Visual Styles - some objects don't render properly

Joe Dunfee

 In my never-ending quest to get drawings from 3D models that are legible, I re-investigated Visual Styles.  I was able to come up with a style that had acceptable output in terms of the line weights, though I had to give up entity color.  But, then I ran into another problem.  Some objects don't render properly.

Any idea how to fix this?  For some reason the Hidden render style does render properly. But, my custom version does not.  Attached is an example.

-Joe

Joe Dunfee

 I just did another test with allowing the lines in a rendered viewport to be color, but adding some width to the default.  This DID permit me to use color.  I think I had abandoned the idea before because I ran into the rendering problems that made it unacceptable. 

When the color lines were too thin (a setting of 3) they often  looked very faint when I printed.  I suspect the dithering is what caused it on the printer, so I needed wider lines to make them wide enough to permit the dithering.  Also, the more complex a page, the more pixelated it becomes.  This may have been a factor as well.  But, it seems that color lines can be made wide enough that they show up. 

-Joe

Joe Dunfee

 Sorry for the multiple posts. As I continue to work, I come across more issues.

When I have my rendering style to make the lines wider, they display at the same width, regardless of my zoom.  The Lineweight display scale has no effect on them.  The problem is that when I have a rendering style that will render the lines wide enough when they are printed, they show on screen as too wide.  My entire drawing is just a blob of color when I zoom to the full page.  

Can anyone suggest any approach to turning these wide lines off?

Attached is a small screen grab that shows the issue.

-Joe

Viewport rendering line width.JPG

Roy Klein Gebbinck

Regard the problems mentioned in your first post:
1.
The color of entities that are not 3D solids is not influenced by the visual style. You are using a VP color override for the 'Extension-Dim' layer.
2.
You have to change the Face Settings to improve the rendering of the diagonals.

Roy Klein Gebbinck

Regarding the problem in your last post:
3.
Every VP has a 'Shade style' (for screen display) and a 'Shade plot' (for printing) property. You can use different visual styles for each.

Joe Dunfee

@Roy Klein Gebbinck:

2.
You have to change the Face Settings to improve the rendering of the diagonals. 

The diagonals were polylines with width and thickness.  This can simulate a 3D solid, and can look identical.  In my case, it didn't render properly with faces off.  So, I simply re-modeled them as true solids.

I bet some are wondering why I even used a polyline for that part, rather than a 3D solid.  Originally, it was a trick I figured out to do 3D using AutoCAD LT ver 2, years ago.  But, in some ways the old tricks of setting width and thickness to polylines, and giving a thickness value to the old-style 2D solid, had advantages.  For bar stock, you can stretch a polyline with width and thickness, and it holds its dimensions. So, you can't accidentally stretch a corner, and change its profile.  Then, for 2D solids, with thickness, if they represent plywood, then you can't ever accidentally stretch it out of its plane, or stretch its thickness.

Thanks for the reply. The other ideas also worked well.

-Joe