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xwalker1-Visitor
1-Visitor
May 26, 2014
Solved

Add visibly renderable silkscreen text and line art to surface

  • May 26, 2014
  • 4 replies
  • 8187 views

I have produced some sheet metal enclosures which will have silk screen printing added to identify connectors.

Is there a way I can add text and line art within Creo that will be rendered?

The only way I can think of doing is is having a seperate sketch with the text and line art, and then extrude it by an infinately small amount. Is there a "proper" way of doing it? In fact, scratch that, I just realised you cannot extrude text from a simple flat surface.

So back to my initial question!

Also, is there a way of inserting a variable in text that I can then pattern and have the variable increment in the pattern. Like "Input 1", "Input 2", etc, or do I have to manually do each one? <== I think I can forget about something like that for the moment!


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Best answer by TomD.inPDX

My bad... you cannot extrude things in the sheetmetal module. This will work normally in regular part files.

Everything in a sheetmetal part must be the same thickness. Huge limitations in this respect.

So if you make a part file with the silkscreen only and assemble it with your sheetmetal part, you got it made. then you can detail the whole box using the sheetmetal part in most of your drawings, and then the assembly in the same drawing showing the silkscreen in its oven view.

Does that make sense?

4 replies

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RaphMORIN16-Pearl
16-Pearl
May 26, 2014

Hi,

We often have to do such renderings. To do our renderings we use Keyshot. For silkscreen printing I use PNG file that we create with Illustrator and then integrate it on my rendering.

I have tried to make extrude of texts, it's a lot of work only to get an approximate result !! And it makes your Creo model very "heavy" !!

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xwalker1-VisitorAuthor
1-Visitor
May 26, 2014

Merci Raphaël.

I didn't know about Keyshot. Downloading their demo version now to see if it could work.

Can you share some renders of some models you've created in Creo ?

Ahh, it would be an expensive solution by the looks of it... Difficult to justify for the ocassional render where I need text shown on top. Otherwise the built-in render (=no extra cost) is OK for me.

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RaphMORIN16-Pearl
16-Pearl
May 27, 2014

Here's an example of what you could get with Keyshot. I've croped the image for confidentiality reason.

The only constraint to do this is to be able to generate a png of the silkscreening you want. For us it's easy because we also do silkscreening.

Concerning the cost, I think it's less expensive than the creo extension. And, regarding to the quality of the renderings, you can sell those to your customers. This is what we do, and now, some customers even use them on their websites !!

Silkscreen.jpg

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TomD.inPDX17-Peridot
17-Peridot
May 26, 2014

I have to do this quite often for my sheetmetal efforts.

I do extrude the text from sections (sketches) by , say .004". However, I do prefer to do this as a separate component. In other words, I have a part level sheetmetal component and the next level assembly often has press-fit fasteners added... and optionally, I can add the silkscreen at that level, or the next level.

Silkscreen as a separate component in an assembly makes it easy to hide in drawings and even remove it through family tables or layers. I have not seen to much of an overhead for simple silkscreen requirements.

Since most industrial silkscreens use Helvetica as a font, I downloaded the open source SWISS 721 font which is nearly identical to Helvetica (licensed). If I do wish to specify SWISS 721, I can even make artwork ready geometry in this manner. What I am getting at is that you can add the right font to your session.

In my case, I detail the silkscreen to the full extent in my drawings. I detail offsets from features, height, font, font style, and all graphics including line thicknesses. -Anyone- can recreate the exact same artwork from my drawings in the case where suppliers are changes and no artmaster is managed or tracked by my client.

When you do extrude closed loop fonts, do not add tapers. Also, be sure to have the option of setting your accuracy to allow for the shallow extrude depth. Allow absolute accuracy in your config.pro and set your accuracy in the part file to maybe .0005 absolute. By default, these thin extrusions often fail.

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Inoram14-Alexandrite
14-Alexandrite
May 26, 2014

Antonius (or anyone) do you have any sample pics? I want to do more rendering when I have time, I'd like to see what results you guys are getting.

thanks!

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xwalker1-VisitorAuthor
1-Visitor
May 27, 2014

Ahh I see why I couldn't extrude before: I was adding text on an existing surface but on its own. If I sketch a rectangle on the surface and then add the text inside, it works, but gives me the opposite of what I want: everything apart from the text is extruded. How do I "inverse" that?

Thanks Raphaël, it does look good. Funnily enough, I'm also working on an audio power amplifier to which I want to add line printing just like you have I can easily add a PNG of the text on top, so that might be an easier option given how much I'm struggling to get what I want directly in Creo. I'll play with the demo version.

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TomD.inPDX17-Peridot
17-Peridot
May 27, 2014

Add one more rectangle and the extrude should inverse again... but you definitely shouldn't have to do that either.

Post your file here if you like and we can take a look at why it is not extruding. Just use the advanced editor.

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xwalker1-VisitorAuthor
1-Visitor
May 27, 2014

When I try to extrude it, I get a warning message: "The selected geometry can not be used by this tool. Please select new references."

Doing a simple rectangle seems to work

Model attached.

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BillChapman13-Aquamarine
13-Aquamarine
May 27, 2014

This is similar to the solution Antonious provided, but I create a sketch .001" offset from the sheetmetal surface. Then create a surface from the sketch. Now you can change the color of the surface for rendering, etc. and use layers to control visibility.

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TomD.inPDX17-Peridot
17-Peridot
May 27, 2014

Bill, the only problems I have with surfaces is that they do not do well for hidden line removal. they become obnoxious

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BillChapman13-Aquamarine
13-Aquamarine
May 27, 2014

This is true enough. I suppose that it will depend on what other requirements you have. Sometimes we screen or laser etch on machined parts. We do not want the text / logos /part numbers to be solid as this will cause issues with machining (Creo Production Machining) and will cause issues with interference checks if you have the text on a mating surface.

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