I’m doing my first foray into using Rhino to set up sheets for drawing sets from a model. So far its been very good.
Can anyone tell me the best way to show dimensions/text with this approach? To this point I’ve been using the Wireframe view type for the drawings, which has worked reasonably well. However, I am trying to show a setout for a series of surface panels, which I am dimensioning directly from my model on the Cplane with the Project option. Some of the panels require a colour differentiation in the sheet (IE, I’d like the surface to actually show up rather than be a see-through wireframe). I turned on the X-ray option, and all of my drafting work below shows exactly as I want to, except for the dimensions/dimension lines/text, which are not showing through the surfaces.
Here are the examples below:
Wireframe, showing the green dimensions as expected:
As mentioned, I like showing the ‘X-ray’ version because it prints out a nice solid grey hatch (which differentiates from other types of panels on differently colored layers), but I’m not sure why dimensions are excluded from this while curves show through? Is there an option somewhere to correct this?
I guess my alternative would be to do all of my dimensioning on a new Cplane that exists above all of my geometry, however I have to admit that I really like just keeping all of that on the origin (world) Cplane, all together as one with the additional linework.
Thanks Pascal. I was under the impression that this was only for when you had two objects in the same planar space (ie, both flat in the Cplane), where you need to tell which one should display above/below. In my instance, I have the actual surface geometry floating around 50m above the Cplane, and then all dimensions are drawn directly in the Cplane with “planar” checked on. Is that the case?
Hi BeeCee - try it and see - BringToFront should push any curves and annotaions (including hatches) to the front of the display, regardless of 3d position - that is what it’s for. Any luck?
Perfect, thats exactly the one I’m looking for, thanks Pascal / John. I didn’t realize this was a pixel-based operation versus a physical one.
One further question - is there a way to draw directly ‘in front’ ? IE I’m adding a couple more dimensions, and each time I draw one it immediately goes behind the surfaces, so I need to select all objects on the DIM layer and bring to front each time; anyway to do this on the fly?
Hi Bee Cee, currently there is not - I can see how this might be a handy thing in an object property or DimStyle or layer property, but for now, you’ll have to do it the dumb way I guess. You could make macros, like
! _SelDim _BringToFront _SelNone
something like that, that you run once in a while.
Be aware that BringToFront will make your dimensions show through everything in every detail view. When/if you start working in 3D it might turn into a mess.
