offset surface preview dissable for speed???

HI Everybody,

Does anyone know in SW2004 if you can dissable the surface offset preview as
it makes picking many surfaces very SLOW and painful. It is especially
annoying for two reasons:

1. It often previews an offset and then doesn't work when you try to
actually execute it (what's that all about, honestly?).
2. When you are copying, or offsetting by 0, what's the point of a preview
anyway?

Also, is there a way to set the default colour for surfaces as different to
that of the model, so that you can instantly see them?

Thanks for all your great advice in advance!

lee

 

Man, I'm talking about FIVE SECONDS per face pick.....

 

You can set the colors for surfaces in both system options and document
options (figure that one out). And... it acts kind of wierd (still haven't
dug into that one to figure out its logic) Add some features, or try to
change the color of a manifold, and who knows what you'll end up with.

I have no direct way to change the pick time for offsetting surfaces.

However, there is a way to do it faster and with greater stability. When
its going to be a lot of faces, or I want something that is stable through
changes (you know, what happens if I rollback and add or delete a face that
contributes to the offset set?) I instead go towards a BODY solution. I
will copy the surface or solid body that is the source of the faces I want
to offset, then delete the faces that I don't want in that body (deleting
faces from a solid body converts it into a surface body). Then I do my
offset of the copied surface manifold - 1 pick, one thing to preview. Will
that get you there?

 

When offsetting a surface by 0 (zero) you may want to consider using
the knit command instead.

It's counter-intuitive; however, knitting a single selected surface
yields an in-place copy. This is one way to work around the delay of
the offset preview.

Per O. Hoel
_______________________________________________________________________________

 

Off the top of my head... I dont remember, and I'm not in a place right now
to check (really buried on something else). I can only vouch for it on
speed of user interface, and its safety (its really easy to miss a single
face out of dozens with the manual select method - this approach makes
missing things a lot harder on the types of models I've done it on)

 

select all the faces you want then pick the offset surface tool