The previous exercise in the Working with the 3D Cutting Tool section involved breaking up parts with the cutting tool in order to make hidden parts visible.

There is another way to make hidden parts visible though. This involves making all the areas of parts that are obscuring a hidden part transparent. The area that has been rendered transparent then functions as a window, making the previously hidden parts clearly visible.

As with the creation of cutout sections (3D cutting tool), this type of depiction is also often used for figures that are to appear in operating and maintenance instructions.

In the 3D mode of Arbortext IsoDraw CADprocess it is the transparency tool that is used to make certain areas of parts transparent. The tool supports two selection variants that provide the same functionality.

The following exercise involves making hidden parts of an assembly visible. Without editing, these parts cannot be viewed in any view. The transparency tool is used to make the relevant area of the obscuring parts transparent. After conversion to a 2D illustration, the parts that have been brought into view will be shown in gray, making them even easier to see.

plate_compl.idr (3D data with an assembly unit)