I made circles (components) to represent plant colors on this test 2d planting grid. Why do the colors disappear on the top down view, and vary when I rotate the model into 3d? Model attached here.
planting grid test.skp (162.8 KB)
This is called Z-fighting. It’s an artifact from OpenGL and due to the fact that you’ve got faces in the exact same location. The graphics card has a difficult time deciding which one is supposed to be in front of the other. Put a little distance between them and that problem will go away.
I moved the circles in the blue direction a little bit in the top copy here.
Perfect Dave. Thank you
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You’re quite welcome.
Just a note. It appears you are thinking about the modeling as if you are laying paper circles out on graph paper. The model space is 3D but faces on their own have no thickness.
Another thing you might consider for something like this is to use cylinders instead of circles for the planting symbols. They won’t look like cylinders in a plan view but there top faces will automatically be placed above the grid or whatever you have for the “ground”.
oooh - love that idea. That’ll be a huge help. Thanks
Again, you’re welcome.
Another thought. If you intend to use your components more than once, set the component’s origin in a logical place to make insertion simple. For example you probably know where the center of the plant circle needs to be located in the plan. When you create the component set the component’s origin at the center of the bottom of the cylinder. Then, when you drag the component in from the Component’s window, you’ll have hold of it by the origin and you can drop it exactly where you want it.
And again, that is such a helpful idea. thanks.
while you all are constructing entire buildings, I’m trying to figure out how to place colored circles. I appreciate the patience with these basic questions.
hal
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It’s OK. This pbasic stuff rolls into the more complex stuff. As you get to working with more complex models you’ll find you still need this kind of workflow and it even becomes more useful.
I made a quick example of the component dropping thing. You can see how the component’s origin is at the center of the bottom of my cylinder.
Centering the origin like that also means that you can resize the cylinders easily without changing their location.