The Technical Illustration Workshop
within SOLIDWORKS Composer can create
advanced interactive vector instructions
that can really modernize your manuals.
What I want to talk to you about in
this video is the ideal format
for the buttons and icons
that you insert into your technical
illustrations.
The default format
for these icons people use a raster images
such as this one.
These can be easily
created in a program like Photoshop
or downloaded from the internet,
and are typically JPEGs or bitmaps,
and are in a format
that everyone understands.
However, I don't think these are best
to make
the buttons for our interactive manuals.
The reason being an SVG cannot
embed a raster image,
it can only link to it.
That means if you have a lot of buttons
on all your pages of your manual,
you will get a lot of folders
that the SVG must link
to and can increase the load speed.
Another reason is the highlighting.
You can see here
that when I hover over this next button,
it highlights
more than just the graphics of the arrow.
It highlights a square.
This is
because this is the edge of the Jpeg file.
Composer cannot identify the actual arrow
and can only link to this entire image.
Compare this to this file.
All the buttons
and this were brought in as vectors.
Therefore, when exported, PNG Composer
can simply embed
the SVG of the button
into the rest of the SVG.
Therefore, no links.
And because the vector is just the shape
rather than the border, when highlighting,
we can see
the actual button highlighted,
which looks a lot nicer.
I created these vectors
in Adobe Illustrator
and exported them to SVG.
However, not everyone has illustrator,
so what are some alternatives?
Well, vector images are no longer rare
and hard to find.
To learn exactly how to do this,
see some of our
other videos
or come to our two day training.
So how do we bring them in
and make them into a button?
Well, simply select vector image
2D rather than image 2D.
Option
on the author tab and import the file path
and point it towards your vector icon.
There are a couple of options which are
normally controlled with a style.
These being scale, background and shadow.
I never really want the background on
so I can overlap items easily.
Another thing that raster images cannot do
I typically turn the shadow off
and the scale
can sometimes be useful for padding,
but I normally just use 100%.
To add the link, it's exactly
the same as the raster images
with a link option that you can import.
Your next SVG web page or mp4.
One trap that I have fallen into before
is the shape cut out.
For example, this next button has
a negative arrow and I can see through it.
This looks good,
but when you come to selecting the arrow,
watch out
because this won't be part of the button,
which could confuse users when they try
and select it and nothing happens.
Instead, what I do is set the arrow
to black and opacity 3% in illustrator.
Then I import this
and effectively still is transparent,
but when exported
it will now be part of the button.
And that's it for now.
Happy Vectorizing.
