Here is a second series of Tips & Tips for our PPX users.
"PPX" is the short name for "CATIA Product Perception Experience", this app enabling designers & engineers to create 3D interactive presentations of their design projects, directly from the CAD data, and explore all its variations to make the best decisions.
Hide all the objects of a Product variant line by creating an empty variant
To hide, in one click, all the objects contained in all the variants of a Product line, simply add an empty variant to that same line. To do so, make sure there is no active selection and click the [+] button to create the empty variant.
NB: Starting with R2022x, you'll get an info message to ensure you really want to create an empty variant.
The other way around, you might want to display all the variant objects at once. For this use the Select Content command of the variant line, and click the [+] button to create the variant.
This "hide & show" logic works also with the following variant types: Human, Simulation Result and Material.
Set the animation length of a given variant
To set the duration of the animation for a given variant, open its context menu and select the command Animation Duration. It offers a list of presets and the possibility to enter a user defined value.
To set the same duration for all the variants of a line, use the same command, but from the line context menu.
The following types of variant are animated in Presentation (Play) mode: Viewpoint, Position, Human (postures) and Simulation Results.
Create lighting variations from a same ambience
Several Environment variants can be created from a single PLM ambience, to simply vary some of its properties, like its orientation or ground reflectivity.
The properties of an ambience, as defined in the Properties Panel, are stored in an Environment variant. It is then easy to create several environment variants to explore some variations of a same PLM ambience, and check their impact on the perception of the design.
Maximize the 3D view by hiding all the UI
Use the following shortcuts:
- Ctrl+Shift+T to hide/show all the Variant panels along with the Project Tree, the Properties Panel etc.
- Ctrl+T to hide/show the Action Bar
To go one step further, right-click the 3D view background and select the Full Screen mode, or Full Screen For Design. The later keeps the top frame and the action bar.
