Hidden Lines are not behaving

[halogen]

I have an issue with hidden lines showing up when not wanted. I have successfully used the Hide/Show Components tab in the Drawing View Properties dialog box. Unfortunately, it does not work consistently. The complexity of our product may be the issue. We make products out of bar stock which eventually end up with rectangular cross sectioned helical curved beams in the middle. (Don’t ask me how we do it, I cannot tell you).

Anyways, I chose the drawing view as Hidden Lines Removed so I can select which (interior components) hidden lines to show. Case A: Selecting no components, I get a drawing with no hidden lines shown (as it should be). Case B: Selecting 6 items I get to see all hidden lines, even for the helical coils even though it is not selected. Case C: Selecting only one component (out of 6 or so) I still see the hidden lines of all of the components, including the helical coils hidden lines.

That was today. Yesterday, it worked. Case D: I selected the 6 items to show hidden lines of and that is all that showed up. No helical coil hidden lines. This is what I want to happen every time. The only difference between yesterday and today is that yesterdays drawing is an assembly and today’s drawing is of a part in the assembly. I have even tried the alternate route using the “Hide Behind Plane” command. It does not work either.

The first way I tried to solve this issue before searching and utilizing “Hide/Show Components” was to start the drawing as “Hidden Lines Visible” and selecting the helical coils hidden lines and choosing to “Hide” them. Unfortunately, these lines seem to wrap around to the front of the part so I end up hiding visible lines with this command! (Case E & F). Maybe this is the real issue: Solidworks cannot tell these lines apart.

I have screen captures illustrating all these cases. Does anyone have a clue what’s going on here or how to solve it?

 

[aamoroso]

Are you sure that the sketch lines aren't showing or maybe tangent lines showing with font. I would first right click on one of the lines you are seeing and select "Go to in Feature Tree". This will take you to the exact source of the line. Right click the sketch and if "Hide" is an option, then your sketch lines are showing. The second thing I suggest is to check your tangent lines. Right click in the view you are seeing the lines in. Select "Tangent Edges" and then make sure your Tangent Edges are not set to "Show with Font". The third thing I suggest trying is to change your draft quality. Activate a view and then change the draft quality in the property manager, save the drawing and then try to change it back. It sounds a little strange but I have seen this action fix more than a few drawing quirks over the last year.

Good luck!!

 

[macPT]

You are right halogen.

Lines ending in tangencies, tangent edges, threads on curved faces... are poorly managed by SW and allways cause a badly represented view.

Another thing that give us big trouble are line/edge hiding. For example, according to ISO standards, when we do a partial cross section (a detail cross section that do not cut all the model, just a small portion) the limits of this cut in the cross section view should be a thin spline. SW represent the limits as an edge (which is wrong because it gives a wrong idea of part boundaries). Then we hide these edges an create the spline. Everything seems to be OK. But if we close the drawing and retrieve it again, the edges are still showing when we need to hide them again.

Regards