AutoCad :: Rotating Working Plane / Flattening Geometry
Dec 2, 2013
Is there a way to rotate the plane you're working on on the fly? I have (what is supposed to be) a 2d floor plan with multiple elements that have non-zero z values, a lot of which apparently cannot be exploded, or sliced (after turning them to surfaces), or anything else. I tried to simply "stretch" the non-zero z vertices down/up to the xy plane and the whole object moves up or down instead. (I'm also using a LISP routine by Lee Mac to do the actual flattening after the fact).
So, what I want to do is simply draw in the 2d geometry necessary to project the object onto the xy plane, and then delete the extraneous 3d lines/objects. However, I'm working on an isometric view (to make sure I'm drawing them in at z = 0), and AutoCAD apparently thinks I want to draw "walls" (yz plane) instead of "floors" (xy plane), if that makes any sense.
Is there some button I can press to change the working plane on the fly? Why AutoCAD wouldn't have this sort of functionality when a much simpler program such as Visual can do it (just by hitting TAB you can swap between the xy, xz, and yz planes).
Alternatively, flattening geometry that does not want to be flattened?
I have a sketch on plane XY and I have another plane at an angle, which I would like to work on. How can I create a sketch on the angled plane, using the geometry from the XY sketch and which I can snap to?
On one part, I have a bore hole drilled on a curved surface so the hole is actually an ellipse.
Now the other part I am trying to constrain together is the pipe that will be welded into the bore hole; so that is a simple circular pipe.
The issue is that the pipe has to be inserted 0.25" above the interior of the bore hole to allow for room for the weld. In order to do this I have tried to create a plane attached to the 3D ellipse and then constrain the pipe to be 0.25" above that plane. The problem is I cannot seem to create a plane attached to the 3D geometry; I cant even find a way to attach points, or pick the center point of the bore hole.
How to create a plane on 3D geometry and link it to said geometry. I'm using 2012, if that is necessary information.
I have a robot model, and because he is a robot, he has a simple FK link structure. All the fk links work fine, except the wrists. when i rotate the wrists i get a skewing of the geometry of all the children below the wrist, and in the rotation gizmo on screen.
the are no link constraints in the hierarchy panel, and it is definately something to do with the fk link because if i unlink the wrist from the forearm it rotates normally.
the children rotate normally indepant of the wrist collectively and individually
I have a scene set up like the picture below but for some reason when I go to render it out, the geometry isn't there for the plane object. I've set it up like that because I have the ball emitting fire and then deflectors along the plane so the particles move across them as if they fire was contained and the particle system reacts in this way but in the final render the geometry for the plane isn't there. I've went through the object properties and renderable is checked.
3DS Max 2012 Mudbox 2012 Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit AMD Phenom 9350e Quad-Core Processor 2.0GHz NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE 4 GB RAM
1. How do I make the angle of the Gizmo appear when I'm rotating the gizmo plane with 'e'?
2. Also, how do I rotate the gizmo itself, so that i can rotate it in any ambiguous axis as well if I wanted to.
For example, let's say I'm slicing a hollowed box usnig Shell modifier. I want to cut the box diagonally. I make the slicing plane vertical using x rotatin axis (red) at perfect 90 degrees (this is why I want to see the angle displacement when rotating a gizmo), then becaue I want to cut it vertically, I rotate the plane on z rotation axis (blue) 45 degrees. Now, I want this cut to be slanted. That means I have to change BOTH x and y axis with equal amount to achieve symmetrical cut I want. ("5 snaps of rotating the slicing plane on x axis and y axis" something like this)
What I want is change the orientation of the gizmo itself so that x or y rotation axis becomes the angle I want the box cut to be slanted at.
3. I've been using 3ds max for rendering most of the time, and didn't really have time to ask myself, why is it such a pain in the a** to get the correct effect I want from max? Viewport and renderd product doesn't match at all for me. Rendering should be just a way of making the viewport image much prettier, not turning garbage into an artwork. Because of the difference between the viewport and renderd image, I constantly have to do test render at 320x240 to see how it looks.
When I say the two doesn't match, it includes but not limited to:
-Lighting Both daylighting system and artificial lights(photometric/standard) -Intensity -Shadow casting accuracy -Material
Scale mismatch of rendering and viewport.
-Color -I'm guessing it may be because of the lighting that the colors are very off. -Unexpected glow on my model from other surrounding objects.
Sketchup or Rhino shows vaguely how it's going to look when it's rendered, just poor quality. Why is it so not intuitive in max?
When I create a new sketch on any given view and utilize the 'Project Geometry' command, not all geometry will project onto the sketch. It seems random; I've tried multiple times using different orders in which to choose the geometry. Sometimes certain geometry will project, sometimes not.
I'm trying to Join First and Second Floor walls that are interrupted by floor framing. I've separated sheathing and siding layers and extended these over to the lower wall. All looks good, except for the joint line. In section view, I use Join Geometry tool and it works, the joint is gone. However on Elevation and 3D viiews the line is still there.
How to make a new work plane rotated at an angle to another plane and passing through the axis of a cylinder, or one of the main axes.On the plane commands, in V2013, i don't find an option for plane at an angle
I have AutoCAD LT 2008 and need to be able to flatten 3d objects. I have followed all instructions for the plot to dxb and have successfully saved the files but now can't get them to open. What are the next steps? I have tried to open a new drawing and open the dxb file using the 'DXBIN", and "DBOUT" commands which show as unknown commands.
I have a single-line riser diagram in 3D I want to flatten to 2D. things like super flatten and such don't work because I'm not using solids, just single lines.
I have topo contours that are splines. I want to flatten them so they become polylines that I can give elevation values. When I flatten some, portions of the topo lines become circles.
what is the best way to flatten out a radiused peice of sheet metal with holes in it. i know how to flatshot but how do I flatten this for laser cutting and shearing
make a drawing to be flattened and set to elevation zero.
I do have the flatten command from express tools, and that works only to make everything to 2d, but i need a simple script routine to set all objects to elevation zero.
This is my current methodology
1. select objects 2. flatten 3. select same objects 4. explode 5. select same objects 6. explode 7. select same objects again 8. In property's, adjust Z axis to 0.
I fear that this is too long and bulky, and sometimes it wont work.
I also fear that any lisps routines are completely out of my league as i never used them before and my company never really had a need for them, but i am willing to give them a shot if it means that they will save me some time.
I am working on a design project for a class i am in, i need to make a model of the design solution i come up with. since my design has curved walls, how to take my AutoCad model and convert the faces to something where i could print them out on paper and make the model. I need to basically unroll them as if i was flattening them on a sheet of paper. i have tried flatshot and flatten, my difficulty with these is that it does not take the entire object length along the curve, it will only take the distance that can be seen on the screen. I know this is possible with 3ds max as a friend of mine did it that way, but i don't know how to use 3ds max so that doesnt work for me.
When I create a pdf using the dwg to pdf driver native to acad2010 it creates a pdf but when I go to print that pdf the processing time that it takes to print is outrageously long since when adobe reader goes to process the pdf to print it it says it is "flattening" the pdf.
How to remedy this problem? At this point the dwg to pdf driver in acad is unusable unless I can figure out how to create a pdf file that does not need to be "flattened" by adobe reader before finally sending off to the printer.
I am trying to design a new mold for some sailing rudders I am building. The files I have for the current molds are in the IGS format, which Inventor can open. The current rudders are convex going from the widest part of the foil down to the trailing edge. The goal is to create another model with this flattened. If I were doing this in logic it would be: Find max height, alter foil to be straight from max height to trailing edge. I have tried everything I can do to make this happen with no avail. what would be optimal is if I could get it set up so that I can easily control the amount of convexness to the aft section, but the primary goal is to just get it to be straight. The trailing edge is the straighter one.
The final goal is to export to g-code and send off to a cnc.
I have attached the files after I have imported them into autodesk, but below is a link to the original iges files.
I need to take 3d objects, in this case fabric foils and flatten them so I can plot them on a table. Are there any plug-ins out there for use with Autocad 2012, or other third party software?
I have an issue when using the DWG to PDF plotter built into AutoCAD 2011. It started when I would generate PDFs from AutoCAD and then try printing them to our office printer for a hard copy. I kept getting the "flattening" bar popping up which caused a set of 20 drawings to take 30 mins to print. Where other PDF generators the drawings shoot out of the printer ASAP. And in a busy office likes mine, tying up a printer for that long is kind of frowned upon. But they didn't solve my flattening issue. I tweaked the "Merge Control" as most of the posts mention along with turning off "layers in PDF" as well. My PDFs are still flattening. All my drawings are 2D...no 3D information.
And now I've noticed after changing the "Merge Control" and "Layer Display" in my pc3 file, it is putting black boxes on text that have a background mask...not a wipeout. I know there have been issues in the past with PDFs and wipeouts...but in my case it's the background mask function. I've even tried using a 255,255,255 colour for my background mask colour (instead of my default "background colour") and that didn't work. And the other weird thing is that it's not blacking out all text with background masks. On one drawing it'll be blacked out and in the next, the exact same piece of text will be fine. It's even only blacking out portions of lines of text. Completely random!
upon flattening layers in CS5, any changes made seem to vanish? This occurs when flattening adjustment layers and has even happened after e.g. Image>Adjustments>Curves (when I close the adjustment dialogue the changes aren't applied.) This doesn't happen on every photo ( I can have two open and it will only be seen on one) and I havene't ever had it happen before. It seems particularly likely to happen after applying HDR toning although I'm sure if there is any connection.
-No I did NOT uncheck the layers box. -No I did NOT accidently FLATTEN my piece -No I didn't change the color space
why the eff my photoshop has flattened two of my PSD files without my permission.
I work in PSD then when done I hit save. Then File> Save as> PDF then I name my PDFS, do so for my other projects then I close everything. I've had two files already where I have opened the PSDS and they're flattened when I never saved them this way.
When I flatten my image at completion, The images changes. Looks like my adjustment layers reset blending modes and adjustments. Tried uninstall, restart of photoshop and Mac, tried to flatten from tiff, psd and PDF. Same thing happens
I am loosing details in an image when I try to save, flatten or merge visible. The top layer is a colored layer that I have used the dissolve blend mode to apply to the layer below. Whenever I flatten it, I loose a lot of the granular detail as well as the color intensity. Any work arounds?
I have a line with a drop-shadow. I want to save it as a GIF and keep the drop-shadow effect. So I flatten the layer. But while doing so, the background which was transparent changes to white.
I recently began creating an image and when it came time to flatten this image, the noise I intentionally put in was softened to a regular glow. I am using CS2 and i used the Layer Style > Outer Glow > and then I added noise with blend mode linear dodge and an opacity of 68%. Anyone know if there is a way I can flatten the image with a way to maintain the noise?
I was looking for a way to quickly save as png without flattening. I work using the pdn format but I save to png 32 bit. It would be nice to have an Export feature in the file menu separate from the save options. Basically just hit export and it brings up the normal dialogs for saving but just saves the image leaving me with the pdn as I continue working.
I'm sure you've realized that not everyone wants to work in png and destroy their layers just because they need to upload for the web really quick. At the moment (as you know) when working on a pdn you have to do save as, select png from the file types and hit save, hit okay on the dialog, click flatten, now you have a png file with a new name if you changed it, then hit ctrl+z to get your layers back, press ctrl+s to save and since it has layers it pops up to save as pdn, rename back to old name and save. It's a lot of steps.
So an alternative would be click Export and if you've exported before it already has the name and file type you want filled in ready to overwrite your last export then click save have that dialog pop up for the bit type and click okay and you're done.
It would be even simpler if you merged the save dialog into the image setting dialog then you could hit Export and hit an export button and be done in two clicks. A lot more work though at a minor usability gain.
