In this post
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3Cweb.52544b9544fa7cea37d25c810%40news.povray.org%3E/
I shared how some of my povray-generated bitmaps were used directly in an issued
U.S. Patent.

Use of povray was very useful in presenting my ideas (complex arrangements of
via chains), which I believe made it much easier to be approved at my company
and the Patent Office.

Unfortunately, the images look like they've been through a fax machine. Even if
that's not literally true, whatever process was used to go from my digital
submission to my company's lawyers to the final product in the patent caused
most of the information to be lost.   I was of the impression that I'd seen
other patents where the bitmaps were faithfully represented.

Q: What tricks would you use in povray to make a great 3D rendering "fax-machine
proof"?

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> Unfortunately, the images look like they've been through a fax machine. Even if
> that's not literally true, whatever process was used to go from my digital
> submission to my company's lawyers to the final product in the patent caused
> most of the information to be lost.   I was of the impression that I'd seen
> other patents where the bitmaps were faithfully represented.
>
> Q: What tricks would you use in povray to make a great 3D rendering "fax-machine
> proof"?

At my previous company all drawings for patents had to be black&white 
line/vector art. 3D stuff was normally done in CAD and then exported as 
a bitmap (most CAD software lets you set to "wireframe" and choose a 
line thickness / output quality). Although I never used POV for these 
type of images, I suppose the easiest way would be to render in high 
contrast (black objects on a white background) and then post-process in 
photoshop or similar with an edge detector.

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gregjohn wrote:

> Q: What tricks would you use in povray to make a great 3D rendering "fax-machine
> proof"?

I have no idea what they did but the images look dithered / color
reduced. So possibly it would be better to provide "predithered" images
in b/w or with only 16 fixed gray values (0,16,32,64,...) instead of
arbitrary ones. However, for best results you should then also know
the dpi resolution they're going for (when in doubt it is probably
better to use a lower resolution, because scaling up has less
terrible artefacts than scaling down).

But a nightmare for debugging if you have to invent a new
patentable gadget for every test run ;)

BTW is the limit of your invention a space-filling curve?

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Christian Froeschlin <chr### [at] chrfrde> wrote:
> gregjohn wrote:
>
> > Q: What tricks would you use in povray to make a great 3D rendering "fax-machine
> > proof"?
>
> I have no idea what they did but the images look dithered / color
> reduced. So possibly it would be better to provide "predithered" images
> in b/w or with only 16 fixed gray values (0,16,32,64,...) instead of
> arbitrary ones. However, for best results you should then also know
> the dpi resolution they're going for (when in doubt it is probably
> better to use a lower resolution, because scaling up has less
> terrible artefacts than scaling down).
>
> But a nightmare for debugging if you have to invent a new
> patentable gadget for every test run ;)
>
> BTW is the limit of your invention a space-filling curve?

In effect, you have a certain volume available to you in the chip, and your goal
is to maximize the number of discreet elements that can be tested in that
volume. So in that sense, it is space-filling. But when one individual (or
thousands) go bad, you have to be able to find at least one individual for TEM /
SEM analysis. The trick here was to be able to capitalize on defect isolation
techniques that may have very low resolution, to allow regionalities in two
different-space filling curves to get you to the right neighborhood.

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