Yes, non-conductive means non-plating
Something I plan to try but have not yet done is a few patterns.
It will be a LONG time before I do this, but here's my idea of what I plan to try.
For a cutom car I'm building I'm thinking about trying to plate a large star or eagle onto the hood, door skins, and truck lid. Might be a black paint job and I might do lots of stars of various sizes. Not decided for sure, but it's different and that's what I go for.
I'll try brush plating similair items first, but if that isn't working then I'll try tanking them.
First I'll mask the area to be plated so I don't paint it, then I paint the whole piece. After painting and curring I'll remove the masking from the bare spot and plate that. I'll probably have to feather the paint edges before plating though or I'll get ridge lines where the paint meets the plating, I'm sure the paint is much thicker!
One thing I am wondering about, if you built a bottomless tank and sealed that to the part (using the part as the bottom of the tank) then fill with a solution if that would plate or not. Instead of the power flowing from sides torwards the part in the middle, it would be flowing from the top to the part at the bottom. My thought here is if the plating on doors, fenders, hood and trunk came out nice the top will not match since there is no way I could ever tank a whole car to get the roof. Although I do like convertables too
I may try that using a plastic 5 gal bucket with the bottom cut out, seal it to a scrap hood add some solution and see what happens. I'm sure I could seal the bucket water tight, but then I'd have to siphon out the solution when done. Or put a shutoff valve in the lower end and drain with tubing.
I try some wierd stuff, sometimes it works sometimes it don't, but that's the fun of experementing
Chromo