rleyden@pnet02.CTS.COM (Rich Leyden) (09/07/87)
Here's a tip for using Sculpt-3D. I wanted to add some text to a scene,
actually the logo of the company I work for, to put on a building being
bombed by 3 F-15's. After playing around free hand I decided there must be
a better way. I used Draw+ to create the 2d image and saved it as a plot
file. Then using a text editor I changed this into a script file for
Sculpt-3D. It was actually easier than it sounds. First delete all the
leading and trailing plotter commands, then use search and replace to change
"PU,PA" to "(", then "PD,PA" to "-(", and finally to set z=0 replace ";"
with ",0.0)". Lines beginning with - are joined to the line above. Below
is an example:
(PLOTTER FILE)
IN; {
LT; {delete these lines
SP2; {
PU;PA2018,3775;
PD;PA8780,3775;
PD;PA8780,578;
PD;PA2018,578;
PD;PA2018,3775;
PU;PA2846,1597;
PD;PA2846,2935;
PU;PA2857,1597;
PD;PA2857,2935;
...etc,etc....
(SCULPT-3D SCRIPT FILE)
(2018,3775,0.0)-(8780,3775,0.0)-(8780,578,0.0)-(2018,578,0.0)-(2018,3775,0.0)
(2846,1597,0.0)-(2846,2935,0.0)
(2857,1597,0.0)-(2857,2935,0.0)
...ETC,ETC
Then the fun begins. I set the Draw+ line width to maximum so each
letters is
actually 4 closely spaced pen strokes. At first I thought I could just close
the
ends of the stroke and have Sculpt do a fill between the lines, however many
letters
have discontinuous strokes. A lot of manual touch up was required. Thin
lines
can be fattened up by using the extrude tool to smear the letters sideways. I
noticed that thin lines, though sharp in the paint mode, will disappear
altogether in the photo mode. Of course once you get the whole alphabet you
can reuse it.
The above meathod should work with any plotter output and would be easy
to
write a program to do the conversion. If one has blueprints with plan and
elevation views, on disk, the first steps to create a 3D image is simplified.
I can see right now that there will be a real cottage industry selling
scene
files for Sculpt-3D.
Rich Leyden-