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.
- Software
- Specifies software acceleration. The software graphics system performs all of the drawing tasks.
- 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.
- Exit. Ends the command.
- 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 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.
- Exit
- Ends the command.