printing 3D solids?

I am a bit new at 3D drawings, for many years it's been only 2D files used for .dxf purposes. My method is using "3D face" and them "extruding" to the size I want. When I view my layout or model, my 3D objects appear to be solids, but show some transparancy. When I preview or print, they only come out as lines. How can I make these objects solid and print them? thanx...

Quick (easy) way - Activate your viewport and set your shademode to Conceptual or Realistic.

Long (not so easy) way - Try rendering your solid.

Hi and thanks for the quick response. I just tried those options without any luck. Rendering seems to be only temporary and shading works well for removing/replacing transparancy. Still...when I go to preview or print, all I get is 3D wireframe???

Select your viewport and look under the Misc heading at the Shade plot field. If it says "Wireframe" change it to either the style you want it to plot as or "As Displayed"

where do I find the Shade Plot field?

In the Properties palette. Sorry, I thought I put that in the previous post.

okay, I get to a little Properties box and at the Plot Style box it says By Color. I can't change this, at least not here. I've looked in layers and found Plot Style Options but it too is not accessable. Do I need to add plot styles in the Plot Style Manager (File drop down menu)?

Like everything else with AutoCad, it's seems so complicated until you know the answer, then it seems so logical...argh

Plot style controls your color and lineweight assignments, useful if you want to print different colors by different linewights, but ultimately not what you're looking for.

Select your viewport, right click and select Properties to open the Properties Palette (not the little Quick Properties window that 09 introduced) Under the Heading Misc (click the downward pointing triangle if nothing is shown underneath it) you should see the Shade Plot field I mentioned earlier. Let me know what it says.

In Layout, I select my viewport, when I right-click I don't have a Properties option but I do Quick Select...Find...and Options... When clicking on Options, it opens an elaborate settings page including tabs named Files,Display,Open and Save,Plotting,System,User Pref.,Drafting,Selection,Profiles. Is this where I should be? I've searched the Plotting tab and can't find Properties Palette or Misc.

Alright...start by typing PROPERTIES into the command line and hit enter. That should open the palette. Then highlight your viewport and look for the item I've circled below.

There are other options as well. Some of the options may not be available to you, as you are using vs 2000.

Once you have your viewport set up with your 3-d model, you can hide your viewport, so that the model hides when plotting only.

From the command line:

Command: MVIEW

Specify corner of viewport or [ON/OFF/Fit/Shadeplot/Lock/Object/Polygonal/Restore/LAyer/2/3/4] : HIDE

Hidden line removal for plotting [ON/OFF]: ON

At this point, you select your viewports that you want to have the hidden effect. This works well for perspective views.

If you are only doing 2-d projections, you can use your SOLVIEW/SOLDRAW commands, and then you don't need to hide your view ports at all. This works well for your Top, Front, Isometric, Side Sections ect.

we're getting closer...excellent instruction! and thank you so much for your time. okay, this is the small box I was refering to before (my screen has a very high pixel count so what should be a normal size is sometimes not) I can get to this with the right-click option you mentioned. I was double-clicking the viewport putting me inside it. I've got that staight now. Unfortunately I'm not seeing the "Shade Plot" box. I have everything you do except Anno. Scale, Layer Prop., Visual Style, Shade Plot, Linked... Got any more ideas?

Can you post a screencap of what you're seeing? Click the properties palette then alt+PrintScreen.

thanx Secretagdan vbmenu_register("postmenu_197015", true); , tried that too and it's not quite what I'm after.

hmm, I've got the screen shot but can't seem to post it. I hit the "insert image" button and it asks me for url address? Can't believe how much I feel like an idiot. :

I can send by e-mail if you want. It looks exactly like the shot you posted, just missing some of the options.

You can host it on a site like photobucket or imageshack. They'll even give you the tag to insert it into the message.

okay, and thanks again.

Hmmm...its been so long since I used 2000...I'm not sure what you need to do to resolve this. I'll keep thinking on it, in the meantime can you post a screenshot of the settings for the plot dialog box? Make sure everything is fully expanded.

sorry it's so big, like i said, sometimes things are bigger than i think but not on my screen...

thanks for trying to help, take all the time you need to remember. I've been struggling with this for days....

is flatshot applicable in cad2000? if so, then flatshot it and print....