What a Mesh

Obscured lines in Visual Styles

A couple of posts ago, I talked about some values that make the background look great. Now it's time for the lines within the model. With the new meshes, the need to really understand each face is even more important than before, since we need to understand the selection we're doing. If we are working with a mesh box of 3x3x3 and have Facet Edges selected inside Edge Effects, we won't see the 9 faces within the side of the box. We need to have Isolines selected for that.

There are some other settings that may be useful to understand, so let's describe them step by step.

Let's assume we are working with a mesh box of 2x2x2, and within the Visual Styles, we select 3D Hidden. The Visual Styles are in the Render tab in the Ribbon, or can be accessed by typing VS. You will probably see something like this.

 

It would be rather difficult to understand that we already have four faces defined within each face of the box, so let's see what we can do about it. Every setting is controlled from the Edge Effects panel.

Let's start with Obscured Edges, which is the first setting in the drop down portion of the panel. Once clicking on the icon to activate the option (you will notice that the icon changes its background), this setting enables you to see the hidden lines with a hidden line linetype. You can also customize the color. The settings in all the videos you have seen until now use the colors I'll be presenting in this post (again, thanks to some time Hans-Frederick Brown took to make the whole experience better).

 

The second setting will give you the ability to see an Edge where there's intersection with another element (solid or mesh). If this edge is not coincident with an isoline, it will generate an edge with the color specified in the settings. In our case, we're using color 141, which keeps us in the blue/grayish palette.

 

The result of this last setting will enable us to see something like the following:

 

The last setting, called Edge Color, controls the color of every visible edge in the model. If you need more contrast, you may want to change the color into something more distinctive.

 

In the next image, let's see the results of this setting if we change it into white.

 

The last setting that we'll cover today is Silhouette Edges. These will emphasize the outer edges of any model. This can be a very useful feature, since it can help to better visualize the outlines of our models.

 

We'll continue covering more Visual Styles features, so stay tuned!

Let's add some color to the UI

Hi,

I've been getting a lot of questions about the UI in the videos. It is certainly not the one shipped in the box.

I'll post the values that you should change in order to have this look. Hans-Frederick Brown, one of the Product Design leads, was the one that came up with this great color scheme.

I would post the arg so you can get the values, but the profile file also comes with some sysvar settings which could change the way you work.

Just in case, a brief explanation of where to put this data.

You first need to go to Options (either typing options in the command prompt or going to the App Menu and clicking Options at the bottom right).

 

This will open the Options dialog, which has a tab for Display. Under that tab, there's an option for Colors.

 

Then, you will need to change the following values. Some of them may be already in the right value. As you very well know, we can chose among the logical colors (with names), the rest of the indexed colors,  true colors and from color books. The values that you'll see in the list are basically RGB values from the True Colors tab. You'll need to select RGB before setting these values. By default it is normally in HSL values.

 

 

This is the list of values that you need to change. They are basically around the 3d perspective and parallel projection, and the 2d model space.

2D model space

Uniform Background                                      81,93,97

Autotrack vector                                            255,102,102

Autosnap marker                                           200,135,70

 

3D parallel projection

Uniform background                                      36,47,61

Crosshairs                                                      Yellow

Grid major lines                                             100,124,130

Grid minor lines                                             60,84,104

Grid axis lines                                                176,199,201

Autotrack vector                                             255,102,102

Autosnap marker                                            200,135,70

Drafting tool tip                                              Black

Drafting tool tip background                          White

 

3D perspective projection

Top of sky background                                  204,211,242

Background sky horizon                                200,202,195

Background ground origin                             36,47,61

Background ground horizon                           220,220,220

Bottom of earth background                          53,65,80

Background earth horizon                               226,226,234

Crosshairs                                                       color 94

Grid major lines                                               69,85,89

Grid minor lines                                               43,60,74

Grid axis lines                                                  176,199,201

Autotrack vector                                               255,102,102

Autosnap marker                                             200,135,70

Drafting tool tip                                               Black

Drafting tooltip background                            199,199,220

You may want to generate a new profile with these values.

Let me know if you like it, and I'm open to suggestions!

 

Layers in the QAT in AutoCAD 2010

I received a couple of questions about the UI displayed in my screen captures. I’ll make some posts about this topic, sharing my customization. This may be useful to many of you, while it will seem obvious to many more.

The first one is about one big enhancement in the QAT (Quick Access Toolbar). As you can see in my screen captures, I have a layer drop down on the QAT, which has become one of my favorite UI features. You may remember that AutoCAD 2009 introduced a modeless layer manager. This means that it can be kept open as if it was a palette. However, depending on how you organize the space on your screen, this may take too much real estate. Having the basic functionality of the layer manager in the QAT is a huge enhancement.

So, how is this done? If you’re already in the 3D Modeling workspace, the Layers panel is by default not displayed in the Home tab.

 

Right click on the Ribbon, select Show Panels, and you’ll find the Layers panel. Once it gets to the Ribbon, right click on the Layers drop down menu, and you will be able to add it to the QAT.

 

In following posts we’ll see how to make some further customizations.