Electronics > PCB/EDA/CAD

How to get smoother STEP 3D body curves in Altium?

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AlfBaz:
What does the dialog box that comes up after pressing the Test DirectX button in prefs->PCB Editor->Display?

I cant help but think this might be a graphic card issue

Curves appear fine here
 

ARQuattr:
I'm not sure what it tells me, but this is what the DirectX test gives (same for both monitors except of course the second shows DISPLAY2).

Generally STEP bodies render beautifully so I'm not sure it's a graphics card issue.  Here is another body that looks good as a whole, but if you zoom in close you can see similar tessellations.  So I wonder if it's just because the radius of this part is so high - maybe it's just based on the change in angle, but how do I change that threshold?

I attached the STEP file and original SLDPRT.  I would be interested to hear what this STEP body looks like for others.  I'm using AD10, and also wonder if AD13 would render this differently.

Thanks for your input.

AlfBaz:
I tried your step model in AD and it looks the same as yours, all blocky
I imported it into autodesk inventor and it came up nice and curved

 :-//

free_electron:
this may have something to do with how the curve is stored ... as a curve , or as a group of short lines with varying angles.
there is revisions of step and altium does not use the latest version.

i have seen siilar problems with certain models. when i load them in a modeler tool ( like Rhino ) select the entity  ,explode it to primitives and ask rhino to create a new 'shell' (outer surface and create the drawing using triangles then export to altium the problem goes away.

i run all step models through rhino before i import them in altium. many step files are waaay too detailed and too large , or contain nested elements. in rhino i can tell the tool  : create an equivalent surface and remove all the inside gunk ( the model becomes a hollow shell. ) typically this makes the step file smaller. and it loads faster in altium.
plus i can change colors and other things and solve the problem having a part show up being all white. (the coloring problem is also a STEP problem. AP214 stores color information but there was a revision. altium only can handle the new revision . the older one shows up as all white.

STEP format has a it of problems , just like DXf. there is too many variations and revisions and some things break between revisions.
processing it through Rhino solves that. if i export AP214 from rhino altium eats it without blinking.

i think for your curved surface altium creates an approximation from that large curve. and the approximation is 3 lines...
if you were to change the curve yourself to an approximation with 25 lines then the render in altium would be much better.

ARQuattr:
AlfBaz, thanks for confirming that.
free_electron, thanks for the suggestion.  I'll give Rhino a try.  What specific operation should I be looking for?

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