Perforated Metal?

[pcrossington]

Is there a way to get a perforated metal sheet modeled in AC without creating a thousand operators cutting holes through a surface? There's a perforated surface within AC that looks great, but it does not have actual perforations through it, its just a fill (see image below).

Thanks,

Phil

Operating system used: Mac Intel-based tahoe 26.5.2

[Barry Kelly]

Don't use textures in elevations.

It can make the files impossible to print in my experience.

Barry.

[Lingwisyer]

So nothing has changed...

[pcrossington]

I don't know what I'm missing, but none of this seems to work. it's not a critical path effort for me, so no worries...

[Lingwisyer]

Could you share a file with the problematic surface?

[Barry Kelly]

These images are from 25, but it is similar in 29.

Make sure the surface is set like this.

The texture needs to have an alpha channel - you seem to have this texture (it is a default Graphisoft texture).

Then in the 3D styles, make sure transparency is turned on.

That should be it.

Barry.

[pcrossington]

Thank you. I believe the problem was that I was using a perforated image, embedded into the project. So even though I had transparency checked in both 3D Styles and the alpha channel, it did not work:

 

 

 

When I switched the texture to one of the built-in AC perforated textures, it works. 

 

I can't get the perforated material to be black this way, but that's ok.

Please also note that even though the material appears to be transparent, the sun does not shine through the openings, which is interesting.

Again, thank you, Barry.

 

[pcrossington]

it - I needed to change the transmittance to basically anything other than "0"

There is stil no shadow, but it looks correct otherwise.

[Lingwisyer]

The lighting engine in AC is basically non-existant so it does not interact with alpha channels, only physical geometry. Surfaces are either fully transparent to "light", or fully opaque.