Change colour of printed net lines.

[Gronkling]

Sometimes I want to print on very dark paper but it is very hard to see the black lines on it. If I was using navy blue paper, for example, I would want to change the colour slightly orange. If I was using very dark red paper I would use slightly green lines. It is a very small change but I am ending up with a very large stack of very dark paper. (It could also be used for when you run out of black ink )

[robertw]

Have you tested to see if those other colours really do come out better? I would have thought that you couldn't print a lighter colour on a darker background, but might depend on the printer.

No one's ever asked to be able to change the line colour for net print outs before. I'm afraid it's probably not high on my list of priorities at the moment. Anyone else interested in this?

Rob.

[Gronkling]

Just checked red, and yellow lines on dark blue. Red and green came out as a slightly more visible black. On black red and green worked well. I also found that thicker lines were also very effective but they may lead to innacuracy.

[robertw]

The line width can be set already in the dialog box that appears before printing nets. You can increase it a bit without really losing accuracy since printers are very high resolution.

Rob.

[Gronkling]

I didn't notice that.

Colour change in net lines would be quite nice but uninportant. (Probably the only real use is for white compounds (and even thats not that important))

[Gronkling]

Another idea I had would be to be able to edit one part of a compound by itself. It would be where if you pressed a button or selected it from a menu the veiw would be changed to be seeing one part of the compound. The symmetry would change to suit the part. Any editing (stellation, facetind. etc) would be done as if you were editing one polyhedron. Upon exiting the mode parts in the compound would be transformed into the edited polyhedron. This would mean more complex compounds.

[robertw]

I think you can do this already as follows:

• Use "Poly->Keep One Part of Compound" (or Ctrl+K) to separate out one part of a compound
• Put it in a memory slot ("Edit->Put in Memory" or "m1")
• Do whatever editing you want
• Add the result to the unedited item in memory ("Edit->Add/Blend from Memory")
• Select a face of the original unedited part
• Put this new model in a memory slot
• Now reopen the compound you started with
• Augment this model using the item in memory ("Poly->Augment Polyhedron" or "a") and select to extract from all faces of the same type. You should also select "Inherit colors from augmented faces" to ensure your compound has the same colours as the original.

This should subtract off the original parts, and add the new parts in a symmetrical fashion.

Rob.

[Gronkling]

Thanks. Lots of compounds!

[robertw]

I've been thinking of trying my hand at making a video tutorial for a while. This seemed like a good example, so I made a video! I started a new thread to announce/discuss it, so please comment there. http://software3d.com/Forums/viewtopic.php?p=877

Thanks,
Rob.