Rendering Fillet Visual only Fillet

[Anonymous]

When rendering, my process normally starts by filleting as much of the model as is possible with little 0.05mm - 0.5mm approx fillets so that edges render with a highlight. This has the unwanted effect of breaking a ton of constraints and adding features to manufacturing models that are not wanted/needed on the manufacturing drawing.

To work around this I shrinkwrap, then make components, and then fix the components in place before filleting.

What would be really nice is a visual only fillet option.

I would guess that the rendering engine is handed a copy of the model to render, while this copy is being made, the option to add a global fillet would be superb.

Thanks and Regards

Philip Russell

[Rory_M]

Adding fillets is something that I do when rendering as it gives a much better result. I don't have a perfect solution to this but I do have a slightly easier workaround.

Start a new assembly.

Place your existing assembly into the new assembly.

Add all your fillets as assembly features.

That's it - Only one more file to control, and it doesn't affect your original assembly at all.

As an alternative, you can add all your fillets in the original assembly as assembly features, and turn them off when you're done. The advantage of this is that there's no more files to manage. The problem with this is if you forget to turn them off, it can have knock on effect on your GA or if your assembly is used as a subassembly elsewhere.

Back in the days of the Mental Ray, 3DS Max had the option to add fillets to edges during rendering so it's definitely something that a rendering engine should be able to do without affecting the model.

[Anonymous]

Good point on the Assembly features 🙂 always happy to save a file or click to get a job done.