View: Shaded with Hard Edges

[maxwxyz]

Is there a possibility to display the parts in a shaded view for all rounded edges and only display the hard edges with a line style?
I know this feature from CATIA and the render view without smooth edges is very helpful for viewing and assessing e.g. cast components.

shading.png (24.92 KiB) Viewed 1940 times

[Shalmeneser]

imho NO
Std_DrawStyle

[Chris_G]

Hi,
Maybe not exactly what you're looking for, but in Curves WB, there is the ReflectLines tool that can mimic this behaviour.
However, that will create a new object in the Tree-View to display the desired edges, so you won't be able to select the edges of the source object.

ReflectLines.webp (42.96 KiB) Viewed 1861 times

If you want to give a try :
- Select your source object and set its viewmode to "Shaded"
- while the object is still selected, activate CurvesWB -> ReflectLines tool.
- turn the "Rg1Line" and "RgNLine" Data Properties to False
- turn the "Track Camera" View Property to True
- set the Line Display properties to your liking

PS: I am not sure this will work on FC 0.20, maybe 0.21 is needed.

[adrianinsaval]

not currently possible

[maxwxyz]

Thanks for the replies and a visible workaround. Would the feature be worth to be a feature request or is this too specific or too hard to implement?

[chrisb]

Would the feature be worth to be a feature request or is this too specific or too hard to implement?

What would it be good for?

[maxwxyz]

What would it be good for?

Especially for complex cast parts like housings or when working with surfaces it is helpful to identify hard vs smooth edges. It allows to quickly see hard edges for e.g. a spotface or helps to see the continuity of a surface. Also, in complex parts, too many edges are more disturbing than helping but often you need to select or use the sharp edges for new features or as references.

In CATIA and NX, you can use a specific composite rendering style to shade the surfaces of an object with its edges, except the smooth ones. A smooth edge is an edge that does not break the continuity of the geometry, contrary to a sharp edge.
Different render styles are shown here: https://www.3ds.com/fileadmin/3dxml/dir ... Styles.htm

It was brought to my attention, that there is an older similar issue: https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/issues/5583
If this could be implemented, I guess it would be easy to add an option to hide the smooth lines.

[chrisb]

Usually I am one of the few to recommend to make fillets early in the modeling workflow (to mitigate the TNP). Here we see the opposite: If all fillets are added at the end of the tree, then you can easily show the object before the fillets are made

[maxwxyz]

That is true for one body. But when using surfacing or creating complex cast parts in Part Design which are set up with multiple positive and negative bodies (boolean) which result in a complex geometry this view / render style is very handy as it hides all (unnecessary) smooth edges and displays only the sharp / hard edges.
This is a not so complex casting model (housing) and even there the too many lines around all fillets are obstructing. Usually all negative parts for a e.g. a core are combined bodies which are then filleted and afterwards removed from the positive bodies.

example.webp (359.74 KiB) Viewed 1449 times

[saso]

@realthunder did a lot of work and improvements on different visual presentations of the model in his version, including for the edges, silhouettes etc. he would probably for sure be able to say how easy or hard it would be to add this... if the general detection of this hard edges would not be a problem, then I am sure it would be possible to also represent them even in different thickness and/or colors so they would be even more visible for the user...

Check the improvements to the different draw styles in his build https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD/releases and their settings in Preferences -> Display -> Draw styles

See also this posts, to get an idea of what is already possible...
viewtopic.php?p=392670#p392670
viewtopic.php?p=394929#p394929
viewtopic.php?p=527574#p527574
viewtopic.php?p=462333#p462333
viewtopic.php?p=526770#p526770