Monday, April 14, 2008

Impression – Fills

Autodesk’s Impression is a program that allows users to digitally create visually enhanced color drawings. Impression’s main method to accomplish this is the FILL tool. Impression 2 really improved the fill application.

There are several ways to add a fill style to an object. The main method, I guess it’s the main method because it is the default setting for fill, is the AREA FILL POINT tool. This fill tool will apply a fill to a single defined area, or shape. The user selects a point, the fill point, and the fill will, well, fill until it comes to linework. If there is a square, it will fill the square. If the shape is some type of polygon, it will fill the polygon. You get the idea. This method works great for filling shapes, one at a time.

AREA FILL LINE. This method allows the user to fill multiple objects at a time. Draw a line and every object it intersects will be filled, similar to a crossing window in AutoCAD. Actually it is more like a fence line in AutoCAD.

AREA FILL WINDOW. This has two methods to it. It works just like a crossing window in AutoCAD. Drag a window from right to left to fill all shapes the window crosses. Drag a window from left to right to fill objects that are fully inside the window. These methods work great for filling objects close together with the same style.

AREA FILL FREEHAND. This method is similar to the fill line tool. The user draws a freehand polyline, essentially, having all shapes it crosses filled.

POWER FILL. I need more power Captain (said in a Scottish accent.) This tool will fill shapes that are similar, all at once! It looks for repeating areas that are bound by objects. Similar windows on the side of a building will all be filled with just one click.

There are many ways to apply a style in Impression; some give you more detailed control while others allow for speed. Choose which method suits your needs best for the task at hand.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Brian,

    Thanks for the nice description of the new Area Fill features. One other thing to note: when you create fills the system creates "anchors" which correspond to the points, lines and rectangles you used. Those anchors are saved in the Impression file and when you run a CAD Update to update the geometry from a DWG file, it re-runs the fills so that they correspond to the updated geometry. It's not 100% perfenct, but it's pretty useful.

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  2. shhhhh!!! You are giving away the topic of my next post!!! That's ok. I love it when people comment, especially when they add to a post as well as this one does. Thanks, and keep them coming. We almost need a message board here. What do you think about that idea huh? I plan on posting about the fill anchors (which are really cool by the way) and get into how they will help you keep your renderings even when the linework changes. you can adjust the anchors too.

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