Quick and Easy Way to Create Realistic Pictures of Projects with a Background

Domenico_DiMare

Here’s a couple tips to make your Onshape model look more realistic and add a background when you need a quick picture. This is just my method when I want something quick to show or get an idea of what a finished product will look like in a setting. Feel free to share your own methods or examples!

First, there are a couple of settings that you can change. In the View tools menu, try turning on perspective view, shaded, and shaded without edges. I like having perspective on and shaded without edges.

You’ll also want to turn off the visibility of any planes, sketches, or origins. You can quickly hide all planes using the keyboard shortcut “p.”

Next, the best way to get a high quality image from Onshape is to use the print functionality instead of taking a screenshot. Click on the menu at the top left and select “Print…”. Then, compose your picture inside of the dashed bounding box. You can change the print from portrait to landscape and change the size based on common paper sizes. Download this image from the menu for the next part.

Onshape exports the image with a transparent background. This allows you to easily use a photo editor to add a more realistic background. I often use Paint 3D, but a more advanced photo editor would work too. I add the background image, usually a photo I have taken from a similar perspective as the Onshape image, and then add the Onshape image on top of the background image.

Sometimes it will take a couple more tries of repositioning the model and printing it again to get the correct perspective and scale. This is a lot easier if you are not trying to make the model look like it is sitting on a surface.