Edge Style

andymaw

Hi there,

Just a quick question - is there a way to make the edge style thinner than the default? I'm placing a lot of plants very close together and the overall all view ends up looking very black.

Cheers

Gaieus

Well, what you can do is to turn off edges completely but otherwise they are 1 pixel thin and you cannot make them thinner. If you have profiles on, you can turn those off and the overall appearance of the model (with very dense edges/profiles) will be less "black". See these settings in Window > Styles > In model > Edit > Edge settings (the first little icon on top).

I'd go along this route however instead (either if you use profiles or not)

edit the plant component (probably you'll find nested components inside; keep double clicking until you get to the raw geometry)
turn your model into wireframe display mode
select all the geometry inside the component (wireframe will make sure you only select the edges)
go to Edit > Hide
exit the component and turn the display mode back to shaded (or anything you are using)
This will hide all the edges of your plant components only and you can still use other edges in the model.

andymaw

That's great. Thanks a lot. The way you described was what I tried to do but didnt think to put it in wireframe! Would have taken ages to pick up all the edges without the faces.

It's done the trick to the images, thanks very much.

glenn

Gaieus, thanks for the wireframe tip. I've been doing it the hard way.....your method will be much faster.
Glenn

MartinRinehart

@gaieus said:

[]select all the geometry inside the component (wireframe will make sure you only select the edges)
[]go to Edit > Hide

Gaieus, what would you say to creating a layer, maybe "plant_edges" and putting the edges there? That way you preserve hide/unhide for their typical uses.

By the way, it is ALMOST ALWAYS a very bad idea to split geometry this way. In this case, however, I'd do it.

Gaieus

Sure you can put those edges on separate layers, too (although it's typically not a very good idea to put elements of a certain group hierarchy onto different layers because if you are a messy person like me, you can easily end up confused).

The reason for an ultimate hide for these edges is generally that you are really unlikely to need them (especially with nicely modelled foliage where image files of leaves and such are much more spectacular without edges). Even from a medium distance those condensed edges are very ugly looking.

BTW the same "tip" goes for 3D Text. Make something and watch it from a certain distance without hiding the edges. It will soon become illegible.