Can a data visualisation switch all objects' fill attributes from "hatch" to "solid" or vice versa?

[line-weight]

I think the answer here is "no" but want to make sure.

 

Here's my basic issue.

 

I tend to give all objects & components what I call a "material class" and this is what determines what they look like in section.

 

At an early stage of a project, for most of these "material classes" I use a solid fill colour. This is so that when I am working on section details it's dead clear what is what, material-wise. So a section at this stage of the project will look something like this:

 

 

 

However, at some point (and it's never easy to decide exactly when to do it) I'll flip all the drawings over to a style where everything sectioned has a hatch instead of coloured fill. So those two same extracts will look more like this:

 

 

 

 

This switchover generally happens when I'm getting closer to the point of formally issuing construction or pricing drawings. The reason I tend to change away from the block-colour version is mostly a long standing principle that black & white linework is more likely to survive things like photocopying or bad quality printers. This is perhaps become less and less meaningful as things are increasingly viewed on screen rather than paper but that's a different discussion.

 

Anyway... the point is, once I have made this transition to hatched versions, the drawings become less easy to work on, especially when I use the "Section In-Place" option to view design layers directly from section viewports. Because of the lack of control over hatch scale I end up looking at this kind of ugliness:

 

 

in addition to this, my current process of starting out with solid colour fill and then changing to hatches is not very efficient, because of all the adjustments I have to make to multiple classes at the switchover point.

 

Really, it would be nice to be able to switch between the two modes at any time (and switch any viewport back and forth with minimal effort). And I started wondering if I could do this using data vis. But as far as I see I can't.

 

(All of this to some extent takes advantage of a quirk of how VW fill attributes work ... something can have a solid colour, and you can then choose a hatch instead, and if you then go back to the "solid" option, it will remember this, but not vice versa.)

 

 

 

 

 

[Tom W.]

Easily done if you assign fill using Materials rather than classes.

 

Or using classes can you set up VP styles to quickly apply/remove class overrides? 

[line-weight]

6 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

Easily done if you assign fill using Materials rather than classes.

 

Or using classes can you set up VP styles to quickly apply/remove class overrides? 

 

Yes, I can see that things will be a bit easier once I can start using viewport styles - at least as far as the viewports themselves are concerned.

 

How would it happen using materials? Can each material have an fill alternative and hatch alternative set for it? And then the data vis chooses which is shown, across all materials?

[Tom W.]

2 minutes ago, line-weight said:

How would it happen using materials? Can each material have an fill alternative and hatch alternative set for it? And then the data vis chooses which is shown, across all materials?

 

No the Material has a single fill + the Data Vis overrides it. A bit like class overrides. But it works on the design layer too. Once you've created a Data Vis you can save it in your user folder + access it from any file. You can apply multiple Data Visualisations at once.

[line-weight]

12 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

 

No the Material has a single fill + the Data Vis overrides it. A bit like class overrides. But it works on the design layer too. Once you've created a Data Vis you can save it in your user folder + access it from any file. You can apply multiple Data Visualisations at once.

So I'd just make a data vis that says anything that has "brick" material assigned to it, instead of filling it with "brick hatch" in section, fill it with solid brown, and I'd set up one of those for each material?

[Tom W.]

Yes if you set up a new Data Vis + under Display Criteria choose Objects using Function > Material, then it will list all the Materials used in the file. Go through them one by one setting the fill to whatever colour you want it to be in each case giving you a single Data Vis that will apply overrides to multiple Materials at once. Create the Data Vis in a file containing all your Materials + set up all the overrides you will ever need to use, then that Data Vis will work in every case in every file.

[line-weight]

14 hours ago, Tom W. said:

Yes if you set up a new Data Vis + under Display Criteria choose Objects using Function > Material, then it will list all the Materials used in the file. Go through them one by one setting the fill to whatever colour you want it to be in each case giving you a single Data Vis that will apply overrides to multiple Materials at once. Create the Data Vis in a file containing all your Materials + set up all the overrides you will ever need to use, then that Data Vis will work in every case in every file.

 

Thanks.

 

It sounds like I can probably have a better setup, once I can transition things to VW2024 and start using materials. So it's not really worth trying to change my current system for the projects that currently live in VW2023.

[Amanda McDermott]

I think you could do this using viewport class properties (and then probably make it into a 'viewport style', but I haven't played with those yet). Click on 'Classes' in your Viewport Object Info palette, check the two tick boxes at the bottom, and then you can edit the class attributes to hatches for that viewport only?

[line-weight]

57 minutes ago, Amanda McDermott said:

I think you could do this using viewport class properties (and then probably make it into a 'viewport style', but I haven't played with those yet). Click on 'Classes' in your Viewport Object Info palette, check the two tick boxes at the bottom, and then you can edit the class attributes to hatches for that viewport only?

 

yes you can certainly do it with class over-rides. And this is what I do in some cases. However it becomes very tedious keeping it up to date when you have a lot of viewports, and it doesn't let you toggle back and forth between a colour/hatched version. Viewport styles would appear to make this much easier though. (I've not yet started using 2024 so haven't actually tried it yet)

[Hugues]

@line-weight Yes, data visualization can switch object attributes from hatch to solid and vice versa. 
You would need to setup appropriate data visualization criteria depending on where your objects are getting their attributes from.

Simple example:

You have objects in Class A, B and C that are using attribute by class and you want to override the Fill using data visualization.

Set the Object Criteria to find objects in class A, B, 😄 Class is A OR Class is B OR Class is C

Set the Display Criteria to Objects using function Class.
You'll see the list of classes. Set the fill for the classes you want to override to whatever color you like.

 

 

[line-weight]

5 hours ago, Hugues said:

@line-weight Yes, data visualization can switch object attributes from hatch to solid and vice versa. 
You would need to setup appropriate data visualization criteria depending on where your objects are getting their attributes from.

Simple example:

You have objects in Class A, B and C that are using attribute by class and you want to override the Fill using data visualization.

Set the Object Criteria to find objects in class A, B, 😄 Class is A OR Class is B OR Class is C

Set the Display Criteria to Objects using function Class.
You'll see the list of classes. Set the fill for the classes you want to override to whatever color you like.

 

 

 

Thanks. Yes, I think I understand this in principle.

 

I didn't explain myself very clearly in my first post.

 

I usually have a large list of material classes set up, each with a different fill colour. And then at some point I change them to hatches. But I notice that the class, even after I have given it a hatch, still "remembers" the fill colour:

 

 

This gives the impression that the class has both a fill colour and a hatch. And it would be very useful if I could flip between these two states, but have that apply to all of the materials classes in my drawing.

 

In other words, have data vis find all the material classes, and just make that change in the "style" dropdown from hatch to solid, or vice versa. Because all my classes are already set up with this dual identity. That is, rather than me having to go and choose an override for each class individually. And it would still work on any new classes that I import in from somewhere else.