Can plotstyles be used for color and lineweight control in Layout Viewports?

Michael Rock

 I am using STB configuration to define color and lineweight when printing independent of the object color, and I am happy with this. At least in 2D drawings. 

Now I start working more with 3D objects, so '2D wireframe' is no good option for visualstyle of my viewports. 'Hidden' would be much better!

• How can I control the thickness of my lines in other visualstyle? I do not mean the thickness of all lines, but to have different lineweigths in one viewport? Like having dimensions with thin lines, or showing some specific parts with thicker lines?
• Is it possible to use plotstyles to define color of objects in visualstyles? For modeling it is very helpful to have lots of different colors, but for printing out I prefer just to use color where it really makes a difference.

Thanks, Michael

Joe Dunfee

 As far as I can tell, there is no way to control the linetypes or lineweights in a rendered viewport.  The rendering is a raster image, and will also cause the file size of a PDF to be quite large.  I think the actual resolution depends on how many other objects are on the page. So, a page with more stuff, will tend to have blockier images.

For me, the rendered images are not acceptable. The only reason I have not dropped using BricsCAD for 3D work, is that we don't have the budget for something like SolidWorks.

-joe

Michael Rock

 Thank you Joe,

So there are two options:

a) Work with rendered viewports, accepting raster images with no control over color and line thickness.

b) Flatshot creating vector lines, where I can manually change lineweight and color.

Not exactly what I expected, but I will learn how to work with this.

Roy Klein Gebbinck

@Michael:
Your conclusion is not entirely correct.
You can customize visual styles (face settings, edge settings) and even create your own.
There is another way to create a vector representation of a 3D model: the _ViewBase command.

Hans De Backer

 Another possibility is to use SectionPlaneToBlock to create a vector representation.
The SectionPlaneSettings offer control over how the output looks, and on which layers the various parts of the produced drawing end up.

Yet another possibility is to use a paperspace viewport and set it's Shade Plot property to 'Legacy Hidden':
at printing time a vector hidden line view will be generated, which can take some time, but, this legacy '3d' plot style will allow to control lineweight and color.

Joe Dunfee

@Roy Klein Gebbinck:

You can customize visual styles (face settings, edge settings) and even create your own.

On my v14, you can set the line weight for all rendered objects at once.  But, this only affects the display on the monitor.  When I print, the line-weight is ignored, and rendered at a very fine line-weight that becomes nearly invisible when anything other than black or very dark colors are used.

-Joe

Roy Klein Gebbinck

Joe, you are right. The only edge setting that seems to affects the printed result is color. I made a wrong assumption here.

Joe Dunfee

Oops, I think I may have made a mistake, in thinking that the BricsCad guru, Roy Klein Gebbinck, made a mistake.  

By using a pen style table, to assign a line-weight and even a line-type to a particular color, I think you can do it!   So, Roy thought he made a mistake, which has turned out to be a mistake itself.... so, when I thought he made a mistake, I was just speaking too soon.

Aargh.., I just realized that the pen style table idea won't work, because rendered viewports are raster images, not vectors.  I even tested the idea, and it has no effect.  So, my efforts to find Roy Klein Gebbinck to be in error is mistaken.

-Joe

Scott McKenzie

One way to do this, create a visual style that uses the face colour and lighting that you prefer for the solid turning off the display of the edges.  Create your view of the solid in a layout tab and then lock the viewport.  Use the solprof command to generate a 2D representation of the 3D view, you can then edit the resulting block and adjust its line weights, colours, etc to create a custom visual style.

The downfall here is that if you adjust the rotation of the model in the viewport, or move the 3D or 2D components your model and lines will not align in the viewport.