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

Reply to
Lee Bazalgette
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Man, I'm talking about FIVE SECONDS per face pick.....

Reply to
Lee Bazalgette

I do that a lot too. I'm thinking about not copying a lot of faces at once. For two reasons. The first is the one you're having trouble with. SW seems to slow down exponentially as the number of faces goes up. This seems to hold for rebuild times as well. The second issue is lost in-context relationships if I edit the offset. So I'm thinking about ofsetting in local regions of the parent surface. Incidentally, this gives me the ability hide and show different portions of the offset surface. Three. three reasons.

If you need them to be a single surface you can knit them after, can't you?

Anyhow, I'm leaning towards doing things this way myself.

Reply to
Dale Dunn

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?

Reply to
Edward T Eaton

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.

Reply to
Per O. Hoel

Great suggestion. You can try using the Surface/Solid Body filters for this, though picking from the folders works pretty well too. Remember, with the filter enabled, you can draw a window around the faces you need for mass selection.

Also, you can CTRL-select your faces *first* before hitting the Offset command.

As for the preview... doesn't the "Shaded Previews" toggle turn that off? (I can't verify now, I'm away from my regular computer).

Mike Wilson

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Reply to
None

Interesting idea. Do you happen to know if that solves faster than the zero-offset method? If you don't know off the top of your head, I can find out myself next time I need to do this.

Reply to
Dale Dunn

Reply to
Edward T Eaton

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

Reply to
Sean Phillips

snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com (Sean Phillips) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com:

I forgot about that one. You still have to sit through the super-slow preview. Component pattern has the exact same problem, only worse: it previews envelope parts in subassemblies.

Reply to
Dale Dunn

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