Blank/Unblank Entities.

[Ocean Lacky™]

Can someone please explain the purpose and/or uses of this feature.

[Midwest]

Hide stuff

 

[Guest]

Blanking and hiding entities

The Screen menu provides options you use to temporarily remove and restore selected entities in the graphics window display.

 

 

Blank Entity: Removes selected entities, on any level, reducing the complexity of the screen display.

 

 

Unblank Entity: Available only if blanked entities exist in the file. Restores all previously blanked entities.

 

 

Hide Entity: Removes unselected entities, allowing you to focus on a small amount of geometry. If hidden entities exist in the file, this function "unhides" them.

 

 

Hide more entities: Available only if hidden entities exist in the file. Allows you to select additional entities from the current display and remove unselected entities.

 

 

Unhide some entities: Available only if hidden entities exist in the file. Displays only the entities that are hidden and allows you to select additional entities to display.

 

 

There are important differences between the Blank and Hide functions:

 

With Hide, you select the entities that will remain in the graphics window; all unselected entities are removed. With Blank, you select only the entities to remove.

 

You can save blanked entities; hidden entities are not saved.

 

Choose Hide to remove many entities from the display, or to quickly restore hidden entities.

 

Choose Blank to selectively remove and restore a limited number of entities from the display.

[JDowe]

When bringing in files from another source

use unblank to make sure there are no hiden

blanked enities

[Midwest]

I sometimes use to hide solid construction line work, so another person / co-workers can't ruin a solid.

 

I also use Levels for this.......Because our designer couldn't find the Solid line work ........and mark the level "Caution Solid Construction Line Work".

 

 

[Ocean Lacky™]

thanks for the replies......The reason I'm asking is, I have a customer model created in ProE and converted to .STP surfaces. It has several hundred entities that are blanked. They are all Pure Garbage. If I try to delete them, I get the "Delete Associated..." dialogue. If I answer Yes, half of my model gets deleted. No, and nothing at all gets deleted.

 

I'm fighting like crazy with this thing just to do simple tasks and trying to figure out why.

[Colin Gilchrist]

Ocean/Everyone,

 

There is one more important feature of "Blank".

 

Whenever you have a trimmed surface, the original surface (untrimmed surface) must still exist in the database. This is known as a "parent" surface.

 

Whenever you trim a surface, Mastercam keeps the "untrimmed" surface on the same level in a "blanked" state.

 

Why? Because if both surfaces were visible, it would be very hard, if not impossible to work with your model. Take a model that has 100 trimmed surfaces. There would also be 100 blanked parent surfaces on the same level.

 

My recommendation is to not use Blank/Unblank unless you absolutely have to.

 

I use Hide/Unhide religiously...

 

Alt + E is your friend. I also love the "Hide more" and "Unhide Some" commands...

[neurosis]

Colin, Out of curiosity, why does mastercam keep the original untrimmed surfaces in the database? Ive never understood this. Sorry for the off topic question.

[Thee Rickster ™]

Neurosis,

 

Most all software does, MC just does it slightly different

 

It is for the purpose of untrimming.

EX: an odd shaped trimmed spherical surface when untrimmed will show up exactly how it was originally created before the trim was performed.

I need to do this often when developing a mold and creating check surfaces that are too complex to recreate.(handy)

 

 

Either way it doesn't take up much memory.

 

M2C's

[Colin Gilchrist]

Hi Dave,

 

The reason that Mastercam keeps the original surface is that a trimmed surface is just that, an original shape with new "trimmed" edges projected onto the parent surface and the excess removed.

 

Take a look at some of your trimmed surfaces. Ever notice that the UV gridlines don't run parallel to one (or more) of the surface edges?

 

With a trimmed surface, there is often no way to take the surface edge curves (in the trimmed state) and use them to rebuild the surface. The shape of the surface would not be correct.

 

Think of the methods that are used in surface construction. Ruled, Lofting, Sweeping, some sort of 3 or 4 boundary approximation...

 

All of these are mathematical methods that create surfaces, based off the original geometry or some other set of parameters. The original "Blanked" parent surfaces are retained because they are needed. They are the base of the new trimmed surfaces.

 

Sure, Mastercam could just retain this 'parent' surface data in the database and make it invisible to the user (until they need to perform and 'un-trim' operation), but quite often it is useful for the programmer to have quick access to this parent surface...

 

Something you will notice is when you move a trimmed surface is that it's parent surface will move also. You don't have to first "un-blank" the surface. If you move all the visible surfaces from one level to another, and you still have entities on the original level, you are safe to un-blank them and delete them because they are not associated to the surfaces you moved...

 

HTH,

[kkominiarek]

colin, alt-e is my best friend! (same with unhide and more)

 

how can I delete blanked enitities? (permanently)

[Thee Rickster ™]

Try importing data.

Save as, Select the Geo you want to keep.

Open new file and import what you just saved.

 

That might only bring in the geo without the Blanked

Data.

[Sarabjit Mann]

how do I blank selected entities in mastercam x9? can someone explain please

[Thad]

This is an old topic.

 

Select the entities you want to blank, then Screen-Blank Entity.

[Sarabjit Mann]

Thanks

[Thad]

You're welcome.

 

Looking at the Quick Reference card for X9, I don't see that shortcut listed. Maybe they did away with it for some reason.

 

I tried it and it doesn't work for me either. Maybe you can setup your own shortcut via Settings-Customize?

[Sarabjit Mann]

yes. I could assign new keyboard shortcut, but they also took off the list of keyboard shortcuts and there is no way that I could find what shortcuts are assigned to what commands (presently), i actually, I added these(blank and un blank) commands to my right mouse click to access it frequently

[Thad]

yes. I could assign new keyboard shortcut, but they also took off the list of keyboard shortcuts and there is no way that I could find what shortcuts are assigned to what commands (presently)

 

Start->All Programs->Mastercam X9->Documentation->Quick Reference Card.