Cable Rails = Long Render Time

[J Lucas]

I created a 3D model of cable gaurdrails, on a porch and two decks, on a house I am designing. I used solid extrudes and sweeps for the components. After adding these railings to the model it now takes a very long time for hidden line to render. Did I do something wrong? Should I convert these objects to some other type?

[mike m oz]

The slow rendering will be a result of all of those very tiny circular shapes - millions of calculations. Make each of the cables a hexagon or rectangle. At the scales you are likely to be looking at the model you won't notice that they are not circular.

[J Lucas]

Thanks Mike,

Would I edit the history of each cable symbol and group and relace the circle profile with a hexagon?

[mike m oz]

Editing the history should work. I'd use rectangles because you will end up with less lines in your Hidden Line Render.

The other option would be to use nurbs. Sweeps in particular can be faceted in Hidden Line Render views. draw an arc path and use Extrude Along Path instead. Try that first on just the sweep parts and see if it makes a substantial difference.

Another good trick is to use symbols for repeated elements.

[islandmon]

Using ExtrudeAlongPath & symbols simplifies everything:

http://www.fractalnet.org/gallery2/v/ARCH/AEC_Projects/CoralWorld/

[J Lucas]

Thanks guys,

islandmon: CoralWorld is your work? Amazing!