3D Design Environment

Certain drawing and system settings should be applied to obtain optimal results when working in a 3D environment.

Program and Drawing Settings

Options | Preferences

Settings which are applied from the Program setup section of the Options menu will store such settings in the TurboCAD program.  These settings remain fixed from drawing to drawing and are only changed when new settings are applied.

Settings which are applied from the Drawing setup section of the Options menu apply certain settings in the current drawing only.  Settings and standards which are required to be applied in all subsequent drawings are saved in the drawing template.

Settings which are modified throughout this training are found in Options > Preferences.

Take Note

By right-clicking in the editor, a selection of convenient 3D Views and Workplane tools are available, shown below.

2D/3D Selector Properties

When objects are handled (modified, manipulated and duplicated) in 3 dimensional model space, a  Selector Shell is placed around the objects in a similar manner to that used when handling objects in 2 dimensional model space

So that a distinction is made between 2D profiles and 3D objects, the Selector Shell settings are applied to toggle between  2D or 3D mode.  This is done using the Selector 2D Properties.

In the Worked Example below, the Selector Shell Properties is displayed in 3D mode.

Worked Example

Turn the view to Isometric South East, shown above.

Select the Rectangle tool from the Sketch menu and draw a simple rectangle which measures approximately 100 x 80.

Select the newly drawn rectangle, then use the 2D/3D toggle selector shown below to switch between 2D and 3D Selector mode.

2D/3D Selector toggle

To convert the rectangle to a 3D box, do the following :

Activate the Selection Info palette using Tools > Palettes > Selection Info (Ctrl-Shift-I)

Select the rectangle, then open the 3D page of the Selection Info Palette. Input a height of 50 into the Thickness field. The result is shown below.

Use the 2D/3D toggle selector to switch between 2D and 3D Selector mode.

2D/3D Selector Mode shown in 2D mode, above left and 3D mode, above right

Setting the 2D/3D Selector Mode

To set the 2D/3D Selector Mode so that it automatically switches between the selection mode for a 2D or 3D object, right click in the workspace and select Selector 2D Properties (r Selector 3D Properties)

Select the General page, then activate 2D/3D Depending on Selected Object and Space Mode, shown below.

Applying the 2D/3D Selector Mode to automatically adapt to selected object

Option to turn on/off theassignment of materials to color faces

In Program Setup, an option to turn off or on the assignment of materials to colored faces for files with ACIS objects (TCW, SAT, ASAT, SAB, STEP, IGES), has been added.

Use Options | Program Setup to switch on the ‘Assign material to color faces during importing InterOp data’