Editing and making corrections to 3D models

Applying Custom Materials

Zea allows you to modify the way your 3D models appear in tools such as Zea Illustrations and Zea Parts.

Often the colors within your CAD may have meaning to the engineering team, but not be relevant to your end users. You can modify the appearance of your models to be more aesthetically pleasing or more closely match your brand identity.

Step 1. Create a custom material.

Create a new custom material in the bottom panel of the 3d Model Inspector.

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Step 2. Select the new material

Select the new Material and edit its settings of the property panel on the bottom right.

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Step 3. Apply the material to parts of your Model

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At the top of the material page, there ae 2 buttons that support applying the material to parts and assemblies in the scene.

The Paint Bucket tool allows you to click on any part to directly apply the material to that part.

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You can change whether the material is applied to a single body, the entire part, or an entire assembly by changing the Selection Filter in the Selection menu at the top of the page

Editing the affected part or sub-assembly

Edits you make in the model inspector are applied to the opened model file. If a subassembly is broken in some way, and it is used by other assemblies, its a good idea to edit the sub-assembly directly, ,instead of the parent assembly.

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Click on the ‘Open Page’ button to the right of the part or sub-assembly name.

This will open an inspector in a new tab for the part or subassembly. Once you have applied changes to the part or subassembly, you can save your changes, and then refresh the page for the parent assembly to see the changes reflected in that assembly.

Editing the Position or Orientation of parts in Assemblies

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You can select parts in an assembly that you would like to move. The transform gizmo that is displayed allows you to move or rotate parts in 3 different axes.

Tip: Holding Shift while rotating parts will ensure that rotations snap to 22.5 degrees. This makes is easy to rotate a part by exactly 90 or 180 degrees

Using the Inspector to understand transformations

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The inspector in the right side panel displays the ‘Local’ transform of the selected part relative to the assembly it is part of. You can type in values in the text boxes to apply specific values.

Saving your Changes

If you wish to keep your changes, you will need to save your changes using theh File → Save menu in the top right.

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Step 1. Create a custom material.

Step 2. Select the new material

Step 3. Apply the material to parts of your Model

Using the Inspector to understand transformations

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