NEW ELEVATION RENDER MODE

[bc]

OK, check out the drawing below.  It is rendered in hidden line and converted to lines.

On the face I counted about 1,060 lines needed to draw this view.

When I enter the hidden line group and select all, I find that VW generated 13,872 lines and took a bit of time to do it.

VW can do better than this.

 

I propose a new render mode.  Call it "Elevation View" or whatever but it should only present the frontmost lines. Literally.

I don't need to have all of the hidden lines...just the ones in front.

I don't need to have one line made from four lines.

I don't need multiple inconsistent line weights.

I would think it would be easier to code the process of determining frontmost lines compared to computing all of the "hidden" lines?

This could also mean we would only have one true hidden line drawing mode....with dashed hidden lines of our preference.

I am old school and was taught that this is what hidden line drawings are anyway.

It is not a hidden line drawing if it doesn't show any dashed hidden lines. Sheesh.

Rant over, thanks for listening.

bc

Edited January 14, 2018 by bc

[Matt Overton]

Or just improve Hidden Line.

Vectorworks already has enough improved versions of things that have been given new names instead of just replacing the broken function.

 

[Gerard Jonker]

I remember MC used to Render like this. It was fixed in some version, it would spend a little time after rendering cleaning up lines.

The problem was it it also cleaned up details so it took a second update to get it right. So now it is broken again?

[zoomer]

If I got that right HL render mode is a) pretty old and b) considered to get improved (?).

 

Until then, Purge Command should be able to get rid of a large amount of redundant lines.

[bc]

My point was to make hidden line literally just that.

The term Dashed Hidden Line is redundant.

It should just say Hidden Line and the dashes are automatically included by long established convention.

Hidden LIne should should be greatly improved (per my original post) and the name changed because it is and always has been inaccurate.

Call it Surface View.  Call it whatever, but not Hidden Line and not with such poor results.

@Zoomer:

I really don't see how the purge command can be very effective dealing with this specific group of lines.

Could you please explain?

[zoomer]

Purge has an option on the right to find and eliminate redundant elements.

Like 3 lines over each other.

Of course this will need several conditions, like same Size/length,

same Class/Layer, same Location and such.

 

If you have one long line, but several shorter lines somewhere behind,

(I think you mentione this)

purge will not work or help. That is why I said it will only help in many cases.

Edited January 14, 2018 by zoomer

[bc]

yes, thank you.  After checking out the dialog I figured as much but asked because I wanted to know whatever you might know that I didn't.