Architectural Drawings and Shading
No. This is not the most exciting topic, but drawing graphics seems to be something we are constantly discussing, tweaking, or questioning.
Personally, I have two competing feelings about drawing graphics:
Everyone to use the graphics that I want, without question, without exception.
I constantly feel like other people’s graphics are better than mine.
It’s a problem.
But not insurmountable. I’d rather be tweaking and tinkering than sitting stagnant.
Specifically, we’ve started using much more shading on the drawings in our office. It lends a graphic clarity to the drawings that lets clients, builders, and consultants “get” what the drawing is showing much more easily. It also lets us thin down our lineweights for cut items, allowing for more detail—with the shading in place, we’re not relying as heavily on the line weights to distinguish between items that are/aren’t cut in views.
That said, there is a lingering architecture-school voice that says “your lineweights should be good enough. Don’t use shading.” It’s a quiet voice, but it is definitely there.
Our evolving shading regimen beaks down like this:
Walls/items cut in plan views get shaded a dark gray
Casework/cabinets seen in plan view get shaded a lighter gray (I’ve found this is useful when showing a builder an initial set of drawings for pricing. It helps eliminate the "I assumed that was furniture” problem without the need for specific casework tags & details.
Anything in a floor or ceiling plan that is special gets a hatch to make it explicit. Special flooring, expensive ceiling material, custom construction of any sort. This also works on elevation views for things like glass and wallcovering.
We use Revit in the office for our construction documents. For the most part, it lets us standardize the graphics for things like shading, hatching, and lineweights. However, we’ve had to come to terms with the fact that, on occasion, we need to draft in a filled region or two so that things look correct.