Quick Tip – Blending Styles in Impression

If you are working in Impression and are trying to get a blended shade, but you can’t quite get it to work with a gradient fill, try placing multiple fills.

Create a fill with one style and place it in your object. Create a different style and place a second fill on your object. Mess with that fills opacity until you get a pretty neat effect. You can blend different colors together too, and remember to try gradient fills with this trick.

Impression – Update CAD Geometry

One of the best features of Autodesk’s Impression, is the ability to update the geometry of the drawing. In this Impression Tip, we will discuss how to update the drawings linework, instantly (or pretty close to it) and keep the rendering styles intact. Try redoing a drawing by hand!

You started off with a great CAD drawing. You imported it into Impression and you used FILL STYLES to render it. It looks great, your best work ever. BUT!!!! The client called, and needs the drawing changed, for whatever reason. Does it really matter why? Nope, you have to deliver. Impression can do that.

I recommend saving your first file and working from a copy of it. That way, when your client (or boss as it often is) changes his (or her) mind you haven’t lost a thing. Anyway, just update the cad file and your done. I know, not much of a tip. How do you UPDATE the cad geometry?

Go to the FILE pulldown menu item. Go to the UPDATE CAD GEOMETRY button and click it. Now you have a choice. You can pick from these three options: entire file, sketches, or layers.

Picking the entire file option will update, well, the entire file. You might not want that, so you have more options. The sketches option provides a list of the different line work and annotations that are available in the drawing file. This list will also include blocks. The layers option will provide a list of the layers. Choose the layers you want to reload.

A dialog box will appear, regardless of the method you choose, that will provide a list of the available items to pick from. Choose wisely!

If you made your drawing using layer styles, and each layer has a style, then the update should go pretty smoothly with very little re-doing of anything. Assuming that is that the cad linework was done with closed polylines. If you rendered your Impression file using fills, then again, assuming you have anchor points for those fills in every proper spot, then you will have little rework to do. Now, please understand that having this happen, meaning having little to no work to do, is a rare thing. Typically the lines move enough so that several of the anchor points are not in the right place. That’s ok, because it won’t be as if you have to redo the entire drawing!

Happy CADDING

Impression – Fill Anchors

Here is another Impression Tip and Trick to remember about fills. We talked about the different Impression Fill tools already, but one thing I left out was AREA Fill Anchors.

Fill Anchor Points are the insertion points for fills. Where this point is placed has special significance when you update the CAD geometry. The anchor point will refill the area around it according to the fill style previously used. You can also move a fill by moving the anchor point. If you filled the wrong area, that’s ok, click and drag the anchor to the new area.

If you don’t want to see the anchor points, you can toggle them on and off. Go to the menu bar, go to DISPLAY, click it, and then turn the AREA FILL ANCHORS toggle on or off. If it is on there will be a check mark in front of it. Sometimes turning this off helps to see the drawing better, especially if you have several small areas to fill right next to each other.

Earlier I mentioned that area fill anchors will refill an area when you update the cad geometry. That’s true, but it isn’t perfect. Sometimes it doesn’t quite work out just right, especially if multiple anchor points end up in one area. Double check it just to make sure. Even though it isn’t perfect, it sure beats redoing the work every time the line work in a project is updated.

The different fill tools produce different types of anchors. The Fill Points will produce an anchor that is, well, a point. The line and freehand fills will produce, well, lines, just as you drew them. The Area Fill Window will produce an anchor that looks like the crossing window. The anchors are permanent fill tools. This means that when the geometry is updated, it reads these anchors just as it would read you inputting them at that moment.

This is just another reason why Impression is a great tool that enables users to create digitally rendered drawings.

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.