Ok, this was gonna be a bug thread, but in the end, it’s a fix one.
I’m not looking for answers or solutions, this is more a “Hey, some of you might get this problem later, here is how to fix it”
I’m talking about Trimble Connect Visualizer
Launching TCV, I found some weird faces.
Before anyone asks, yes, all faces are in the right orientation, yes, I copied the group in a separate file to check, no it’s not related to the huge file I’m doodling in.
Some faces are just… darker. at all time, even when reversed, monochrome, just darker.
Turns out it’s a result of almost flat geometry, but not quite.
This file started as a terrain mesh from cadmapper; but it could have been a simple grid sandbox terrain.
On this mesh, I draped the outline of my sidewalk. I deleted all the surrounding, and used Fredo6’ joint pushpull to make the sidewalk thicker.
You can still see the original grid mesh from the terrain on the sidewalk.
Some of the faces that result are complex, with big areas and long thin ones, with a lot of sides.
Here is a close up of a portion that remains dark
the solution is quite simple. delete the top face, and triangulate it again. If a big complex face will become dark, a bunch of smaller simple ones won’t. Don’t just retrace a diagonal, trace a bunch, to cut your complex face into simpler faces.
and using the eraser in smooth mode, you can then hide the extra lines. or not. TCV don’t display lines anyway.
Weird is, the faces appear as coplanar before, I guess TCV must try to triangulate them by itself, similar to exporting a collada or dxf file (a TrimBim I suppose?). and since in my case, the geometry was complex with a lot of thin elements, it gave up.
@TheCGO am I warm ? since TCV is originally a Trimble Connect tool, does it convert our SKP file into a TrimBim and triangulate on the fly ?
Attached is a chunk of my file, if you want to have a look at the problematic faces some day.
And by the way, no idea when an update will appear, but an “update” button is more than urgent. Closing and reopening TCV for every SU change is time consuming.
TCV dark.skp (297.5 KB)