So I have been playing around with some of the display modes and have a few questions.
I can’t seem to get my parallel line shading effect to look any where near as crisp as it does for the example shown on the online rhino docs page. See the attached image for the example I am talking about. It looks so nice and crisp but no matter how I tweak the settings, the shadow lines are barely recognizable as lines sometimes. And a lot of times the shadows display on top of the model instead of being cut off by the geometry as they should because they are on the ground. What’s weird is that the display problems aren’t consistent. If I have to switch to a different display mode for a bit to do some modeling or something and then switch back the display will sometimes fix itself or suddenly reappear when it wasn’t there before. I hope that makes sense.
I am wondering if it has something to do with my graphics card settings and/or it’s an anti aliasing issue of some kind. I am running a GeForce GTX 870M and the driver is up to date. And I am running it for optimum performance and all of that good stuff.
Which brings me to another question for those of you who have GeForce cards? Is it even necessary to update the drivers that come out every few weeks since they seem to be geared specifically to ensure that whatever new game has come out plays nice and fast? I don’t do any gaming and there doesn’t seem to be a driver to download for those of us that use these cards for 3d modeling and CAD. My Wolfenstein and DOOM glory days are well behind me so updating my driver so Halo 20 runs smashingly on my system isn’t a huge priority for me. (Even though there is a part of my brain, nestled deep in my subconscious, saying “just buy that game and take a week off work. You don’t have tell anyone”)
Anyways, last thing. My current renderer is always set to Thea and not Rhino Render. If I set a display mode to use its render material instead of its color do I need to ensure that I switch my current renderer to Rhino Render and that I use Rhino materials to get the effect? If I am using display modes for visualization, I generally don’t use render materials, but it sounds like it could get interesting to do so and I want to make sure that I am doing it correctly so i can see what that whole side of things has to offer.
It’s not always easy to get good images out of the patent display mode. Shadows come and go and you have to play with direction of the lines and the position of the sun.
That said, from your description, it’s perhaps the Options > View > Display Modes > [Patent Drawing] > Shadows that you should be looking into and not so much the Shading effects (that are described in the picture that you refer to). If you turn off Edge Blurring you should be getting more crispy lines.
I made Grasshopper - Galapagos simulations that made us conclude to use 5 hydraulic cylinders (as opposed to 4 in the original concept of the inventor who is sitting 6 meters away from me as I’m writing this). I then became project manager for the demonstration version.
When the concept was proven, one of our product departments took over and constructed the pilot version (being tested here in the same workshop) that has successfully served its first tour and is now being made ready to be shipped out again next week.
Well, I wrote a response ages ago but seemed to have forgotten to hit send. So here is my belated response:
Very nice. I couldn’t figure out what this thing was besides a part for some serious looking deep sea machinery. So I googled it and…yup it is a part for some serious looking deep sea machinery. I don’t often find myself reading up on the latest innovations in deep sea oil extraction. Looks like you all got some accolades for it as well.
Do you use Rhino to design serious mechanical equipment and not another program like Solidworks? I wasn’t aware that, even with plug-ins, you could perform the sort of engineering analysis that would be necessary.
Anyways, the shadow settings are what I have been messing with. I just wanted to screen capture the image and it happened to be surrounded by the shading effects documentation. I definitely turned off edge blurring and also reduced the shadows from artifacts setting which helped some. I think the sun/lighting situation is what I really need to pay more attention to. That is the trick.
It’s definitely not a one-man show.
In the technology department, I only work on new concepts and pretty much only use Rhino for that. With the occasional quick reality-check that a Scan & Solve analysis can give inside Rhino.
When one of the product departments take over, everything gets done in NX (and Pro/E in the past). We have a pretty large analysis department that checks parts, products, and runs global analysis (including everything from permanently installed equipment subsea to the rig or other vessel at the sea surface). They typically use Abaqus but also hand calculations and software developed in-house.
I just briefly looked up scan and solve and it seeed like most of the results are a couple of years old. I’m intrigued by it. It would be nice to find a plugin that could do some structural analysis using real world materials.
I do small scale architecture and furniture design so if you know of any plug-ins that might work for those applications let me know.
