One of the things we use Shark for is to create technical illustrations. We model the parts and export as a .ai file, open in illustrator, clean up and shade etc. Generally works well, but having used apps like Deep Exploration, and recently dabbled with 3D VIA Composer I can't help feeling that we are missing a trick here.

Despite what the likes of Dassault say, there is still a huge demand for quality 2D technical drawings showing part assembly sequences, cutaways etc. One of the fundamental styles here is the thick n thin line - where the outside edge of a part is represented in a thick line style, and inner edges in a thinner one. Deep Exploration and 3D VIA (and Arbortext and others) do this automatically, but Deep Exploration's version is the best by far.

There you can define the edge thickness and type, and when you export to Illustrator the layers in illustrator are arranged component by component, or thick lines/thin lines. Not only that but the lines are proper Bezier curves, not a squillion facets.

Incidentally, Rhino v5 Mac's .ai export gives Beziers as well.

So to transform Shark into a state of the art technical illustration front end:

1. Add the thick n thin line styles as a view option
2. Let the user define the weight, type and colour of the lines
3. Improve the .ai export so that curves come in as curves, and different lines styles come in on different layers - or - different bodies come in on different layers.

There is a vast market out there for a high quality front end to Illustrator/Indesign/Quark for this type of work - but nobody seems to want to service it apart from Corel with their technical illustration suite. The USP for Shark of course, of that you can create geometry as well as use imported files.

It would be a massive time sa

Which brings me to another question (and one which I have asked many times already)

Why do I get a zero result when I set the style to outline only (ie - all other settings are set to Ignore)

(my thinking was to superimpose a thick outline on thin drawing lines - to achieve the end described by Kevin)

We do export all splines as bezier. See attached spline.ai exported from Shark FX.

Is it possible you used Export EPS instead of Export Adobe Illustrator?


Tim

ISO dictates line thickness per element per sheet size. Thick'n'thin illustration styles are arbitrary, so an illustration mode for model-to-sheet would need a viewport preset rather than drawing preset.

Would setting "visible" to "ignore" in the MtS dialogue be the probable reason that the model doesn't appear on the sheet?

I like to model with a gradient background, but that's confusing with sheets. Can I have a 'switch to monochrome background for MtS' setting?

In two or three years of using Shark/VC, I've used MtS frequently, but perhaps used go to 2D twice. And obviously didn't pay attention when I did! That's it exactly. Thanks, Jason.

Sorry about that! On seeing this I have had another look at the ai export and yes it does do curves - it's SolidWorks that converts it all to facets! All we need is the rest now :)