How to thicken silhouette edges of a model or assembly

[araschdo]

Many of you are probably familiar with the hand rendering technique of using a thicker pen on silhouette edges to make a part "pop" from the page. (See this link for some examples:

http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~brosz/research/sil/

)

I have often wanted a function in Solidworks that would do this automatically. Here is another interesting link:

http://www.cs.brown.edu/research/graphics/research/art/rt-npr-s97.pdf

I also found some code on the solidworks site for finding silhouette edges for any given view:

http://files.solidworks.com/API/Examples/00000/0300s/0324/Example.htm

Can any coding gurus out there figure out how to use this code to have Solidworks aplly a thicker lineweight to silhouette edges for a jpg or tiff purposes? (Or even better, to do it real time as you spin a model, as illustrated in the top link?)

 

[Theophilus]

You can do this for drawings or wire-frame by setting your line weights to be thicker for outer edges (as opposed to tangent edges). You might want to do this for your drawing, assembly, and part templates if interested.

Otherwise, if rendering with PhotoWorks, you shouldn't use this since you can obtain near-photorealism.

Jeff Mowry
Industrial Designhaus, LLC

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

 

[araschdo]

I looked all over the Document Properties and System Options and the Help file for a setting for "outer edges". I couldn't find it. The closest I came was "visible edges" and that merely made EVERY edge thicker instead of just the silhouette edges, which just made it look smudged and less detailed.

Please clarify what you mean. I am running SW2004 SP2.1.

Thanks for your help

 

[rockguy]

You found the correct setting Araschdo. You could try coloring the interior and hidden lines a gray color and leaving the outer edges black. You can also select an individual line and set it's wieght. It may be possible to achieve what your trying to do but it's going to require lots of manual work. There really is no easy global way to achive this. No way that I know of.

 

[MadMango]

I haven't tried this (don't use layers), but can't you place different parts on different layers, and assign different line types/colors to each layer? If you can, then you might be able to get where you are wanting to go.

Ray Reynolds
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[araschdo]

Thank you for your replies.

I wanted to post a jpg and part file in order to clarify what I want to do, but could not figure out how to do that. I unfortunately do not have access to web space to place the files and post a link to them.

Imagine a cube viewed from one of the corners. The interior edges would form a Y shape: these edges I would like to have normal thickness. The silhouette edges would form a hexagon: these edges I would like to have double or triple thickness. Now a cube is very easy to visualize, so the effect is not very apparant. When the effect is applied to an assembly where there are lines all over the place, it is more effective. Highlighting the silhouette edges by thickening them is an effective means for communicating the part or assembly's shape quicker.

As far as ROCKGUY's suggestion of changing the color of interior and hidden lines:
I could not find a setting for interior lines. The color of the hidden lines does not matter since I am only interested in applying this effect to the Hidden Lines Removed view and/or the Shaded with edges view.

In fact, the "visible edges" setting I referred to above is only available in the document properties of a drawing file. I would like to have the effect in part or assembly windows as well.

To clarify further based on MADMANGO's suggestion, I would like to have the effect of thickening the silhouette edges of each part.

 

[MadMango]

Much clearer for me now. I've had to do this on occasion, and the only way was to individually select each line, convert entities, then using the Line Thickness icon change the thickness of the lines to Thick3 or Thick4.

Ray Reynolds
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[rockguy]

Araschdo,

There is no global setting to change the color of the interior lines. You will have to select each line and change the color using the "format" toolbar. As Mandigo said, you could also create a layer with the line weight and color settings and then select the interior lines individually and place them on the new layer. Either way it's a time consuming process.