Selective visibility

Visible

A model can become so complex that you cannot easily tell its components apart. 3D objects often hide behind each other, hindering your efforts to examine geometry, pose, and motion on model update or during simulation.

Visualization filtering is a feature that lets you selectively show and hide parts of your model. By showing only those parts that you want to see, you can more easily discern any components placed within or behind other components.

This feature is available from the Scene tree. If you click the quick access action eye next to the 3D object in the tree structure, the object disappears from the scene. To make the object visible again, click the reverse quick access action in the tree structure.

Alternatively, you can set the visibility of the 3D object from its properties in the Visibility group. This approach allows you to set the visibility on a multiple selection of 3D objects.

Any changes to the visualization settings of a tree node apply equally to all children of that node, if any. To only apply the changes to the tree node, use the Ctrl key when clicking on the eye icon.

If you want to show part of a subsystem you have previously hidden, you can change the visibility settings for the child nodes that you want to show by expanding the tree node.

Visualization filtering is not the only approach you can use to enhance component visibility in a model. However, it is often the simplest. It is also the only approach that does not require you to modify the 3D objects in any way. Alternative approaches you can use include:

• Lowering the opacity of obstructive components by decreasing the alpha channel in the color selection dialog box

• Modeling obstructive 3D objects only in part by editing them in a 3D CAD software application.

Axes

The axes visibility option toggles the display of an object’s axes off and on.

The easiest way to view the frames in your 3D scene is to toggle their visibility on. You can do this by clicking the frames icon of the quick access actions in the tree structure.

Alternatively, you can set the visibility of the 3D object's axes from its properties in the Visibility group. This approach allows you to set the axes visibility on a multiple selection of 3D objects.