visualisation question 1

Hi,
True shading is limited, so you can't apply this kind of texture without Ugphoto License.
Regards
Didier

If you're looking for 'textures' such as wood you need to be in 'Studio' rather than 'True Shading' mode. And you assign textures by first assigning some arbitrary 'Material', usually to individual faces and then edit the material giving it a texture map or image file.

Now when I say material I'm NOT talking about what you assign for mass density, but rather what you will find on the Resource Bar tab labeled 'System Materials'. You can either drag a material on to a body, where it will be assigned to all of the faces, or you can first go to the 'Materials/Textures' function found on the 'Visualize Shape' toolbar. If you use the 'Materials/Textures' function you can then assign materials and textures on a face by face basis. Once a material is assigned, it characteristics can be edited by selecting the 'Editor' option in the 'Materials/Textures' menu-bar.

The first thing that you will do since you're going to be customizing the material, is to give it rename it and change to type on the 'General' tab to something more appropriate. I generally use Something like 'Plastic' if I want a light shine or 'Conductor' for more of metalic look or you can just use 'Constant' which means that you get a generic appearance without any controls. If you're dealing with translucent materials, use 'Glass' of 'Dielectric'. Once that has been set you can then go to the 'Pattern' tab and eitehr select one of the 'Texture' engines or go to 'Wrapped Image' to assign a bitmap image from the 'TIFF Palette' or a user supplied image file in either .tif, .jpg or .png format. If you use one of the 'Texture' engines you can control virtually all aspects of the appearance of the texture. If you pick a bit map, you options are more limited. You can also control the relationship of the image to the model shape and orientation using the optionsw on the 'Texture Space' tab. If you have a good graphics card and you toggle the 'Preview' option ON, you can preview the appearance of your model in real-time as you make changes to the various settings and options found on the various tabs on the 'Material Editor' dialog. The best way to learn this is by doing so just start with something simple, like a block, assign a couple of textures to one or more faces and then just play with the setting and options until you get a feel for how it all works. Don't be afraid to experiment as you can always assign a new material and start over.

AS an example of what can be done, here's an image which was created several years ago using UG/NX (note that I only have the image file as this was NOT my work but one of my fellow workers):



John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.