Silhouettes with Hidden Geometry Off

medit

Hi, I'm new here, first post and hello to everyone.
I've searched for this question in the forums but I haven't found any solutions (maybe I should have searched better but anyway...).

I'm also new with Sketchup and maybe this is too easy to solve but i can't figure it out... I've done a model with AutoCAD, imported to SU and i'm trying to do a hidden line rendering. Problem is that the silhouettes of the curved solids don't show up unless i put the hidden geometry on. But even then it's not a continous line but a dashed one and I don't want all these extra lines that appear when I put the Hidden Geometry on -if i delete them some faces dissappear-.

So my question is, is there a way to do a rendering with the Hidden Geometry off but the silhouettes of the cylinders on (the red line in these images)?

hidden geometry on: Too many lines, don't like the black areas

hidden geometry off: silhouettes not showing

can i do this? HG off and silhouettes:

Thanks a lot in advance (and pardon my English)!

pmolson

try this.

Insure curved piece is a group.

select it

right click

soften/smooth edges

in soften edges dialog window, check smooth normals box

adjust slider until geometry disappears.

p

Chris Fullmer

There is a style setting for that called "Profiles". Many people turn them off (they do slow down SketchUp a bit if you have a really really nig model) but they can be super duper handy for viewing edges that are not connected correctly.

So yes, go to styles and turn on Profile, and you can set it to 1, or I prefer 2 (or anything higher if you choose to be so daring).

Chris

medit

pmolson, Chris, thanks for your answers ... but it doesn't work..

this is what happens with the profiles set to "4":

and this is what happens if I move the slide to 180 degrees in the soften/smooth edges box (in fact, as i move the slide to the right, the silhouette progressively loses almost all the "inner" lines leaving the outline EXCEPT the one that defines the limit of the curved corner):

since I'm new with SU I don't even know if what I'm asking for is possible or not... but it's really strange that I can't do what apparently would be the most simple rendering.
Maybe it has to do with AutoCAD and how it saves .dwg files? is AutoCAD "really" compatible with SU (or "fully" compatible)?

Thanks again.

Chris Fullmer

Oh thats interesting, I thought for sure that would do exactly what you wanted. I'll open up SU in a bit and see if I can figure anything different out.

Chris

thomthom

Are the edges by any chance hidden as well as soft/smooth-ed?

Chris Fullmer

Yeah, Thom, I was thinking that too. I NEVER EVER EVER hide lines (except sometimes) because I find it causes too many little quirks that always bug me. Anyhow, point being that I just tested it and sure enough, smoothed lines display their profile just fine but smoothed AND hidden lines will not display profiles. And his are smoothed and hidden judging by the small dashes they show in View Hidden Mode.

So, the way to fix it would be to unhide those lines and only smooth them. That will get SU to display just how you want. good luck!

Chris

medit

thomthom,
no, they aren't... in fact, i've tried all the combinations: hidden geometry on w/ soft/smooth and w/o soft/smooth (and apparently it doesn't seem to do anything if i move the slide in the soft/smooth box), and hidden geometry off w/ and w/o soft/smooth (then i see the changes i showed above: i lose all the inner lines except the outline and still the rounded corner is inivisible..)

Chris,
I'm not sure if I'm doing this right but when you mean to unhide you mean to leave the Hidden Geometry option unchecked in the View menu right? I already have that (and to be sure that i had not any hidden line somewhere i also clikcked in Unhide > All under the Edit menu)... so all my lines are shown and then i click in the small building with the rounded corners, select it, then right-click and I open the soft/smooth edges option, the menu appears and the slide is in the 0,0 degrees with the smooth normals checked and the soften coplanar unchecked... if i move it to 180 degrees -or if i check/uncheck the normals and coplanars, or if i do a combination with all these options- the building not only NOT shows the corner but almost dissappears..

by the way, this happens as well with the edge of the roof of the gas station: if i move the slide to 180degrees almost all the lines disappear... and what happens with the circular columns supporting the roof is that, since this is a solid with no straight lines, either with the slide to 0 or to 180 remains invisible, it only shows the circle in the base of the columns.

I guess there's something wrong the curved solids... not that they look polygonal (cause if i show the hidden geometry then they look perfectly curved but with all these dashed lines that appear in the first pic i posted) as some other threads of the forum talked about.

If it helps: I did the model in AutoCAD 2007 and saved it in that version, then imported to SU as a .dwg... I also can do a screen capture of every step i do if you think you could help me better...

Thanks a lot again for your patience.

thomthom

Can you post a sample model?

Chris Fullmer

Yes please, post a model. I'm fairly certain we'll find that the lines are hidden (or that AutoCad has somehow done something imopssiblle to the geometry). So post the model and we'll check,

Chris

medit

Ok, this is the SU model (.skp).
If you need it I could try to upload the original .dwg file as well.

Thanks again.

Exemple.skp

thomthom

As suspected, your edges are in fact hidden - not soft & smooth.
You much unhide all edges, then Soft/Smooth the edges. When you do that you get your profiles.

mitcorb

Since this seems to be a small model, try this.
To unhide edges one at a time or in a limited area, you can use the Eraser tool with Control and/ or Shift.
To Soften, use Control+ Eraser.
To Hide Unhide, use Shift+ Eraser.

If I have these mixed up, Just use Control Z to undo.

Chris Fullmer

Except that only unsmooths a line. It won't unhide it.

But you can turn on hidden geometry, then select the entire area and go to Edit > Unhide > All and that will unhide edges, but leave their smoothness alone.

Now once you do that, turn of view hidden geometry. Now if those lines are visible, you want to smooth them. Then you can do as mitcorb suggested by using the eraser tool with ctrl pressed. That will smooth the lines, but not hide them. Then they will show up in profile like you are wanting.

Chris

mitcorb

An edge both hidden and smooth, has a "finer" dotted line when viewing hidden geometry. Apparently, you can right click on this edge, select Unhide and it reverts to smooth only, which should display in the "coarser" dashed line.
Hide and Smooth can be achieved using Control+Shift+Eraser.

medit

Well, first thanks for all your replies,

Thomthom,
your method works ok, but ... do I have to edit each group, then select each line in that group and then in the entity info box of each line select all the lines that I want to hide for each particular view? .. because if I want a different view and I rotate my point of view then it won't be those edges that I've edited the ones that will define the "silhouette" of the rounded corner and I'll have to start again.

So my question is if there's some way that Sketchup can automatically "detect" what the are the silhouettes for each view and then show up only the boundaries just like AutoCAD do? .. if you have a curved solid in AutoCAD, like a cylinder, you can tell it to show x lines per surface (which would be those dashed and dotted lines in SketchUp) or simply to show the siolhouettes per solid and surface independently of what is your XYZ position and from where you're looking at the solid...

these captions show the AutoCAD method: first one without the silhouettes and 4 "contour lines per surface", the one with 20 (that actually don't show the silhouette), and then one with only the silhouette and 0 lines "inside" the geometry of the solid --- that's what I was asking if it's possible to do with SketchUp, because it would do the most basic hidden line rendering that I'm looking for (and that AutoCAD, as far as I know, can't do... in fact, if someone knows if AutoCAD can do that type of renderings tell me how...)

Anyway, what AutoCAD won't do will be to "emulate" a hand rendering WITH silhouettes and that's why I turned to SketchUp... but if for every view i have to personally edit each curved solid and define its boundaries by hand it will take me hours with a medium/large model.

Chris, Mitcorb,
thanks for you suggestions but I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong: if i select a whole group and use the eraser with crtl or shift it just don't do anything, and if i select a group, edit it, and then select line by line with eraser + crtl it just don't do nothing either... of course without the crtl pressed it delets the whole group.
And still I don't quite understand the difference between a dashed line and a dotted line... but I just want them to disappear not to be smoothed/softed (it seems that check or uncheck the smooth/soft only turns dotted lines into dashed lines?)

Sorry if I seem a bit dumb but it's my first time with SU... and, this silhouettes problem aside, it's really a fast, flexible and great piece of software!

Thanks again.

Chris Fullmer

I'll try to make a video showing how to do it today. The point is that SU DOES automatically find the profile edges to display by default when you turn on profile edges. The only time it does not show them is when YOU hide the edges. That overides the profile showing. The point is?, don't ever hide lines. I know it is confusing at first between hidden and smooth, but once you see the difference, it all makes sense. Anyhow, I think a video will go a long ways to explaining it. Its really rather simple.

Chris

medit

great, thanks Chris...

meanwhile here's another example... I don't see how with the profiles ON I could solve my problem...

these are actually cones, also done with AutoCAD... their silhouettes, now with hidden geometry OFF and profiles ON in the View menu, does not show..

then I turn hidden geometry on still with the profiles on (so now there's nothing hidden).. now I see the silhouettes but I don't want the "auxiliary" lines (the dotted lines)

so i select one of the cones and click on soften/smooth edges

the box starts with the slide at 0 degrees (so the lines are dotted)

and I move the slide to the 180 degrees (and now the lines are dashed including the base of the cone which I want to keep as a continous line)

since this does not do what I want, i edit the group of that cone and open the group... I select some of the lines and click on entity info.. i unhide them (that I don't understand: how it is they were "Hidden" if i have the Hidden geometry ON in the view menu?)

so now i close the group and back to the view menu, i uncheck the hidden geometry and those six lines appear...

... but those are not the silhouettes for that view, so i move the camera until one of them "become" one of the silhouettes of the cone...

So, what I'm missing? I can't do that for every single curved solid in the model and for any new point of view!
Chris, if you really can do a small tutorial for this particular problem I would be very grateful,
thanks

Chris Fullmer

ok, here is a video that shows a few things. I tried to make a shape similar to your lights cones.

I show how to unhide all the edges. Then they will show up as profile edges. The bottom ring of edges had not been "smooth" already, so they show up as dark black. I use the eraser tool + ctrl to smooth them. notice they disappear, but still show up as profile lines.

I hope this begins to help, sorry there is no audio. I don't have my mic with me at the moment.

Chris[flash=750,640:221b9reh]http://www.chrisfullmer.com/forums/profile_edges.swf[/flash:221b9reh]

mitcorb

@medit:
Way up there in the post you said:
"Chris, Mitcorb,
thanks for you suggestions but I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong: if i select a whole group and use the eraser with crtl or shift it just don't do anything, and if i select a group, edit it, and then select line by line with eraser + crtl it just don't do nothing either... of course without the crtl pressed it delets the whole group.
And still I don't quite understand the difference between a dashed line and a dotted line... but I just want them to disappear not to be smoothed/softed (it seems that check or uncheck the smooth/soft only turns dotted lines into dashed lines?)"

In this paragraph you said you selected the group and then tried to use the Ctrl+Eraser method. After you select the group, you must either right click and select Edit Group(or Component) and then do the Ctrl+Eraser (or top menu Edit> select Edit, go to bottom of drop down menu> Group(nn in model)> Edit Group at top of fly out menu. If it does not respond, then- do you have "nested" groups/components? That is, are they groups within groups? If so, you can explode the inner group, or right click and edit the inner group.