-GRAPHICSCONFIG (Command)

Sets hardware acceleration on or off and provides access to display performance options on the command line.

Displays the graphic performance options on the command line. It also provides access to advanced graphic options which are not available in the Graphics Performance dialog box.

The following prompts are displayed.

Acceleration

Specifies whether to use software or hardware acceleration in 3D.

Hardware

Specifies hardware acceleration. The hardware graphics card performs most of the drawing tasks to increase performance.

Smooth Line Display. Controls the status of the full screen anti-aliasing effect. This option removes the jagged effect on the display of diagonal lines and curved edges.
Per-pixel Lighting. Enables the computation of colors for individual pixels. With this option turned on, the 3D objects and lighting effects appear smoother in the viewport.
Full Shadow Display. Enables the display of full shadows.
Advanced Material Effects. Controls the status of the advanced materials effect on-screen.
Uncompressed Textures. Increases the amount of video memory to display better quality textures in drawings that contain materials with images or have attached images.
Note: With this option on, the time it takes to load the images may increase the first time that they are accessed and there is a reduction in the quality of the images when they are displayed in the viewport or plotted.

Software

Specifies software acceleration. The software graphics system performs all of the drawing tasks.

Smooth Line Display.
Exit. Returns to the previous command prompt.

Exit

Ends the command.

Adaptive degradation

Turns off or minimizes display effects when performance drops below the minimum acceptable speed (frames per second) you specify.

General Options

Sets performance-related options that are not hardware dependent.

Smooth Faces

Smooths the facets in a polyface mesh object when displayed in the viewport and in a rendering. This is useful when using objects that were imported through 3DSIN or when using PFACE objects. Note that when enabled, all objects in the drawing are made smooth. If you do not want all objects to be smooth, recreate the model using a different object type.

Dynamic Tesselation

Sets the options that determine the smoothness of the objects in a drawing. Objects are drawn using many short lines (or triangles when drawing spheres). These lines are called tessellation lines. Objects in your drawing appear smoother when you use more tessellation lines.

Surface Tesselation. Determines the amount of detail for surfaces in your drawing. A higher setting provides more detail but uses more tessellation lines and more memory.
Curve Tesselation. Determines the amount of detail for curves in your drawing. A higher setting provides more detail but uses more tessellation lines and more memory.
Tesselations to Cache. Configures your system according to memory and performance requirements. The 3D cache always stores at least one tessellation. When this option is set to 1, the tessellation for all viewports is the same; some objects in the drawing may be regenerated as you zoom in and out. Setting this option to 2 or more is useful when you have more than one viewport with different views. Increasing the number requires more memory.

Discard Backfaces

Discards back faces when drawing objects. You cannot see the effect of discarding back faces on some objects, such as spheres, because you cannot see the back face even when it is present. The effect of discarding back faces is visible on objects such as those that don't have a top. Discarding back faces enhances performance.

Transparency Quality

Adjusts the transparency quality used when viewing or rendering a model.

The transparency quality used is dependent on if software or hardware acceleration are used, or if a model is being rendered. The default quality is Medium.

Software acceleration

Low quality produces a screen-door effect to achieve transparency without sacrificing speed.
Medium quality uses a combination of the screen-door effect and alpha blending.
High quality uses simple alpha blending, which can cause graphical artifacts to appear based on the current draw order.

Hardware acceleration

Low quality uses simple alpha blending, which can cause graphical artifacts to appear based on the current draw order.
Medium quality uses a two-pass algorithm to draw all opaque objects, followed by all transparent objects. The transparent objects are drawn using simple alpha blending, which can cause graphical artifacts to appear based on the current draw order. The graphical artifacts are less noticeable due to the opaque objects being drawn prior to the transparent objects.
High quality improves on medium quality by sorting transparent objects to decrease the appearance of graphical artifacts. However, the sorting does not completely eliminate all graphical artifacts.

Rendering

Low quality disables the use of transparency for all materials, and the materials are rendered as opaque instead.
Medium quality enables transparency for materials, but the actual material opacity used is the square root of the specified material opacity.
High quality enables transparency and the opacity assigned to a material is mapped directly to the Mental Ray rendering engine.

Note: Materials must also be turned on for transparency to be visible.

Plot Emulation

Turns on or off the use of software emulation for unsupported hardware effects during the plotting of a drawing with shaded viewports. The use of software emulation happens when it is turned on, and hardware acceleration is disabled or is enabled, but does not support Shadows.