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SECTION: 4.20 is for some information and illustrations relating to example images of the various Display Modes that affect the way drawing elements are displayed.

The Perspective Display Modes relate to the way the lines and edges of the triangle elements are colored in and outlined. The Perspective Display Modes also control how line elements, triangle elements, or mixed elements will be processed for display.

See Section: 3.1.25.0 for a detailed discussion of issues relating to Perspective Display Modes, Printing Display Modes, and other issues related to this Section.

The Stereoscopic Display Modes relate to the way the right and left eye views will be formatted for display. Different stereoscopic viewing methods require different formatting of the two images, these formatting options are controlled through a code number. Various other values are associated with each formatting code number so as to optimize the display for each Stereoscopic Display Mode, and its relation to the particular elements being displayed. The Perspective Display Mode selected affects the appearance of the images used for the Stereoscopic Display Formatting, i.e. you can use all of the Perspective Display Modes with any of the Stereoscopic Display Modes giving a large variety of combinations, only some of which would be of interest generally.

See Section: 3.3.7.8 for a detailed discussion of issues relating to Stereoscopic Viewing Methods, Anaglyph glasses, and other issues related to this Section.

The modes available and the images they produce may be altered in other program revisions, so the images generated by the program version you have may not match the illustrations shown here. Variations in the code used in different program, revisions and versions can affect the results, so you should not expect the same results from different versions and revisions of the programs. The Author reserves the right to make any kind of changes at any time without notice.

Some Browsers may not display the larger size illustrations properly, so you may only be able to view the smaller sizes of each illustration. You should turn off the shrink-to-fit feature in your browser, if it has one, since that can distort or degrade the illustrations or make thin lines disappear.

Series 40 Perspective Display Modes includes modes within the range 40 through 49, although not all of the mode numbers in this range are in use as of the initial release of v3.7L. The different Perspective Display Mode code numbers control how triangle elements are displayed. Line elements are normally displayed using Perspective Display Mode code number 1 when all elements to be displayed are just line elements, and Perspective Display Mode code number 10 when mixed triangle and line elements need to be displayed at the same time. The Mutate command can be used to convert line elements into triangle elements so that some of the other Perspective Display Modes can be used to display the mutated line elements along with triangle elements.

Perspective Display Mode 40 shades pixels in triangles of triangle elements in the line color of the triangle, and outlines the designated edges in Black. Since Black does not shade in the initial release of v3.7L, the setting of the Tall or Equal bit in the triangle's lines does not affect the shading of the edge outlines. See Appendix N for more information about triangle line attributes.

Perspective Display Mode 40 only shades the triangles by their distance creating the affect of a diffuse light source behind and around the viewer. Series 60 and 70 modes add a second light source that is movable and may give a more natural modeling to the surfaces for rendering. Perspective Display Mode 44 may have some uses in making tool path files for manufacturing since the conversion of BMP or Pixel files into ASCII files can convert pixel brightness into tool height. The Series 50 modes are the same as the Series 40 modes except that they have the option of controlling the near and far points for the diffuse fill lighting. Adjustment of the near and far points might be used for depth clipping.

Perspective Display Mode 41 shades pixels in triangles of triangle elements in the line color of the triangle, and outlines the designated edges in the line color of the triangle. Since fill and outline colors are the same, setting of the line attribute for the triangles to Equal rather than Tall that the edge outlines are un-shaded may improve contrast of the un-shaded edge outlines against the shaded triangle fill. See Appendix N for more information about triangle line attributes.

Perspective Display Mode 41 only shades the triangles by their distance creating the affect of a diffuse light source behind and around the viewer. Series 60 and 70 modes add a second light source that is movable and may give a more natural modeling to the surfaces for rendering. Perspective Display Mode 44 may have some uses in making tool path files for manufacturing since the conversion of BMP or Pixel files into ASCII files can convert pixel brightness into tool height. The Series 50 modes are the same as the Series 40 modes except that they have the option of controlling the near and far points for the diffuse fill lighting. Adjustment of the near and far points might be used for depth clipping.

Perspective Display Mode 42 shades pixels in triangles of triangle elements in the line color of the triangle, and outlines the designated edges in White. Since White does shade in the initial release of v3.7L, the setting of the Tall or Equal bit in the triangle's lines does affect the shading of the edge outlines. See Appendix N for more information about triangle line attributes.

Perspective Display Mode 42 only shades the triangles by their distance creating the affect of a diffuse light source behind and around the viewer. Series 60 and 70 modes add a second light source that is movable and may give a more natural modeling to the surfaces for rendering. Perspective Display Mode 44 may have some uses in making tool path files for manufacturing since the conversion of BMP or Pixel files into ASCII files can convert pixel brightness into tool height. The Series 50 modes are the same as the Series 40 modes except that they have the option of controlling the near and far points for the diffuse fill lighting. Adjustment of the near and far points might be used for depth clipping.

Perspective Display Mode 43 shades pixels in triangles of triangle elements in the line color of the triangle, and outlines the designated edges in the complement of the triangle's line color. For colors that are shaded, the complement of the triangles line color does shade in the initial release of v3.7L, so the setting of the Tall or Equal bit in the triangle's lines does affect the shading of the edge outlines. See Appendix N for more information about triangle line attributes.

Perspective Display Mode 43 only shades the triangles by their distance creating the affect of a diffuse light source behind and around the viewer. Series 60 and 70 modes add a second light source that is movable and may give a more natural modeling to the surfaces for rendering. Perspective Display Mode 44 may have some uses in making tool path files for manufacturing since the conversion of BMP or Pixel files into ASCII files can convert pixel brightness into tool height. The Series 50 modes are the same as the Series 40 modes except that they have the option of controlling the near and far points for the diffuse fill lighting. Adjustment of the near and far points might be used for depth clipping.

Perspective Display Mode 44 shades pixels in triangles of triangle elements in the line color of the triangle without the outlines for the designated edges. So the setting of the Equal or Tall line attribute does not impact the display of the edge outlines in this mode. See Appendix N for more information about triangle line attributes.

Perspective Display Mode 44 only shades the triangles by their distance creating the affect of a diffuse light source behind and around the viewer. Series 60 and 70 modes add a second light source that is movable and may give a more natural modeling to the surfaces for rendering. Perspective Display Mode 44 may have some uses in making tool path files for manufacturing since the conversion of BMP or Pixel files into ASCII files can convert pixel brightness into tool height. The Series 50 modes are the same as the Series 40 modes except that they have the option of controlling the near and far points for the diffuse fill lighting. Adjustment of the near and far points might be used for depth clipping.

In this example Perspective Display Mode 44 is used to display the object height as brightness. This display aspect can used for different applications.

If you wish to make a tool path, an image that has brightness values corresponding to surface height can be converted with the Files Utilities BMP ASCII command when the image is in a BMP file or the Files Utilities ASCII Pixel command when the image is in a Pixel file. It is best to use the 24bpp or 32bpp video modes when making a Pixel file to get the highest resolution of the brightness values, and therefore the highest resolution of the surface height in the ASCII tool path file made. Further processing of the ASCII file converted from the brightness values may be required to make the tool path file safe to execute, see the commands in the Drawing Editor's NC and Jockey sub-menus, and in particular the Plotterize command.

When making drawings that require filled in colored areas you can use Perspective Display Mode 44 or 54 to display flat triangle elements in the shapes you want. If the shapes are all at the middle depth they are in middle tone, but if you have some elements near and some far the distances to the elements could be used to control the relative brightness of the basic colors. The view distance should be set to 1e18 to reduce the change in size of the objects by their distance.

In this example Perspective Display Mode 44 was used to display the object height as brightness, as seen above. Then that image was converted into a tool path file by means of translating the brightness values into tool height.

If you wish to make a tool path, an image that has brightness values corresponding to surface height can be converted with the Files Utilities BMP ASCII command when the image is in a BMP file or the Files Utilities ASCII Pixel command when the image is in a Pixel file. It is best to use the 24bpp or 32bpp video modes when making a Pixel file to get the highest resolution of the brightness values, and therefore the highest resolution of the surface height in the ASCII tool path file made. Further processing of the ASCII file converted from the brightness values may be required to make the tool path file safe to execute, see the commands in the drawing editor's NC and Jockey sub-menus, and in particular the Plotterize command.

In order to make the individual tracks of the tool across the raster field more apparent the image resolution was reduced before conversion to the ASCII file, and the tool path lines displayed from an angle in perspective rather than flat on in order to show the changes in height of the tool path tracks. For actual use, you would generally have the tool path tracks closer together, by means of using a higher resolution image, at least for a finish tool path, for a roughing tool path you could use a larger tool and tracks spaced wider.

Better results for making tool paths for cutting contoured surfaces might be obtained by using the BETWEENS, WEAVE, and other commands in the Drawing Editor's NC, Jockey, and other sub-menus, but you would have to draw source elements for surface contours, or import surface contours scanned in DANCAM.EXE (tm). Converting brightness values lets you make contoured tool paths from rendered images or scanned images, so not as much manual drawing may be needed. Scanning in DANCAM.EXE (tm) or using the teach mode in DANCAM.EXE (tm) usually requires an object to scan or probe.

See also Perspective Display Mode 54 to be able to control the far and near points for the brightness clipping.

This surface contour element was used to generate the illustrations above and below this one, and to generate the tool path lines that trace along the surface used in some of those illustrations, so be sure to look at those illustrations as well. In this illustration the Preview command in the Main Menu of DANCAD3D (tm) or DANCAD87 (tm) was used to show the surface contour element with perspective, shading, and reflections in order to make the surface details visible in a photo like image. The Z-Buffer used for rendering in the CAD programs can help to simplify drawing 3D shapes like this since the Z-Buffer automatically resolves triangle intersections and such, letting you just arrange the 3D elements in the workspace as you like, even having 3D elements pass through each other or sit on the surface of another 3D element.

In this example the surface contour element used for the Perspective Display Mode 44 examples was displayed using Perspective Display Mode 64 so that you could get a better idea of the shape of the surface contours. When Perspective Display Mode 44 is used for the display of the surface for conversion to contour lines you would have the perspective distance set to 1E18 in order not to have foreshortening distorting the element surface, in other words you would not be rendering a pictorial view as show here, you would render the face of the surface "flat on" so that the top was full white, and the bottom was full black as part of a technical process involving several steps.

In order to have the surface element render full White the surface element should be set to display using line color 15. The background should also be set to black by setting line color index 0 to color 0.

In this example Perspective Display Mode 44 was used to display the object height as brightness, as seen above. Then that image was converted into a tool path file by means of translating the brightness values into tool height. Then the Plotterize command was used to add the vertical extensions at the end of each chain of line segments that make up each contour line.

In this example Perspective Display Mode 44 was used to display the object height as brightness, as seen above. Then that image was converted into a tool path file by means of translating the brightness values into tool height. Then the Plotterize command was used to add the vertical extensions at the end of each chain of line segments that make up each contour line. The Link command was then used to add linking line segments and a line from and to the starting and ending point so that the tool path is continuous.

When you are going to export a tool path file as G code it is best to have the tool path continuous, rather than have gaps, since some older CNC controllers may have a problem reading tool paths that have gaps. My programs DANCAD.EXE (tm) and DANPLOT.EXE (tm) automatically cross over gaps, but may do so at rapid feed rate, so there may be instances when using the Link command would be used for making tool paths for them as well.

In this example Perspective Display Mode 44 was used to display the object height as brightness, as seen above. Then that image was converted into a tool path file by means of translating the brightness values into tool height. Then the Plotterize command was used to add the vertical extensions at the end of each chain of line segments that make up each contour line. The Link command was then used to add linking line segments and a line from and to the starting and ending point so that the tool path is continuous. Before the Plotterize command was used the Flip command was used to Mirror the tool path contour lines converted from the brightness values, so that the high points are now the low points.

Using the Flip command to produce a Mirrored tool path in this way might be useful for the production of molds, or where you need both a positive and negative conversion of the depth.

Brightness to Tool Height conversion can be coded into Macro Files to automatically generate height images and tool paths.

Some code to make images and tool paths like the ones in this section are shown in Section: 4.20.5.5 (click here to see the macro code). Additional information about macro commands can be found in Appendix: B.