Augi World - July/August 2008 - (Page 12) Perhaps the outline stroke is a “super compound element.” Effects There are additional style elements that can be added such as roughen effect and drop shadow effect. The roughen effect will alter a stroke so that it has a rough, or hand-drawn, look to it. It allows the user to make the lines appear to have been hand drawn without a straight edge (remember those?). As expected, the roughen effect has its own group of settings. You can alter the treble and bass of the “roughness” by height and frequency. These settings will make the roughen effect smoother or more jagged. The drop shadow effect can add a multidimensional feel to your drawing. It can add a sense of realism and scale to building overhangs, trees, or any object in your drawing. The settings for the drop shadow include opacity, fade, color (yes, you can have a green shadow if you want to), internal, or cast. Figure 7: An example of the roughen and drop shadow effects applied to a block of a tree in plan view. Appearance application Appearance styles are typically applied to layers, but they can also be applied to an individual object. To apply a style to an object, select the object, then double-click a style in the palette. This process could create a style override or an exception. It is possible to have too many styles affiliated with objects on the same layer. This means that the overrides (or exceptions) will keep you from being able to change settings on a bylayer method. This is similar to assigning colors and line types to objects in AutoCAD. If an object is not set to BYLAYER, then layer settings will not affect it. One way to help avoid this is to turn on the Autolayer function. This function will automatically create a new layer when an individual object’s settings are edited other than by layer. Figure 8: The layer Auto 2 was created by AUTOLAYER when the objects style was edited. Conclusion As you can see, Styles are a major factor when working with Impression. In fact, you may find that styles are the only things you will have to edit in many drawings that were imported from AutoCAD. Styles control the appearance of your line strokes, colored shading, and effects. You can use the preset styles with Impression or you can create new ones. Either way, you have many style controls available to you in Autodesk Impression. Brian C. Benton is senior engineering CAD technician/designer for Heidt & Associates, Inc, Fort Myers, Florida. Brian has been working with AutoCAD since release 10 in the mechanical, structural, and civil engineering fields. He has been a detailer, drafter, designer, IT assistant, CAD software manager, protector of standards, and proverbial “Help Desk.” He can be reached at benton. brian@gmail.com. w w w. A U G I . c o m 12 http://www.augi.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.