Symbol Material Scaling


Chopsaw
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I am not sure I have seen a posting of this nature so here goes.

 

Any ideas why my chief material is scaling up by 32x when applied to a symbol ?

 

It does not seem to matter what I set the scaling at it gives an 18" pattern when I want it at 1/2".  I over compensate and make it 1/64" and it applies as 18"

 

It seems to apply to to other symbols ok but this is a single face but I have done this before with faces but maybe not in X12 so I don't know what is going on.

 

I am using this as mosquito screening and not the de Havilland mosquito kind !

 

image.thumb.png.c3bcc91fefc213c42a42d5e592fc95db.png

 

Here is the Symbol if anyone want to check it out:

 

Gable Vent Left.calibz

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6 minutes ago, glennw said:

Try checking (or unchecking) Keep Texture/Pattern in Sync and then change the scale and see if that helps.

 

No sorry.  I forgot about that setting but wanted them different anyway.  If you turn on " Global Symbol Mapping" the DBX preview appears to match the resulting texture in standard views but that is no help either.

 

image.thumb.png.f32259d5eab54579f52c894cede5d15a.png

 

Thanks for playing though.  This might be one for Dustin on Monday unless we are missing the obvious somehow.

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Hi Chopsaw,

I tried it on my machine the left one is your symbol. The right one is a copy with the square mesh from the library, edited to 1"x1" scale. It comes in at 5"x 5."

I have found that checking the box "keep Pattern/Texture in Sync" first before making changes to the scale makes it behave the way you expect.

Screen-material-scaling-test-1.jpg

Screen-material-scaling-test-2.jpg

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Apparently the same issue exists in a metric template but it appears to only be an issue as soon as you go below a single unit in metric or imperial.   metric units being cm and imperial units being inches.:(

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20 minutes ago, glennw said:

Chopsaw,

Yes, I agree with that - the single digit seems to be the key.

Metric is usually mm not cm

 

Yes I agree that the metric annotation standards are in mm but I think the software still does it's base computations in cm and inches.

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The problem probably has something to do with the fact that your symbol is a zero inch thick single face.  For whatever reason, Chief has a hard time dealing with that.  Give it some thickness...even making it .001" thick...and see if that works.  You have to model it that way from scratch though.  You won't be able to increase the thickness of a zero inch thick object since there's nothing there to increase.

 

P.S.  You can delete the extra face after the fact or by exploding your solid before converting to a symbol.  The object just needs to have some depth.

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1 hour ago, Alaskan_Son said:

The problem probably has something to do with the fact that your symbol is a zero inch thick single face.  For whatever reason, Chief has a hard time dealing with that.  Give it some thickness...even making it .001" thick...and see if that works.  You have to model it that way from scratch though.  You won't be able to increase the thickness of a zero inch thick object since there's nothing there to increase.

 

P.S.  You can delete the extra face after the fact or by exploding your solid before converting to a symbol.  The object just needs to have some depth.

 

Interesting idea.  I will give that a try to see if it makes a difference as it seems that theoretically it should not. I am actually using Dermots method that was specifically recommended for this purpose.

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Just now, Alaskan_Son said:
1 hour ago, Chopsaw said:

I am actually using Dermots method that was specifically recommended for this purpose.

What is this method you are talking about?

 

Being able to display screening properly by applying it to a single face.

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15 minutes ago, Chopsaw said:

 

Being able to display screening properly by applying it to a single face.

You can still apply to a single face, the symbol just has to be thicker than zero if you want to scale down to under a single unit.  Thicker than zero doesn't preclude the single face idea.  Please note that I'm not saying I think the behavior is good, just telling you how its working.  You can also increase your texture image to include a larger sample area...

 

Square Mesh 2.png

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9 minutes ago, Alaskan_Son said:

You can also increase your texture image to include a larger sample area...

 

I won't likely get to this today but could you expand on that part of your statement for me.  I am not quite clear on what you are suggesting.

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14 minutes ago, Chopsaw said:

 

I won't likely get to this today but could you expand on that part of your statement for me.  I am not quite clear on what you are suggesting.

I posted an example already.  My texture image is 4 times as big as the one you are using.  Use that one instead and you can set the scale at 1x1 and it will be 4 times as small.

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11 hours ago, Alaskan_Son said:

The problem probably has something to do with the fact that your symbol is a zero inch thick single face.  For whatever reason, Chief has a hard time dealing with that.  Give it some thickness...even making it .001" thick...and see if that works.  You have to model it that way from scratch though.  You won't be able to increase the thickness of a zero inch thick object since there's nothing there to increase.

 

P.S.  You can delete the extra face after the fact or by exploding your solid before converting to a symbol.  The object just needs to have some depth.

 

Looks like your modified material is the workaround to go with.  So thank you for that. :)

 

It does not seem to be the thickness that matters.....    This one is 1/8" and the material actually works on the edge faces but not on the rectangular face that I need.  It must just be another one of those things where chief just falls on its face dealing with angles.

 

I will send this one in when I have a breather.

 

image.thumb.png.652d8dfca2b2525d32d24b50618c5b6d.png

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13 hours ago, Chopsaw said:

It does not seem to be the thickness that matters.....    This one is 1/8" and the material actually works on the edge faces but not on the rectangular face that I need.

 

Weird.  I had just quickly tested when I first responded with that advice and I thought I had it working by giving it some thickness.  I just tried it again real quick and couldn't repeat.  Odd.  Either way, yes, adjusting the sample size definitely works, and yes, Chief is treating this scenario oddly.  I'll let you know if I have a chance to play with it again and figure out what I did differently last time.

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Morning Gang...

Super interesting find you guys have here.  I don't think I've ever tried to scale that small before but I tested the attached object and sure enough, its popping itself back to default.  I'll log it as a bug.

 

Looking at what you have now however, I don't think that material would be able to get to where you need it to be if the hard cap on scaling is tied to whole unit increments, you might need to make a new material (mentioned above) or "remap" your object.

 

For those that don't know what mapping is, here's a quick breakdown.

 

When we make 3d objects that will go into Chief, we need to "map" each face so the direction and scale of any applied materials behave correctly (think wood grain direction on cabinet doors) with this data hard locking into the object.  While we are outside of Chief we can control these values as needed, but once the object is IN Chief, it's locked in place and we can only manipulate the materials that we apply.  Shown below is an example made in 3ds max using a testing material that I use to dial in direction and size.  The squares are mapped at (Chief Default) 20", 10", and 1" and you can see the testing image tile more and more as we scale it down.

 

Mapping.thumb.png.623b3e0bc58c467c578bb0b290458e71.png

 

If you use Chief to model something, or if your model doesn't have any mapping data on import I believe, then the mapping would default to 20".  This default of 20" is why your material looks so big initially, and if your hard capped at 1" as your minimum, why you can't scale it down super tiny.  Looking at the wire mesh image, the sample size is a 6x6 grid... 

 

So each square, if mapped at chief default would be 20"/6= 3.33~ inches.

 

If we mapped the object at 10", now your squares will be 10"/6= 1.66~ inches

 

And finally if we mapped the object at 1" we'd end up with 1"/6 - .1666~ inches which would be closer to what you are after.

 

Here's that example of default 20", 10", and 1" from 3ds max...

1709067045_WireMeshExample.thumb.png.deb1e22c5c8754bf071bde972b0f7602.png

 

As you can see the mesh gets smaller as the mapping value gets smaller.  The same wire mesh material is on all three squares, set at 20"x20" but since our object mapping is different, we can get smaller or larger results.  

 

Now you can scale that Chief material down to 1" and get super tiny...

Tiny.thumb.png.315f669653f5cbbc160a39ae194ca42e.png

 

So, if you need a smaller scale, and want to remap your object, you can bring it into pretty much any 3d software suite and map whatever size you need, just remember that it will multiply by whatever your chief scale value will be.  Blender is a free option that should get the job done, or as mentioned above, you can tile your material a couple times in photoshop or other image toolsets to increase the pictures sample size, either or.

 

Hope that helps, and again I'll log the 1" minimum as a bug.

 

Let me know if I whiffed on the question or if anyone needs clarification.

 

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Thanks for logging the 1" minimum bug Dustin.  I just wonder though based on your explanation if there is another underlying issue when creating symbols.  Prior to creating the symbol of the triangular shaped single face there was no issue with the material application.  Does this mean that the assigned mapping is lost at the point of symbol creation, but only for some types of objects ?  I have not had hours and hours available for testing so I don't really know exactly what shapes and sizes of shapes work and don't work at this point.

A simple square or rectangle seems to maintain it's "mapping" when converted to a symbol so maybe I don't understand what is really going on. 

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