Having trouble capturing a production quality image for a scientific paper

Hi all,

I am trying to use Rhino 7 to draw 3D math/physics schematics to be used in a paper; however, I am having a lot of trouble actually getting a high-quality image file out. I have scoured the internet on the different ways to do this but have mostly been unsuccessful. My main problem is that when using “ViewCaptureToFile,” the line widths and points in my drawing change significantly based on the resolution I choose. Using the viewport resolution gives me an image that has accurate line widths and point sizes but the overall quality is too low to be used in a paper. Thus, when I try to scale up the resolution, the image quality obviously goes up; however, the line and point sizes decrease proportionally with the resolution.

For example, the following export is at the standard viewport resolution. The lines and points are the correct size, yet the resolution is too low.


On the other hand, the following image is the same figure but with the resolution scaled up by a factor of 3. The resolution of this export is right about where I need it to be, but the lines and points have shrunken way too small.

I would like to know if there is any way around this issue other than having to manually increase the sizes of each object each time I want a different export resolution. I also am wondering if maybe I am not taking the right approach for developing figures for a paper. I would greatly appreciate any help with my issue and/or any suggestions anyone might have regarding my overall workflow.

Thanks so much for your time!

A couple of options here as I see it.

  1. You can, in display options (in settings) set the lineweight/edge width for surfaces/lines in each of the display modes, so set it to something that works and then export as you are.

  2. Print, as an image, in raster, and control the lineweights there in the print dialogue

  3. The option I would use, but if you do not have illustrator you cannot do this (or if you have another program like illustrator you might be able to?) Select all, and export as an .ai file, then in illustrator just make the lineweights what you want, color it how you want, scale it, etc., and save as PDF or image.

Hope this helps.

Thank you very much for you quick and helpful reply.

Your first point is what I am currently doing; however, it is just kind of a hassle when I switch to that custom viewport and the lines and points are set so large that they pretty much blot out the entire image before capturing. It works—just mildly inconvenient. As feature-rich as Rhino is in general, it seems like the exporting functionality is lacking.

I have also tried your second point several times with varying results. Primarily, I have found it difficult when I have several different line widths, as they all seem to get exported as the same size.

Your third point is my preferred method since I still need to add text. I don’t use Illustrator because I have found that Inkscape usually is sufficient for anything I would do Illustrator, which is preferable because it is free. Unfortunately, I have been unsuccessful with getting my Rhino exports into Inkscape. Maybe it is time to bite the bullet and buy Illustrator. If anyone has had success getting Rhino-created files into Inkscape and being able to edit them, I would be extremely grateful if you could let me know your process for doing this.

Anyway, I again really appreciate your time helping me with this!

Another option is to go the grasshopper route, and use the custom lineweight preview tool and then bake it, and you can export do it all right from Grasshopper. Not sure if you know how to use Grasshopper.

Also, I forgot to mention, you can set up layouts in Rhino, and set scales/page sizes, and tell it what lineweights to print as. This should work, it is how we do architectural drawings.

I would also recommend print to raster. It contains all of the features that viewcapture has, plus more that let you set things like point size and line width.

This doesn’t sound right. Are you setting print width for different curves?

Hi -

Whenever I need to check the PDF or SVG output from Rhino, I use Inkscape.
You need to print as vector and so the plane in your illustration has to be a hatch.
Attached is a quick PDF from Rhino and the SVG from Inkscape. When you import the PDF into Inkscape, you need to ungroup several times to get rid of all groups.
Illustration.pdf (5.7 KB)
Illustration
-wim