Turn Off See Through / Transparent Components

[stephen.lankfer]

When you activate a component all the other components turn transparent to highlight the active component.  This is useful if you then want to view/sketch on/modify etc the active component.

However, if I create a new empty component with the intention of creating a sketch for this new active component from an existing inactive component it is (depending on the complexity of the model) hard to see which inactive component you want to start the sketch on.  Hope that makes sense?

So my question is simply can I turn off the automatic turning of inactive components transparent?

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Steve

[TrippyLighting · Accepted solution]

I should have probably tested this before posting, but I believe this is the preference setting that allows you to change this behavior.

[stephen.lankfer]

Oh so simple!

Thanks.

Regards,

Steve

[mullcom]

I have this setting active but still all my component are transparent :S

when i start a new design its are default. try to check many places to turn this off. 

[jeff_strater]

you may have accidentally turned on "wireframe" mode.  Switch back to "shaded with visible edges only" in the Visual Style command:

[mullcom]

Thx! this solve this. =D Happy.... 

[graham.wideman]

For other readers finding this topic: Another circumstance where foreground objects seem to be transparent no matter what you do is where the background object is a Canvas. Canvas has the special ability to Display Through other objects, so it can provide a picture of some real object you want to model, using the picture in the Canvas as a guide.  Display Through defaults to ON. You can turn off that Display Through property in the edit dialog, where it currently appears as "Display...".  However, you may actually be wanting an image to appear as a legitimate object in your model, rather than as a modeling guide, in which case, evidently, Decal is the object type to use.

[johan.rutgeerts]

Is there a similar setting as 'Active component visibility', but for edit-in-place of external components (instead of activating internal components)?

Or is there some way to make the components less transparent?

Thank you,

Johan

[GRSnyder]

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@TrippyLighting wrote: I should have probably tested this before posting, but I believe this [Active component visibility] is the preference setting that allows you to change this behavior.

Oh happy day! I've wondered about this as well.

But, what I really want is to have this toggle available as a dynamic keyboard shortcut rather than a static preference. Without the transparency, I suspect that I'd end up even more frequently making changes with the wrong component activated. But when making cross-component references, I'd like to be able to actually see what I'm doing -- the highlighting on transparent bodies is sometimes very hard to see, especially when the bodies are complex.

In addition, I often just want to check how the whole design looks visually. Currently, that means activating the root component and then remembering to re-activate whatever component I'm actually working on.

[TrippyLighting]

I am wondering if "Isolate" would be the right function. You can isolate more than one component at a time.

Then activate the one you want to edit and you only see it and the other isolated component(s).  

[johan.rutgeerts]

Filthy workaround, based on this post by @jhackney1972 :

• Add the body you want to see non-trasparent to the assy context,
• Activate the assy context in the component you are editing in place,
• Create a Boundary Fill,
• Select the body and select its cells as required.

You now have a local body that you can hide/unhide (imo only for visualisation purposes, not to be used as reference).

Added benefit: cross section views also affect this (local) body, while they don't affect geometry in an assy context.

Regards,

Johan

[johan.rutgeerts]

Correction:

On selecting Create – Boundary Fill, it switches back to the local context, so you have to either select the body in assy context first, and then select Create – Boundary Fill, or you can just create the boundary fill and select the correct body from the assy context in the browser.

[pbookerB89A5]

This is what I was looking for! Thank you!