Graphic styles
On this page
How every drawing looks is data in the project, not built into CreaBIM: pen widths for each scale, how each category of element draws (its object style), the hatch patterns of cut faces, and view templates. All of it is kept together as a style pack, a .json file an office can keep its drawing standard in. Load another pack and every view and sheet is restyled.
Style packs
Open File › Graphic styles….
- The Style pack list shows the packs in the project. The one ticked is the default: the project draws with it.
- Add a shipped pack: CreaBIM comes with two, Standard (its usual look: black linework, grey poché, the usual hatches) and Light linework (fine pens, pale blue-grey poché, furniture in grey, sections fading with depth, sun shadows on plans from above).
- Load pack… reads a .json pack and makes it the default. A pack of the same name is replaced. The pack's text styles, title blocks and mark numbering replace the project's of the same names.
- Save pack as… writes the pack to a file, to use in another project or to share.
A project without a pack draws with the Standard pack. Loading a pack is one undo step.
On the command line, creabim apply-style <project> <pack> --pdf sheets.pdf loads a pack (a file, or Standard or Light linework) into a project and exports its sheets. creabim style-packs <folder> writes the shipped packs as files to start your own from.
Drawing styles
Each plan and section has a Drawing style: how what is cut is drawn. Pick it in the view's header, or under Graphics in its Properties. It is kept with the view, and so in a view template, and the screen, sheets and PDFs match.
| Style | What is cut |
|---|---|
| Technical (the default) | Hatched by material, as the graphic styles set them |
| Poché | Walls and slabs in solid ink, no hatch |
| Colour and hatch | Each material in its own colour, layer by layer, with its hatch over it: brick red, insulation yellow |
| Material colour | Each material in its own colour, layer by layer, no hatch |
| Colour wash | A soft wash of the materials' colours, for presentation |
| Grey wash | An even light grey, no hatch |
| Clean | Outlines only: no hatches or fills |
In the colour styles, roofs seen from above under a plan's cut are washed too, the lowest first, so a higher roof covers a lower one.
Object styles
The Object styles page has a row for each category: walls, slabs, roofs, columns, doors, windows, furniture and so on.
- Projection: the weight of its lines seen below the cut or in elevation. Cut: the weight of its outline where the view cuts it. Each is As drawn (CreaBIM's pen), one of the pens (so it follows the scale), or a width in millimetres.
- Colour: a line colour of its own.
- Line: Solid, Dashed, Dotted, Centre or Dash dot.
- Cut fill: the colour behind its cut hatch. Cut pattern: a pattern for its cut faces; Material's keeps each material's own.
The pack's file can also set a style for one category in one material, a surface fill and pattern (a roof seen from above, or a hard landscape area), the draw order and transparency.
A hard landscape area keeps the paving pattern set on it. The Site style's surface fill goes under every area. Its surface pattern is drawn only on areas whose own pattern is None.
Pens
The Pens page lists the pen widths, in millimetres on paper, for each range of scales. A drawing takes the first table its scale fits: with Up to 1:75 and Up to 1:100000, a 1:50 plan takes the first and a 1:100 plan the second.
Patterns
A hatch pattern is one or more families of parallel lines (an angle, a spacing, an offset, a stagger and dashes, where a dash of 0 is a dot), or a small tile repeated, over a background colour.
- on paper (mm): the pattern is the same size at any scale, like fixed-size dots.
- true size (m): the pattern is drawn to the model's size, like brick coursing or tiles.
A material's cut faces take the pattern its Hatch names (Brick, Concrete…). A pack pattern with the same name replaces that built-in for every material using it. A material can also name any pattern of the pack.
View templates
A view template is a named bundle: scale, style, the categories its views leave out, pens of its own, distance fading and sun shadows. Every view that uses it changes when it changes.
- Give a view a template under Template and overrides in its Properties, or select views in the project browser and use Give it to the N selected views on the View templates page.
- Views without a template take names the template a view of each kind gets from the pack when it has none of its own.
- Views name their template, so loading another pack with templates of the same names restyles them.
Tags and marks
The Tags and marks page sets how every room tag and view marker in the project is drawn. Each choice is a row with a picture: rest the pointer on one to see it on the drawings, move off to go back, and click to keep it.
- Room tags: Stacked (name, area, then the number small), Number badge (the number in a small outline on top), Boxed (a box with the name over the number and area) or Inline (number and area on one line).
- View markers: Classic, Minimal, Bold or Plain, for section marks, elevation marks and callouts together.
- Your own markers: + New style from … opens the marker designer. Pick a head, fill, text, pointer, line, callout edge and colour, watch the preview, name it and Save as style. It is listed under Your styles, with Edit… and Delete. Your styles are part of the style pack, so Save pack as… and Load pack… carry them to other projects.
Overrides
A view can change how a category or one element draws in it only, over the object styles.
- In a view's Properties, under Template and overrides, Add a category… adds an override: Halftone, No hatch, a Weight, a Line pattern or a Colour.
- For one element, select it with the view open: In <view> in its Properties has the same fields, for example the boundary wall dashed in the site plan only.
Depth cues
Under Template and overrides:
- Fade with distance: in sections, elevations and plans from above, lines and fills further from the cut or the viewer draw lighter.
- Sun shadows: in plans from above, each element casts a shadow on the ground, Toward a direction, with a Length for each metre of height and a Strength.
Cut elements always take the heavy cut pen.