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Fix dashed hidden line rendering - what a mess!


Kevin McAllister

Question

Please fix dashed hidden line rendering mode.

I almost always use a combination of Custom Renderworks for background rendering and Hidden Line for foreground rendering on Sheet Layer viewports. Once and a while I want to show some of the structure behind and switch to Dashed Hidden Line for foreground rendering instead. If an object is complex I'm instantly reminded of how unusable this mode can be. The reasons why -

- the dashed lines should not override the solid outlines of the object. I have no idea why this happens but it just makes the drawing look like the printer ran out of ink. The dashed lines should always be behind the solid lines and never obscure them.

- the line weight of the dashed lines should be adjustable. Currently they are the same weight as the solid lines. Yes, you can adjust their greyness but conventions call for more than this. I'm not sure why the greyness/dash style isn't by class much like section style. Making it by class would also allow for overriding the line weight.

- some degree of control over what is included. Often there are so many dashed hidden lines the drawing becomes a mass of unreadable lines.

Thanks,

Kevin

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Please fix dashed hidden line rendering mode.

I almost always use a combination of Custom Renderworks for background rendering and Hidden Line for foreground rendering on Sheet Layer viewports. Once and a while I want to show some of the structure behind and switch to Dashed Hidden Line for foreground rendering instead. If an object is complex I'm instantly reminded of how unusable this mode can be. The reasons why -

- the dashed lines should not override the solid outlines of the object. I have no idea why this happens but it just makes the drawing look like the printer ran out of ink. The dashed lines should always be behind the solid lines and never obscure them.

- the line weight of the dashed lines should be adjustable. Currently they are the same weight as the solid lines. Yes, you can adjust their greyness but conventions call for more than this. I'm not sure why the greyness/dash style isn't by class much like section style. Making it by class would also allow for overriding the line weight.

- some degree of control over what is included. Often there are so many dashed hidden lines the drawing becomes a mass of unreadable lines.

Thanks,

Kevin

I just did a search to see if this was a thing. Yeah...not sure why dashed lines would be on top of the solid lines. When they are greyed, it makes things look really bizarre.

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Perhaps Alan is referring to a separate issue when drafting in 2D, where you have a dashed shape with a fill in front of another shape behind it. Such as this:

Screen Shot 2016-09-19 at 6.11.02 PM.png

This is completely separate from the problems with Dashed Hidden Line rendering mode being discussed above, wherein the greyed lines are drawn in front of the solid lines, something which cannot be controlled and which is very dumb. (This is related to rendering 3D models, not 2D drafting.)

Screen Shot 2016-09-19 at 6.10.29 PM.png

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Please fix dashed hidden line rendering mode.

I almost always use a combination of Custom Renderworks for background rendering and Hidden Line for foreground rendering on Sheet Layer viewports. Once and a while I want to show some of the structure behind and switch to Dashed Hidden Line for foreground rendering instead. If an object is complex I'm instantly reminded of how unusable this mode can be. The reasons why -

- the dashed lines should not override the solid outlines of the object. I have no idea why this happens but it just makes the drawing look like the printer ran out of ink. The dashed lines should always be behind the solid lines and never obscure them.

- the line weight of the dashed lines should be adjustable. Currently they are the same weight as the solid lines. Yes, you can adjust their greyness but conventions call for more than this. I'm not sure why the greyness/dash style isn't by class much like section style. Making it by class would also allow for overriding the line weight.

- some degree of control over what is included. Often there are so many dashed hidden lines the drawing becomes a mass of unreadable lines.

Thanks,

Kevin

AutoCAD has long had a setting in the Plotter Configuration Editor called 'Merge Control' that allows you to globally control whether 'Lines Overwrite' (current Vw behavior) or 'Lines Merge' (what is described in Kevin's first request).

If possible, this 'Lines Merge Control' should be added as an option to Vw print settings. This would address the first part of Kevin's hidden-line requests

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Kevin, If you don't have a fill in your hatch you don't get the problem. Seems the issue is the fill starts from the centre of the line and so does the line thickness, so if you have a wide dashed linestyle the dots only cover half the solid fill so you get this strange look. If you place the dashed line to back all the time or better still don't have fill on any dashed line polys you should be ok,
HTH

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40 minutes ago, Alan Woodwell said:

Kevin, If you don't have a fill in your hatch you don't get the problem. Seems the issue is the fill starts from the centre of the line and so does the line thickness, so if you have a wide dashed linestyle the dots only cover half the solid fill so you get this strange look. If you place the dashed line to back all the time or better still don't have fill on any dashed line polys you should be ok,
HTH

I disagree Alan, I think Kevin is right about this - Dashed Hidden Line is not working properly. Dashed lines should never render on top of solid lines, the lines should merge. Solid lines should always get 'Sent to Front' in terms of the rendering order.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
On 9/20/2016 at 8:00 AM, Matt Panzer said:

Yes, these are both separate known issues. I just linked this thread to the bug report for the dashed hidden line problem. It needed a little bump.  ;-)

 

Thanks to the nudge, this will be fixed in an upcoming service pack for VW2017.
 

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