Pipeline rendering issues.

Joe Dunfee

 I am continuing to work on a pipe system drawing, and now have run into a challenge over how render the views.

Ideally, I would be able to have hidden lines show as hidden lines.... this has been a drafting standard for perhaps as long as the art form.  But, I am running into problems.

Also, I show various pipe line runs in different line-types to help the user follow the path.  I also depict the centerlines of the pipes using a 3D polyline, but 3D polylines will not show a linetype, though solids do.

I can create a visual style that has the occluded lines show as hidden.  But, these are the problems'

1) If the pipes are depicted by 3d polylines, those polylines are not converted to hidden lines when they go behind objects.

2) If the pipes are depicted by solids, they do convert to hidden-line-type when it is behind objects (and overrides the named line-type  which is good) But, the line-type of the visible solid is difficult to detect, regardless of the settings I try.

  A)  If I show the tessellation lines, or the facet edges, the hidden portions are shown as hidden lines, and you can't discern the line-type.

   If I turn off the tessellation lines, or the facet edges, and have the profile on, the profile does not show as hidden when it goes behind other objects.

At the moment, the best choice seems to be 2A, which means I can't use line-types to depict particular runs.  I currently use color, but I know that a fair percentage of guys have some color blindness.  Also, permit drawings in Florida must be done in b/w.  So, color really is not a viable option.

Thanks for any ideas.

-Joe

Joe Dunfee

 I should add that I have an older thread, https://forum.bricsys.com/discussion/25238 that talks about related issues, but the stuff related to piping was unique enough to warrant a new thread.

-joe