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Hidden line: how to remove unwanted lines at object joins?


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See the attached image.

I've made the stepped shape on the right simply by putting the three blocks on the left exactly next to each other.

In the OpenGL view, the stepped shape looks like one object. But below is the "Hidden Line" elevational view and the blocks are still rendered as individual objects when they are exactly adjacent to each other.

My question is whether it's possible to tell VW that I don't want to see certain edges in hidden line view.

You can do something like this in Sketchup for example - choose certain edges to be "hidden".

I appreciate that if I were to join the 3 blocks as a solid addition, then they would be rendered as one object in the hidden line view. But there are situations where this isn't possible. For example, they are on different layers but I don't want to see the join line when I've got both layers switched on.

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C4D sketch and toon has millions of settings for each behaviour.

I do not know of HL settings in VW to avoid this.

Also there are lines that I miss, like at the intersection of 2 surfaces.

So for me there was no other solution than to model the 3D geometry

according to the needed result.

Like Add Solids to avoid certain lines and creating "physical" edges where

I want to force to get HL's. That means you have to cheat by having your

columns to sit/start on your finish floor or you have to cut out every column

out of your finish floor.

Also HL calculation does not work for 1-point perspectives where lines are

parallel to your view axis. You have to rotate your camera a small amount.

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There are various situations where making a solid addition isn't possible. For example, when the two things you want to add are on different layers.

Or another example - something I built in sketchup but apparently wouldn't be possible in VW. I had a series of vertical elements, "legs" if you like, that made up a custom-made stair. Each of these items was a different length and had different connections at the top end, but they all had the same detail at the "foot". That detail I modelled as a component - sketchup version of a symbol, so when I changed it I wouldn't have to update every instance individually. Then the simpler upper parts, the legs, were drawn individually.

So each element was modelled as individual "leg" grouped with repeated detail "foot". In reality they were all made from one continuous piece of steel so I didn't want the join between foot and leg to be visible as a line. In Sketchup this is easy - just hide the edges where the two pieces join, and then in all views that join is not visible.

On that occasion I imported views of these sketchup models into my VW drawing to supplement the main, 2D VW drawings. And I thought, it would make much more sense to do all this in VW, draw it all in 3D, and then generate both 3D views and elevational drawings, instead of drawing it twice. But it seems that I'd hit this difficulty with the limitation of control over the appearance of hidden line renderings.

So this seems another example of a really basic thing VW can't do, that ends up making loads of the more complex things it can do redundant.

Unless of course there *is* some way of selectively hiding edges in which case someone tell me how, please!

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I wouldn't ever want these thousand Sketch and Toon Render + Material settings

in VW. That doesn't look like fun.

I think that even current camera settings is too much for the typical VW user.

I like the reduced Material settings. And they could even be easier to use if

cleaned up a bit and rearranged.

I think is ok to need to go to a special Rendering App in those cases.

In the chair leg case, why not making a temporary duplicate and Add Solid these

just for rendering ? (all in one go)

Doesn't mean VW should not optimize HL rendering.

Using multi cores or include those 2 settings about hiding lines for touching elements

of same material or ad lines in intersections, or optimizing hidden default settings.

Edited by zoomer
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I wouldn't ever want these thousand Sketch and Toon Render + Material settings

in VW. That doesn't look like fun.

I think that even current camera settings is too much for the typical VW user.

I like the reduced Material settings. And they could even be easier to use if

cleaned up a bit and rearranged.

I think is ok to need to go to a special Rendering App in those cases.

In the chair leg case, why not making a temporary duplicate and Add Solid these

just for rendering ? (all in one go)

Doesn't mean VW should not optimize HL rendering.

Using multi cores or include those 2 settings about hiding lines for touching elements

of same material or ad lines in intersections, or optimizing hidden default settings.

Maybe you misunderstand slightly - I'm not really talking about rendering 3d views and so on. I'm talking about generating elevations, plans, sections and other 2D projections from a 3D model.

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Yes, the hidden line render option.

The one without RW.

It is the same that will HL render your perspective View Window.

For RW users there are also Line options in OpenGl or Render Styles,

even Hatches, but I think the original HL look finer.

That's why I use these in my Viewports.

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I think the big challenge here is what you're asking for is something VW has been working to get rid of for years. Long ago hidden line rendering were often missing lines at corners, when objects overlapped etc. It was frustrating to have lines missing from your elevations that you had to add back manually. Thankfully that problem is pretty much gone.

I think you'll need to use a work-around to solve this issue. Something like adding flat geometry to your annotations to mask the extra lines or having a stand in piece of combined geometry in a different class that you turn on and off.

Kevin

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It's also something that it's capable of doing for wall segments. See attached for example. Two wall segments of different heights attached to each other. In the hidden-line elevation view, it knows not to draw a line where the two walls connect. So surely it shouldn't be a big ask to do this for adjacent simple solids, when required.

Another situation - because of the limitations of the wall tool, sometimes a section of wall has to be modelled directly using a solid. But then how do you join that section into a piece of "real" wall seamlessly so that you don't get a join line?

You can almost do it in plan, because you can choose not to have a "cap" on one end of the wall segment - in top/plan view the end of the wall segment is drawn open. You can then draw some 2D lines continuing the wall for your custom wall segment if you're only concerned with the plan view. It would be nice to be able to do the same thing with a manually drawn 3D segment, so that it still works in all the elevations, sections, etc.

Edited by col37400
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Think I got it.

You are asking for a functionality that currently is not there.

So you have a Feature Request.

You wish to have a Selective Exclusion Option for Element Edges in HL Render.

I want to add my wishes :

a)

I want to ALWAYS have displayed a Line between 2 intersecting Faces when the

angle between them is >0°

b)

As an Option, I want no Line displayed between 2 Faces touching at their edges,

when the angle between them =0° AND they have the same Material or Color.

(Maybe another Option, if both Faces use the same Class)

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Yes, that's what I want.

your (a) and (b) wishes, I would also like.

(a) could be optional (ie user can turn it on or off). But if it wasn't, it would be much more useful to have it "always on" than "always off" because that would reflect standard drawing conventions - if two faces meet at an angle you'd pretty much always draw a line there.

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Yes, a) is the problem about the missing lines while b) is the problem about

having unwanted lines like in your examples as well as things like getting

lines between same Walls of different Stories/Layers.

If Jim doesn't find the time to look in here and confirm your request,

I think it could be worth to start a Thread in the Wish List Forum,

with a link to this.

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I posted a few years ago requesting a tool that would be able to select a line in any view and change it's attributes.

Any rogue lines could be easily made transparent, and you could make lines thicker in elevations to add depth by just clicking on the line.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
I posted a few years ago requesting a tool that would be able to select a line in any view and change it's attributes.

Any rogue lines could be easily made transparent, and you could make lines thicker in elevations to add depth by just clicking on the line.

This is how I think we handle it, adding this thread to that request. Trying to add additional attribute controls for all geometry would be a mess, but if we added an inactive method of showing or disabling edges or any lines within viewports, it would be more useful. Certainly better than having to manually cover or add edges in annotations as you have to currently.

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I posted a few years ago requesting a tool that would be able to select a line in any view and change it's attributes.

Any rogue lines could be easily made transparent, and you could make lines thicker in elevations to add depth by just clicking on the line.

This is how I think we handle it, adding this thread to that request. Trying to add additional attribute controls for all geometry would be a mess, but if we added an inactive method of showing or disabling edges or any lines within viewports, it would be more useful. Certainly better than having to manually cover or add edges in annotations as you have to currently.

Being able to make these changes to an individual viewport would be a big improvement on the current situation but I really think some thought should be given to making it possible to change on the model too... and what about multiple instances of the same thing - say the offending lines are within a symbol that is repeated many times within a model? Otherwise we have to manually make the change(s) in each viewport and possibly each time we change something too. Isn't the whole point that we should be aiming to produce as complete a model as possible, which, once sorted, we then use to generate various views without further intervention?

As I mentioned further up the thread, it already happens with adjacent wall segments, so surely the possibility is already catered for in some extent?

Edited by col37400
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  • 6 years later...

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