topic Re: How can i just show the outline of a wireframe in AutoCAD Forum

How can i just show the outline of a wireframe

mpotgieterNN2AS — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 10:07:48 GMT

I have a wireframes (mined out tunnels underground) i need to just show the outline of these tunnels in my modelspace (similar to sketchy) but i need to have the colors as well. sketchy makes it just black. Below is what the wireframe looks like

what i need i just the outline. i t tried creating a plane through the tunnel, but thats didnt work. any suggestions ?

Kind regards

Marius

Re: How can i just show the outline of a wireframe

imadHabash — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 11:49:11 GMT

Hi,

>> i need to just show the outline of these tunnels in my modelspace <<

since you have a very simple outline shapes (circles and lines) .... i suggest to draw these circles and the lines then attache them as an xref to your drawing and with the colors that you need . then you can modify the xref drawing whenever needed.

Regards,

Re: How can i just show the outline of a wireframe

mpotgieterNN2AS — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 12:34:06 GMT

Hi Imad

problem is that its not just simple shapes.i attached a small file where it gets a bit more hairy. I tried flatshot and a few other commands to create 2d from 3d, but without any success

see below

Re: How can i just show the outline of a wireframe

dieters — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 14:19:16 GMT

What an interesting image, Marius! Here are some ideas that might work.

- What visual styles (VSCURRENT) have you tried?

- Instead of sectioning, you could try a Boolean subtraction from which you could extract the "side rail" splines for each tunnel.

- You could drop perpendiculars from points within the tunnels and create cross bars to get a series of T-shapes, from which you could string splines at the ends of the crossbars.

Dieter

Re: How can i just show the outline of a wireframe

mpotgieterNN2AS — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 06:22:52 GMT

Hi Dieter

The VSCURRENT gets me the closest to a solution so far for the development tunnels. so what you see below is 1 level of a underground mine. below that is a side view of the entire mine, so at a level we want to just see the outline of the wireframes of both the development tunnels and the orebody (the big wireframe to the left of the tunnels)(the tunnels are used to get to tot orebody so they can mine it and transport the ore out via the tunnels)

I will try the subtract, but my wireframes is just 1 mesh, I will try convert to surface. if you like I can send you a small sample of the file in DWG format. right at the bottom is a image of how it should look . this is a slice of the mine. I'm not sure what package they use to get this. the tunnels are the dark bold and the thin lines are the ore body, just the outline

This is the result I'm after

so when I use hidden it also hides the tunnels that lie inside the orebody.

thanks for the help so far. I'm a lot closer than what I was yesterday

Re: How can i just show the outline of a wireframe

Michiel.Valcke — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 06:56:29 GMT

Try hidden, it will show you the wireframe, but all edges that are behind a surface from your viewpoint will not be shown.

EDIT:

nvm: I just read the last paragraph of your last post, apparently that is not a solution as well.

You could make the ore transparant in a less confronting color (greyish) and make the tunnels a more distinctive color. then if you set it to realistic you will see your tunnels through the ore, but it will still look very meshy I believe.

Re: How can i just show the outline of a wireframe

dieters — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 13:56:47 GMT

Marius,

I think Michael is on the right track. By assigning a moderate to high level of transparency to the ore body, you'll be able to see the tunnels inside. What you might also want to do is the following:

1. Select the ore body mesh and set its transparency property medium to high (50% or more)

2. Set VSCURRENT to Realistic and choose object colors to what you want--dark gray and light gray come to mind, but it's your choice.

3. Use VISUALSTYLES to display the Visual Styles Manager, and create a new visual style that's starts with Realistic. Make it the current visual style.

4. Experiment with this new visual style--for example, set the Edge Settings to Isolines and turn on the display of Intersection Edges (to show where the tunnels intersect the ore body.

If you hate the results, delete the new visual style and create a new one based on Realistic. You'll want to leave the default visual styles unmolested so you can easily go back to a known setting.

Dieter

Re: How can i just show the outline of a wireframe

mpotgieterNN2AS — Thu, 24 Aug 2017 08:05:27 GMT

Hi Gus

Thanks for the help. I reckon I have enough new methods to come up with something that can work

Re: How can i just show the outline of a wireframe

Michiel.Valcke — Thu, 24 Aug 2017 09:05:00 GMT

@mpotgieterNN2AS

If you do find a setting or method that works for you, please share it here.

It might be helpful for others in the future and I really love looking at that drawing, it's very much unlike anything I have worked on / seen before.

Re: How can i just show the outline of a wireframe

parkr4st — Thu, 24 Aug 2017 11:12:09 GMT

perhaps this will help, googled autocad underground mines

look at such as these. maybe you can get an idea from how others did the task.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U4OdFyApCM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAvXVXSKf8M

dave

Re: How can i just show the outline of a wireframe

dieters — Thu, 24 Aug 2017 21:23:05 GMT

Great videos--thanks for posting them, parkr4st.

Marius,

This morning, when I described what you were trying to accomplish with both the ore body and the tunnels to our AutoCAD graphics performance team, they mentioned specifically that setting the transparency of the ore body and specifying the display of intersection edges where the tunnels intersect the ore body will result in a performance slow down. The feature work they did over the last couple of releases doesn't support all display settings. What they'd like to know is under these circumstances, whether the performance of 3D Orbit is still acceptable, and if not, what kind of delays you are experiencing.

Thanks,

Dieter

Re: How can i just show the outline of a wireframe

mpotgieterNN2AS — Fri, 25 Aug 2017 09:03:43 GMT

Dieter

I did a few changes to the hidden display properties to a better result. the transparency solved the problem of seeing the tunnels inside the orebody wireframe, then i also switched silhouette edges on and increased tthe width, after that i changed the crease angle till i had something workable, below is my setting for the display

here is what it looks like just after i set the clipping

and this is my final result

Re: How can i just show the outline of a wireframe

dieters — Fri, 25 Aug 2017 14:24:37 GMT

This looks great, Marius--pretty much what you were after. Thank you for posting your solution.

Dieter