Hidden Line Corner Drawing

[RussU]

When in Hidden line, the default value on the smoothing angle is 1° . I would love that to draw a line between a face and an arc... see the right hand example below.
Even when you go to a smoothing angle of 0° you still don't get the line, specifically on the SHS/RHS etc.

 

I know that this is because of the vertex placement, and there's no vertex on the break between the flat and the curve, but when using structural shapes you lack decent lines. I'd have hoped that the 0° smooth would do that, but it doesn't

 

Anyone have any hints/tips about restoring the lines on a corner?

Decomposing, recomposing, and then clipping inner and outer isn't an option, due to the sheer amount of profiles in a working file.

 

Any thoughts very welcome.

 

Simple example file attached below

 

Corner Drawing.vwx

Edited December 12, 2018 by RussU
more detail

[markdd]

Hi Russ

 

I'm curious to understand how you made the LH extrude as the extruded shape only has 4 vertices...

 

Mark

Edited December 12, 2018 by markdd

[RussU]

29 minutes ago, markdd said:

Hi Russ

 

I'm curious to understand how you made the LH extrude as the extruded shape only has 4 vertices...

 

Mark

If I'm honest, I didn't
It's an ungrouped object from the square tubing tool set.

 

See what you can come up with... I was surprised to see just the four verts too, and that seems to be the √problem

[markdd]

I had been wracking my brains to think how you might have got that object. Glad I know. Do you not have your answer now?

[RussU]

Sort of... I can see that it's a vertex issue, but I was hoping that setting the hidden line smooting angle to 0 would add a line where we go from flat to curved.

While I appreciate that the structural elements are vertex efficient, they do make the hidden line VPs look a bit flat!

 

Thanks Mark, always good to have a second set of eyes on things

[Kevin McAllister]

I think if you still wanted to use the square tubing as a guide I think the fastest conversion processes is to use the extract tool to extract an end face, push/pull to extrude to match existing geometry, delete old geometry.

 

An alternate solution would be to select a tube, convert to NURBS, enter the group and Stitch and Trim. The result would be a generic solid. Someone might be able to write a quick script for this one. (You can select all of the tubes, convert them all to NURBS, enter the group and Stitch and Trim but it will give you a generic solid made up of the entire tube array. There is a wishlist item for separating generic solids made up of distinct shapes but currently there is no way to separate the mass.)

 

Kevin

 

[RussU]

There's some really good ideas in there, so thanks @Kevin McAllister

 

In general modelling for speed, I throw in a standard structural 3d object and then use the push/pull tool, with the taper face and splt tool (this creates section objects)

I've not really played around with Nurbs as I like to have the stack to step back through the object history, so perhaps I need to re-address the way I'm working.

 

About the only other thing that I do is add a record format or name to the object so that I know what the profile name/size is when I lay up into drawings.

 

When you convert to generic solids or NURBS, does that retain the attached record? would be super useful if it did.

 

Thanks again for the advice, I'll have a bit of a play today and see if this workflow meshes into the way I work today.

 

[markdd]

The Convert to group command will keep a record attached. When using the Convert to Nurbs command it seems the resulting group does not have the original record attached. I think that's an oversight and is definitely an inconsistency. I'm going to file that as a bug and see what comes back....

 

Mark.