shaded views in Wildfire 4

We are making paint drawings in Wildfire 4 to indicate painted
surfaces and masked areas for some sheet metal parts. We've cut some .
005 deep areas on an inherited part so that we can color it a
different color to indicate a masked area. In the drawings, we used
shaded views so that the different colored areas show up. The problem
we are having is that the views look great when I bring them up on my
CPU, but when the other mechanical guy brings it up on his machine,
the lighting in his shaded views appears to be different and the
colors are all washed out. It's as though the light is pointed
directly at the planer faces in most of the views on his computer. Re-
open the same shaded view drawing on my computer and it's fine.

Can't figure out why this is happening....any suggestions?

Mike

 

Can't figure out why this is happening....any suggestions?

I use cosmetic sketches to idicate keep-out areas and masking.

 

We are making paint drawings in Wildfire 4 to indicate painted
surfaces and masked areas for some sheet metal parts. We've cut some ..
005 deep areas on an inherited part so that we can color it a
different color to indicate a masked area. In the drawings, we used
shaded views so that the different colored areas show up. The problem
we are having is that the views look great when I bring them up on my
CPU, but when the other mechanical guy brings it up on his machine,
the lighting in his shaded views appears to be different and the
colors are all washed out. It's as though the light is pointed
directly at the planer faces in most of the views on his computer. Re-
open the same shaded view drawing on my computer and it's fine.

Can't figure out why this is happening....any suggestions?

Mike


Pro/e is awful with windows stuff, like you did this and go back to it, expecting it'd be saved but it isn't....? That kind of stuff, like you can go into the assembly and do 'View>Explode' and do Default or Set position. When you do this and save, you're disappointed to realize that this didn't save with the part. So, along the way, you realize, Pro/e is loaded with teaser functionality that looks like it's doing something but it's just a taste, a lick on the sucker.

What you need to be looking for is something that lets you SAVE NAMED VIEWS! Maybe try View Manager, get something set up the way you want and give it a name, available in the drawing. ANY saved/named views are more stable, reliable, predictable than what you're doing. Nothing is automatically, OUT OF THE BOX simple, direct, easy in Pro/e. And certainly NOT windowsish. If at all, it's only reluctantly.

David Janes

 

I use cosmetic sketches to idicate keep-out areas and masking.
Another possibility~surfaces which are also selectable for "Color & Appearance" coloration.

David Janes

 

We are making paint drawings in Wildfire 4 to indicate painted
surfaces and masked areas for some sheet metal parts. We've cut some .
005 deep areas on an inherited part so that we can color it a
different color to indicate a masked area. In the drawings, we used
shaded views so that the different colored areas show up. The problem
we are having is that the views look great when I bring them up on my
CPU, but when the other mechanical guy brings it up on his machine,
the lighting in his shaded views appears to be different and the
colors are all washed out. It's as though the light is pointed
directly at the planer faces in most of the views on his computer. Re-
open the same shaded view drawing on my computer and it's fine.

Can't figure out why this is happening....any suggestions?

Mike


Pro/e is awful with windows stuff, like you did this and go back to it, expecting it'd be saved but it isn't....? That kind of stuff, like you can go into the assembly and do 'View>Explode' and do Default or Set position. When you do this and save, you're disappointed to realize that this didn't save with the part. So, along the way, you realize, Pro/e is loaded with teaser functionality that looks like it's doing something but it's just a taste, a lick on the sucker.

What you need to be looking for is something that lets you SAVE NAMED VIEWS! Maybe try View Manager, get something set up the way you want and give it a name, available in the drawing. ANY saved/named views are more stable, reliable, predictable than what you're doing. Nothing is automatically, OUT OF THE BOX simple, direct, easy in Pro/e. And certainly NOT windowsish. If at all, it's only reluctantly.

David Janes


Oh, and I forgot to mention, generally, for a price because the really good stuff usually requires that you buy some addon module. I don't know, for sure, but this may be one of those cases.

David Janes

 

Does his computer have the same graphics card and driver installed?

Dave

 

This could be the problem. Any idea where the default lighting is set?
Never has been a way to change the default lighting settings. Most people don't fret over this but go into the model and adjust 'View>Model Setup>Lights', create a new light setup and save/set that as your 'default'. The sticking point may be the drawing; it may not be possible here to capture these more regulated, sophisticated settings. After all, shading in a drawing is a technical illustration frill, for cartoon, pictographic display. In your case, the technical information might be better captured by a cosmetic sketch or "keepout" area with cross hatching enabled and some dimensions thrown in. No need to stretch the limits of the new shading functionality. I guess I'm seconding Aggrevated's comment. As to how to adjust lighting settings on an individual computer, that might be a matter of OpenGL settings on your graphics card. If the driver has no such ability (on the ATI card), you may be screwed, but an ATI forum might be of more help.

David Janes

David Janes

 

I believe he may be running an NVIDIA card and my machine has an ATI.
I hadn't thought about the graphics cards causing the difference. If
it is the graphics cards, then I suspectd there is no fix. I've been
trying to find how to change the lighting in a shaded view but cannot
see any functionality related to a views lighting.

It might not be views lighting at all. It might be the color properties of whatever color is captured in the drawing view. Whatever it is, I doubt it's fixable in the drawing. Most likely, fixing the start part with an agreeable default color will fix the problems between systems. When I said elsewhere that part lighting/shading is not configurable, I should have mentioned parameters to adjust. Start parts accomplish much the same, manually, as you'd hope parametrically adjustable defaults would accomplish. Barring the latter, go with fixing harmony in your start part. Even the lighting business might be possible by setting some lights, associated with certain colors. View Manager is a very powerful tool here, including creating views, usable in drawings that capture simplified representations, creating views orientations, display styles for individual components, and saving this as some combination style, refferable in the drawing.

David Janes


With regard to the exploded views not coming back that you mentioned
above, you have to "save" the exploded view after you change it. In
the view manager under the explode tab when looking at the list of
views, if there is a "+" by a view's name then that means that view
has been changed. To save it, you need to right click and select
"save" on the fly out menu. That is in wildfire 3 and 4. In wildfire
2 the behavior is the same, but instead of selecting "save" the flyout
menu says "update" ...I think. If you've already used that exploded
state in a drawing and changed it in the 3D model you'll have to open
the drawing and re-apply that newly saved exploded state to the
drawing view for the drawing to update. I wrestled with that one for a
while myself two summers ago.

Mike