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Hidden Line Screen Capture

Hidden Line Screen Capture entails creating a new view simulating a hidden line drawing from which screen captures may be taken at any specified resolution. This allows for the rapid creation of a hidden line drawing which, for large files with many objects, would likely take much longer using Make2D. Keep in mind, however, where Make2D maintains curves as vectors for manipulation in other software, this technique produces raster images with a singular line weight.
These hidden line drawings can be used on their own, or can be overlaid with renderings in Photoshop. Since these hidden line drawings generate a rasterized image with single line thickness, it is recommended that the user generate separate drawings so as to highlight different portions of the image. This is done so that each of these drawings can be layered in Photoshop and different amounts of transparency can be used on each drawing, so as to make some drawings read more than others. See attached example for execution of this strategy. In order to generate the best possible screen captures, one needs to download the Technical Drawing [http://en.wiki.mcneel.com/default.aspx/McNeel/TechDraw.html] plug-in for Rhino. A download for this can be found in the Rhinoceros Resources page of this wiki.

Technical Drawing Plug-in

To install the Technical Drawing Plug-in for Rhino, copy the TechnicalDrawing.rhp file to the Plugins folder of your Rhinoceros Program files (typically located C:\Program Files\Rhinoceros 4.0\Plug-ins). Once the file is placed in the appropriate folder, drag and drop the file into an open and running Rhinoceros file. Activate To activate the Technical view mode from any of the viewports in the scene, simply right-click on the name of the view and select Technical from the pulldown menu.

Modifications There are a series of modifications that need to be made to the plug-in. The attributes of the plug-in can be located within the Options menu (type Options in the command line) under the Appearance heading. The necessary modifications are listed below:
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Options There are a series of view modes specific to the Technical Drawing plug-in. These view modes toggle certain tyoes of linework either On or Off. Each of these view modes can be accessed by typing TechToggle in the command line of Rhino. A recommendation would be to generate one high resolution screen capture with TechToggleHiddenLines active, and another with it deactivated. It is also encouraged to test the success of the TechToggleIntersections view mode.

Named View
To save a particular camera position and lens length, one can utilize the Named Views options dialog box within Rhino. Once here, one can save that particular view and lens length.

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New Viewport
In order to create the particular desired view, it is suggested to create an entirely new viewport that is specific to that view. To generate a new viewport of a particular size, type -NewViewport in the Rhino command line. It is important to add the dash (-) in front of the command. This allows you to edit the Width and Height of the viewport. Assign a width and height that has the same aspect ratio of the final image (if you want your image to be twice as tall as it is wide, select a width of 300 and a height of 600).

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Anti-Aliasing Level
Anti-Aliasing determines the edge sharpness/quality of an image. By default, Rhinoceros' anti-aliasing setting is set very low. Since we will be taking high resolution screen captures, we will need to increase this. This is done by first having your chosen view active and typing TestSetAALevel into Rhinoceros' command line. A series of options are presented to the user, but Highest should be used.

Screen Capture
To capture a high resolution screen shot one must first have the chosen view active an typing ViewCaptureToClipBoard into Rhinoceros' command line. By placing the dash (-) in front of the command, the user is then able to alter the parameters of the command. Once this command is executed, an image of the current viewport has been stored in the computer's virtual memory. Simply create a new file in Photoshop and select File > Paste from the main menu.

Please refer to the example below in order to understand how to layer multiple screen captures in Photoshop. Photoshop'd Hidden Line Example
hidden_line_screen_capture.txt Last modified: 2013/02/05 14:41 by mnagis

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