1. UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO
Project 04
Solid Modeling Assignment 04 - MAE 377
Jonathan E. Jones – 3451-8370
10/7/2009
Project 04 was meant to expound upon the three dimensional CAD skills I have learned to date, and take
my proficiencies in a slightly different direction. No longer was the actual functionality and design
integrity of my project a major factor. Appearance and realism instead reigned supreme.

2. Table of Contents
1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 3
2 Problem Statement ............................................................................................................................... 3
3 Results ................................................................................................................................................... 3
3.1 Part A............................................................................................................................................. 4
3.2 Part B ............................................................................................................................................. 4
3.2.1 Part B.i.1-Aluminum .............................................................................................................. 5
3.2.2 Part B.i.2-Cast Aluminum ...................................................................................................... 5
3.2.3 Part B.i.3-Polished Gold ........................................................................................................ 5
3.2.4 Part B.i.4-Brushed Gold ......................................................................................................... 5
3.2.5 Part B.ii.1-Clear Glass ............................................................................................................ 6
3.2.6 Part B.ii.2-Colored Glass........................................................................................................ 6
3.2.7 Part B.iii.1-Injection Molded ................................................................................................. 7
3.2.8 Part B.iii.2-Spark Eroded ....................................................................................................... 7
3.2.9 Part B.iii.3-Translucent .......................................................................................................... 7
3.3 Part C ............................................................................................................................................. 8
3.4 Mini-Project .................................................................................................................................. 9
4 Discussion.............................................................................................................................................. 9
5 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 10
6 References .......................................................................................................................................... 10
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3. 1 Introduction
For Project 04, aesthetics were held in the utmost regard, making this project almost entirely different
from Projects 01-03. The emphasis in teaching me new tools in ProENGINEER Wildfire 4.0 switched
from that of the actual modeling of parts, components, and assemblies, to that of a more artistic sense.
I daresay that with the completion of this project I have added a few more handy tools to my current
repertoire of abilities.
2 Problem Statement
In order to further my three-dimensional CAD skills, I was given three already modeled products and
along with my cell phone from a different era from Project 03, tasked with making them appear much
more lifelike. I spent hours utilizing tutorials direct from PTC itself (the maker of Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire
4.0 and the original owner of the models I was using in the project). Following their instructions was
simple enough for the initial cell phone and chess piece renderings, but we were allowed a little more
freedom of expression in the final electric razor and primitive cell phone depictions.
3 Results
Luckily, I was able to match the appearances required for the completion of Project 04. The following
sections will detail how I went about creating each part, describing any pitfalls I may have run into along
the way.
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4. 3.1 Part A
Part A was of course a breeze to model, as it was given to us in an already modeled package. This part
served as an introduction into the rendering commands and options available in ProE, and in that sense
did not go that in detail about every nook and cranny of rendering. However, we did get to play around
with the lighting, appearances, surface textures, reflections and the like. All in all, Part A was not all
too complicated, and did not deviate in anything significant from the tutorial to cause any major
headaches.
Figure 1: Part A, rendering of a flip cell phone.
3.2 Part B
Part B was quite simply, an exercise in repetition. This section of Project 04 was meant to show us how
versatile the appearance editor within ProE could be. As such, I was given a pawn chess piece looking
like model, and was tasked with changing the appearance to nine different ordinary styles.
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5. 3.2.1 Part B.i.1-Aluminum
As the title suggests, Part B.i.1 was making the chess piece out of an aluminum material. As would be
the process throughout the rest of Part B, I followed the tutorial through a stage of 3 separate renders,
each time tweaking a section of the appearance or light editor to gain the material I was looking for.
Aluminum was pretty straightforward, as it was a preprogrammed material.
3.2.2 Part B.i.2-Cast Aluminum
This section showed me how to copy and already created appearnce, and then tweak that minimally to
create and entirely different look and feel. Adding a few bumps and altering the colors slightly created
this part without much difficulty.
(a) (b)
Figure 2 (a) Part B.i.1-Aluminum chess piece; (b) B.i.2-Cast Aluminum
3.2.3 Part B.i.3-Polished Gold
This part of B set about with an entirely new appearance, polished gold. Again just editing the colors,
and various factors within the appearance editor such as specular factor, roughness, and mirror factor,
was able to recreate the desired look without much difficulty.
3.2.4 Part B.i.4-Brushed Gold
Herein lays one of the fundamental problems of Project 04. As I will describe in detail later, the tutorials
we were privy to for this section were meant for Wildfire 3.0. As any student who resides more than 10
seconds in the 10th floor computer lab in Furnas knows, we deal solely in the 4.0 realm. Apparently, one
of the completely necessary commands in 3.0 was either relocated, renamed, or eradicated all together
from the 4.0 version: the ability to change our location of our texture mapping to the CSO coordinate
system. Every other command required for the creation of Brushed Gold was followed to the “t,”
including the bump mapping, cylindrical mapping type, and texturing. However, without access to the
CSO coordination system mapping location command, the texturing was completely off.
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6. (a) (b)
Figure 3 (a) Part B.i.3-Polished gold chess piece; (b) B.i.2-Pusedo-brushed gold
3.2.5 Part B.ii.1-Clear Glass
Part ii of part B shifted the focus from metal appearances to glass. This followed the exact same process
as the aluminum and gold chess pieces, only differing in that the overarching field type was switched
from metal to glass. Again toying with the various settings within the appearance editor, and editing the
light settings when necessary, I created the clear glass chess piece without too much difficulty.
3.2.6 Part B.ii.2-Colored Glass
This was a shift very akin to that between Aluminum and Cast Aluminum. For this part we were also
introduced to changing the floor type and texture to the tiling shown in Figure 4. Copying the
appearance of clear glass to a new file and altering the color and light settings produced the part easily.
(a) (b)
Figure 4 (a) Part B.ii.1-Clear Glass chess piece; (b) colored glass
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7. 3.2.7 Part B.iii.1-Injection Molded
The injection molded chess piece came together in the exact same fashion as the previous parts, hence
the repetitive nature of Part B. Opening up a new appearance, changing some of the dials and factors,
adding color, and tweaking the lights were all things of a repetitive mundane nature by now.
3.2.8 Part B.iii.2-Spark Eroded
Copying the appearance from the injection molded chess piece again proved simple in nature. Adding
bumps this time gave the appearance of slightly deformed plastic.
3.2.9 Part B.iii.3-Translucent
Changing the reflectance shader settings of the injection molded plastic appearance allowed for a
translucent chess piece to be made. Adding a distant light behind the model and tweaking the
appearance settings gave the finished product the look I was looking for.
(a) (b)
(c)
Figure 5 (a) Injection Molded Plastic; (b) Spark eroded; (c) Translucent
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8. 3.3 Part C
Simply put, Part C was quite the pain. Again utilizing one of PTC’s infamous tutorials, I had to change the
appearance of an electric razor, learning a few new tools along the way. These new skills included
perspective, fog, scattered lighting and depth of field to name a few. One should think that this process
would be as simple as before, following a tutorial and changing whatever it said to change until the
desired final appearance was met. However, this tutorial paled in comparison to those previous, as I
think that this walkthrough was meant more as an overarching, generalized tutorial for all of ProE’s
rendering capabilities. Sure, this part of Project 04 was meant to pull together the skills learned in the
sections previous to accomplish a more difficult assignment, but the tutorial was lackluster at best. It
often gave a plethora of options that I “could” choose from; never telling me what exactly would create
the desired output. Even at this point, I could deal with messing around with the settings until I found
ones that matched what I was looking for, if only it weren’t scores if not hundreds of different setting
combinations. Even still, if our lab computers were powerful enough not to freeze or take an obscene
amount of time rendering, I would have had minimal objection to this part of the project. As you may
have guessed, none of these wishes proved true.
Figure 6: Part C-Final rendering of the razor
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9. 3.4 Mini-Project
Following suit, the final part of Project 04 was quite unlike the final mini-projects of Projects past. In the
previous projects, the final facet of the assignment was often the most time consuming and difficult. In
direct comparison, this mini-project was almost easy. Again utilizing a previously modeled assembly,
this time the cell phone I modeled in Project 03, the focus centered on appearance and overall
aesthetics. After changing the exterior hulls of the phone to a dark metal, the lends to green glass, the
keypad and antenna to red rubber, and the interior pieces of the phone a blueish plastic, the majority of
the project was completed. Adding a room, floor, and lighting similar to the cell phone I made look
pretty in Part A, and this section was finished.
Judging by the initial rendering of the mini-project, I decided it was most prudent for me to complete
the bonus section of this project, creating a rendering similar to that of Part C. Following the steps for
lighting, background, perspective, and depth of field (among others) set forth in Part C; I completed a
more than competent rendering of my cell phone, making it look verifiably real.
(a) (b)
Figure 7 (a) Cell phone rendered like Part A; (b) Same model rendered like Part C
4 Discussion
The specific problems detailed in Sections 3.1-3.4, regarding the creations of Parts A, B, C, and the mini-
project have already been duly noted. One of my main concerns with Project 04 is the almost apparent
lack of power of the computers we have at hand in the 10th floor lab of Furnas Hall. One more than one
occasion, I would come to the final stage of the rendering process, the one required the most memory
and computer muscle since it is when all the maximum quality options have been selected, only to have
my computer freeze up and eventually time out, ProENGINEER simply not responding for upwards of 20
minutes. Now I did not expect this to be the actual time period required for the final render, but if it is,
that is still a problem. Oftentimes, one cannot tell what the actual final rendered product will look like
until after the final rendering, resulting in as much as 10 renders, some or all of them stalling out at
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10. some point in time. Truthfully, this brings me to my next qualm: even with “real-time rendering” turned
on, why does ProE still convert the final render into most times an entirely different depiction of the
model? In a project where final appearance is all that matters, this is wholly frustrating to say the least.
Tweaking various settings by seemingly minimal amounts hoping to correct a minor mistake often
results in a 180 degree flip of the appearance of the JPEG, something not apparent until after the risky
and time consuming final render. Make “real-time” render and wee more ”real-time,” and I will quit my
squabbling.
5 Conclusion
Project 04 did end up being quite the lengthy project, accumulating over 20 hours in total. Honestly, if
not for the two nights fruitlessly spent trying to sit through the “ProE Not Responding” errors during the
final renders, I could have saved myself at least 5 hours of computer time. The problems detailed in
Sections 3.1-3.4 truly tarnished the artsy mood in the computer lab I felt from making models appear to
be truly lifelike. I eventually created all four parts of the project up to specification, utilizing my newly
discovered aesthetic rendering talents. The scary thing is, I feel like I’m making progress in the world
that is three dimensional CAD. Progress? Never thought I’d hear myself say the word.
6 References
1.) Parametric Technology Corporation. (2009) [Online]. ARX Advanced Material Definition. Available:
https://ublearns.buffalo.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=%2fwebapps%2fblackbo
ard%2fexecute%2flauncher%3ftype%3dCourse%26id%3d_77303_1%26url%3d
2.) Parametric Technology Corporation. (2009) [Online]. ARX Workshop Tutorial. Available:
https://ublearns.buffalo.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=%2fwebapps%2fblackbo
ard%2fexecute%2flauncher%3ftype%3dCourse%26id%3d_77303_1%26url%3d
3.) Parametric Technology Corporation. (2009) [Online]. Basic of Advanced Rendering Extension.
Available:
https://ublearns.buffalo.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=%2fwebapps%2fblackboa
rd%2fexecute%2flauncher%3ftype%3dCourse%26id%3d_77303_1%26url%3d
4.) Toogood, Roger, ProENGINEER Wildfire 4.0. Edmonton, Alberta: ProCAD Books Ltd, 2006.
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