A new demo showing how to model an electric razor has been added to solidThinking’s YouTube Channel.

See how you can quickly model the razor, change details and perfect its design in complete freedom thanks to solidThinking’s unique ConstructionTree technology.

In some cases, the Round modeling tool does not highlight some of the edges that you would like to round. This can happen because there are gaps. As a consequence, you cannot apply radii to these edges.

To verify the presence of gaps, click the ESC key to close the Round tool and use the Tolerance Check tool (see image below).

In order to solve the problem, the best way is to first verify the geometry and then close the gaps by taking advantage of the ConstructionTree™ structure that will allow you to apply changes to the model and update the geometry.

In some cases, you may also prefer to perform the operation without fixing the geometry.

To do this, choose the Round tool, then select the object. Now, use the CTRL+ENTER shortcut to close the tool without adding radii (They will be added later). Increase the Sew Tolerance as displayed in the image below.

You should increase the Sew Tolerance by small increments until you get the following panel (see image below). This panel informs you that the number of edges has changed. Just click OK.

Now, by using a bigger value for Sew Tolerance (see image below), all the edges are highlighted.

At this point, you can click the Insert Radius checkbox to add the radius you need.

Remember that in order to perform the operation, you will need to apply radii to ALL the edges that had gaps (they were displayed in yellow when you used the Tolerance Check). Of course, you can also add any other radius that you need.

A new demo showing how to model a spray bottle is available. See how solidThinking lets you explore  any possible design alternative in real time. 

You can find the real time version of the demo, useful for learning, at the Demos page of the solidThinking Web site.

An accelerated version of the demo is avaialble at www.youtube.com/solidthinking.

The Translate, Rotate, and Scale tools have no Console prompts or ‘creation phase’ so the Tool panel is immediately active. Like all basic transform tools, we can either enter exact values in the Tool Panel or simply click-and-drag in the workspace to interactively perform the action.

The input boxes for the Translate, Rotate, and Scale tools will accept numeric input at any time until the action is closed.

This means that you can ‘preview’ the effects of the value you entered and still enter another value to replace the previous one. These values are not cumulative, so entering a value of -3 and then a value of -1 will not equal -4.

The Bounding box fitting scales a given object to fit it into a user-defined box. Scaling transformation can be non uniform so that you can define exact dimensions for each direction (X, Y, Z) of the box. Here is how you use it:

1. Select an object. 

2. Click the Bounding Box Fitting icon (If the object has a Construction Tree, the program displays an alert message informing the user that a copy of the object will be created).

3. Pick and drag a HotSpot to change the dimension of your bounding box or insert the new value in the Width field in the Modeling Tool panel. 

You can uncheck the Constrain Proportions in the Modeling Tool Panel in order to set different values in Width, Depth and Height. You can also set a custom scaling center. 

Note: Keep in mind that you cannot use the Bounding box fitting with primitives or with objects that are involved in a construction history without collapsing them. If an object is not collapsed you can edit its parameter inside the modeling tool panel as usual.

Have you ever wondered how all those wireframe lines and shaded and textured view polygons get drawn on your screen? In solidThinking the display of 2D and 3D elements can either be done using OpenGL, or (Windows only) DirectX. When these display methods are used by solidThinking, the information on screen is accelerated by your hardware video card. This is how you can navigate the interactive views and know back from front.

Video cards and their drivers can greatly affect the quality and amount of 3D information seen on your screen. The most frequent benchmark is the resolution that you can run a 3D game at before the interactive display starts to slow down or “stutter.” In solidThinking, there are multiple options to allow you to adjust the information on screen before you have to change your resolution. Today we have a few tips for getting the most out of your particular computer and its video card, and to improve your efficiency when working in solidThinking. There is also an “undocumented feature” in there as well, so hang on to your shaded surfaces! 

Slow Redraw or Display
Opening very large or complex 3D scenes can cause a “drawing” progress bar to go across the top of the solidThinking interface. When this happens, the program is optimizing the display elements so that you can visually see what your model and scene look like in either Wireframe,Shaded, or Textured display modes. When you see this progress bar alot, or moving your cameras around in the scene (and the “redraw” of elements) is slow or delayed, it is time to further optimizes olidThinking to deal with this data. 

The first place to go is the View Detail settings dialog (found in theView menu). By setting your display level to Medium or Low, you can reduce the *visual complexity* of the objects displayed in all of your views. (**It is important to note that this does not change your modeling any way, just the way it is displayed!**) This will reduce the amount of lines or shaded polygons your hardware must draw on the screen, which increases interactive speed. You can always set this higher if you want to see *more* of your geometry on screen, as well.

Next, in the solidThinking Preferences under the “View” tab, you can set the Adaptive Degradation to a higher minimum number of frames per second. This controls when solidThinking *stops* trying to draw all visible geometry on the screen, and instead gracefully degrades the display to draw “bounding boxes” around your objects when you are panning, zooming, or orbiting. This can be especially helpful for extremely large objects if you do not need to inspect everything at once.

Also in Preferences under the “View” tab, you can optionally turn off the Grid Display in either the orthographic or perspective views to minimize distractions and slightly lower the amount of lines to be drawn. This sacrifices some relational lines and scale reference, but also makes cleaner screen captures, as you can see.

Seeing All Sides
Sometimes you may look at a surface in Wireframe display mode and not be able to imagine the true shape. This is why the Shaded display is frequently used, as it tries to approximate the curvature of the entire surface and even hide those surfaces that are behind or intersectingit. This gives your views a “solid” look, but sometimes the shading hides things like Control Points and HotSpot handles, and interior geometry.

A compromise between Wireframe’s complete transparence and outlines,and Shaded’s opacity and shape definition is to turn on Transparent Surfaces in the View Detail dialog. This acts like an X-Ray mode in all Shaded views, showing both the shading and outlines, but as semi-transparent overlays. (The effect you see will depend on your OS and video card, but in general all hardware supports this.) In this mode it may be difficult to judge volumes, but manipulating points and seeing surface changes can always be done simultaneously.

Finally, if you find you are frequently changing the angle of view of your perspective camera by Orbiting around you object, all to just “get a feel” for its overall 3D shape, then you may find this undocumented feature useful. In solidThinking you can cause the perspective view to”auto rotate” around the current focal point by pressing Control + Alt (or Option) + D all at the same time. Press the ESC key to stop this”virtual turntable” at any time. This gives you a hands-free way to examine all sides of your object and is useful for on-screen presentations to your colleagues.