What's New in AliasStudio 2008 General improvements > Quick way to duplicate a tool on a shelf

General improvements

General changes and new features.

Customer Error Reports

This version of AliasStudio introduces an automated way to provide error information to Autodesk.

If AliasStudio terminates abnormally while you're working, or if you need to choose Save and Exit from the Start menu, we now provide an easy way for you to notify Autodesk of the problem you had. The following window opens.

Type in your email address, fill in a description of the workflow that caused the problem, and click Send Report.

The information will be used by Autodesk to analyze software problems.

Window-based item visibility improvements

This version of AliasStudio introduces a new way to coordinate the display of interface and object types on a per-window basis.

The WindowDisplay menu is much shorter than Display Toggles was. It now contains the following items:

Many of the tools that were used to change the state of visibility of items on a per-window basis have been moved to a single window, named Show.

The individual tools are still available from WindowDisplay > Toggles to make it easier to add the different display toggles to shelves.

Choose WindowDisplay > Show to open the option box:



Select a mode (Show or Toggle), then put a check mark in the boxes of all items you want to affect.
Press Go.

The settings take effect if the item type chosen is currently visible. If the item is turned off on an object basis (for example, by using one of the ObjectDisplay menu items), it remains off regardless of the choice made in the Show option box.

You can choose to change the display in either the current window or all windows, and can use the tool in one of two modes (Show or Toggle).

Options

Mode

Show: Choose this setting to make checked items visible, and unchecked items invisible.

Toggle: Change the visibility state of checked items from their current state.

All/None

The All and None buttons offer a quick way to check or uncheck all the item check boxes at once.

The types of items that can be changed through this window are as follows:

Model

Shows or hides wireframe models. This does not affect the ability of the model to be rendered: it's the wireframe display that is turned off.

Pivots

Shows or hides green rotation and scale pivots.

Grid

Shows or hides window grid.

Guidelines

Shows or hides guidelines (usually created by keypoint curve tools).

Locators

Shows or hides objects created using the Locators palette.

Construction Objects

Shows or hides construction points, vectors, and planes.

Canvas Planes

Shows or hides canvas planes.

Lights

Shows or hides light icons as shown in modeling windows. This does not affect their ability to be rendered.

Textures

Turns textures placement icons off or on if they are enabled in the multi-lister and renderer. This does not affect the rendering of the textures.

Cameras

Shows or hides camera icons

Image Planes

Shows or hides Image planes (created using File > Import > Image plane).

Clouds

Shows or hides display of cloud point data.

All Windows

Check this box to change the display in all windows. Uncheck it to change the display in the current window only.

New menu on window bars

The easiest way to change the visibility of items is to toggle their current setting in the Show menu available on each window. You can toggle more than one item without closing the window by holding down the key as you click items. To close the window, click outside the menu.

Transparency of interface items

Sometimes the display of useful data needs to be toned down a little: you still want to see it, but don't want it interfering with your view of the model or scene.

To reduce the visual pull of some types of objects, choose WindowDisplay > Transparency   to open this window:

0.0000 is fully opaque; 1.0000 is fully transparent. Transparency is achieved by blending the object's color into the background color.

Transparency of these items can also be changed in the Control Panel, without opening the option window.

Curve snapping changes

Note that snapping behavior has changed with the new snapping tools.

Orthographic windows show movement in the two axes that the window represents. Movement can happen in the third axis (the depth of the window), but it won't be perceived in that window. Both Snap to CV/Edit Point and Snap to Curve can change an item's depth, so it's worthwhile to observe movement in two windows when using these modes.

The Snap option window has been expanded. When you click on the small arrow next to the snap mode icons, you now see this:

Snap To Intersections has been renamed True Intersections.

When curve snap is on, you now have the following options:

Snap to Center

When this option is turned on and you click on a curve, the center of the curve's bounding box is displayed as a small cross surrounded by a circle. Moving the cursor in close proximity of the center icon lets you snap to it.

Pivot

When this option is turned on and you click on a curve, its pivot is displayed. Moving the cursor in close proximity of the pivot icon lets you snap to it.

You can snap to both the scaling and rotation pivots (if they are not in the same location).

Projected Intersections

When this option is turned on, you can snap to the intersection points between curves in any orthographic or perspective view, even if the curves don't truly intersect in world space. These intersection points are displayed as pink crosses.

If the model contains a lot of geometry, snapping to projected intersections may take a few seconds to occur.

When using curve snapping, you can release the hotkeys after the item has snapped to the curve, and the item will continue to stick to the curve as long as the mouse button is pressed.

New tessellator

The Accurate setting in the following tools now invokes a new tessellator which is faster and generates a more accurate tessellation, without extraneous triangles.

NURBS to Mesh
Diagnostic Shading
Hardware Shade
Software Render (Render Globals)

STL Export also uses the new tessellator internally.

(This tessellator corresponds to the 2008 prototype that was included in Beta 1).

The Fast setting remains unchanged.

Print or plot with hidden line removal

In Print Setup, turn on Hidden Line. Your print or plot will then only draw the visible portions of the lines.

The hidden line algorithm uses a tessellation in its processing. You can specify to use the existing tessellation (like in the NURBS to Mesh tool), or uncheck that option and use your preferred tessellation settings.

If you have surfaces behind other surfaces that you want to be plotted (for example, dials behind a transparent plastic shield), make the transparent surface's wireframe invisible before choosing Print; because hidden line plotting doesn't recognize shader transparency.

New "Publish" button in Bookmark Lister

You can now save a bookmarked view as an image file on your local disk by using the Publish Bookmark button in the Bookmark Lister (Windows > Bookmark Lister ).

To save one or all bookmarks to your local disk

To save only one bookmark, click on it in the Bookmark Lister.

A green border appears around the selected (current) bookmark.

Double-click the Publish Bookmark button to open the option box.
In the option box, choose Current or All, and select an Image File Type (default is jpeg).
Click Go.

A file browser window is displayed.

Choose a folder and type in an Object name for your image or group of images.
Press .

The saved images will be called <object name>_<bookmark name>.<file type>.

If bookmark names are not unique, "_<#>" will be added to the image names to make them unique, for example: issue_BM_1.jpg, issue_BM_2.jpg, etc.

> Options

Image File Type

Specifies the file format of the published image.

Bookmark Publish

Save only the Current bookmark, or All bookmarks.

Specify Image Size

If checked, two sliders enable you to set (in pixels) the dimensions of the output image.

Maintain Aspect Ratio

If this option is checked, changing the horizontal or vertical size will automatically adjust the other slider so that the aspect ratio of the image is preserved.

This option only appears when Specify Image Size in on.

Horizontal / Vertical Size

Size (in pixels) of the output image.

These options only appear when Specify Image Size in on.

Quality Level

This option only appears when the Image File Type is jpeg.

Use the pull-down menu (Maximum, High, Medium or Low) or the slider (values from 1 to 100) to adjust the quality of the jpeg image. A higher quality will result in a larger file size.

New options in Edit > Paste

Some of the options in Edit > Paste are new and some have been renamed.

The No Change option is now called Same layers. The functionality is the same.
The User Specified option has been removed from the option box, but you can still paste into a newly created layer by using the new Always ask option, and then choosing new layer in the pop-up menu.
You now have the option to not merge the layers of incoming data into the layers of your existing data if both layers have identical names, with the following workflow:
Choose Always ask in the Paste option box.
Click Go

A pop-up menu appears under the cursor.



Choose duplicate layers from the menu.

If a layer with a name identical to an existing layer is pasted, it will be duplicated and a number appended to its name. For example, if the original layer is called curves, the duplicated layer will be called curves#2.

From this menu you can also select one of the existing layers to paste into it.

Three new tutorials in Learning AliasStudio

We've added new information.

Three existing tutorials have been replaced with up-to-date material. See Modeling an MP3 Player, Modeling a Sports Shower Gel Bottle and Shaders and Lights. Each tutorial has animated viewlets to help you understand the workflow.

Quick way to duplicate a tool on a shelf

If you hold down the key, then use the to click and drag a tool on a shelf, you can now quickly create a duplicate.

You can then double-click the new icon, change the options, and save in the usual manner.