Part II: Building Intelligence into Your Parts
Auto Trace
Auto Trace is an add-in that you can select by choosing the Tools ➪ Add-ins menu. Auto Trace is
intended to trace between areas of contrast in sketch pictures, creating sketch entities. To use Auto
Trace, make sure the add-in is activated. Activating the Auto Trace add-in activates a set of arrows
at the top of the Sketch Picture PropertyManager. There is nothing to identify the functionality
with the Auto Trace name. Figure 6.11 shows the Sketch Picture and Auto Trace PropertyManagers.
The sliders for the Auto Trace functionality do not point out which end is high and which is low.FIGURE 6.11The Sketch Picture and Auto Trace PropertyManagers
Auto Trace works best with solid blocks of black and white in the Sketch Pictures. To achieve this,
you may need to use image processing software and reduce your picture to a two-color (black and
white) bitmap, TIF, or PNG image. Even if this pre-processing gives perfect results, don’t expect
much from Auto Trace.