Tuesday, July 6, 2010

The Draftsmans Daily Struggle

It's winter here in NZ and contrary to what the nice tourist posters tell visually, I can confirm that Auckland in the winter is pretty miserable, with rain most days.

Consequently, I'm frequently telling myself a warm office is a good place to be!

Sometimes I believe me, but I would rather be curled up at home with a good book.

Recently at work I have been asked to do a drawing showing how the hot water piping is run throughout the plant. In a previous go at this, I had a 3D model, which I exploded into lines so that everything was "X-Ray vision".

This did not work out that well as you ended up with a forest of lines which had to be grey to fade into the background. So the latest attempt involved getting a 3D model of the plant and
running my pipes around that. The buildings are just "shells" to minimise clutter, and I xref in the bits of plant that I have drawn previously.

Still not the ideal solution, and just seems a struggle.

The plant is here: http://www.chelsea.co.nz/content/about-chelsea/default.aspx

I'm starting to wonder if my approach is correct.

2 comments:

RobiNZ said...

Have you tried the Xray visual style?

[3D modeling workspace]>View Tab>Visual Styles Xray effect

or, if 2011, transparency?

William Le Couteur said...

Yes, but did not seem that wonderful. Maybe it needs revisiting! If 2011??? I'm stuck at work on 2008....