let me see if I am following, if you get a drawing from another office that was made with ticks, and change it to arrowheads, are you not in danger of them having dimensioned "backwards" some of the time?

I am not sure I follow when you say "arrows show the direction of every dimension".

I use ticks, I like to start at one end and continue, left to right and bottom to top. But nobody's perfect. I did not think when I string from right to left, Hebrew, that God was actually watching. :)

??

Poorly phrased. If you have one arrow on the left side of the extension, but none on the right side you will know that the left dimension ends at this extension, but the right is overlapping the left, that you need to adjust dimensions, and the string cannot be trusted.

example

-------->||----------- is bad

---------| Tim S wrote: