The Advanced Rendering API is provided for enabling high-quality rendering of drawing files. Rendering is performed by the mental ray ® renderer from mental images ® .
AutoCAD and mental ray provide a large number of render settings, that can be saved as presets. The ACAD_RENDER_SETTINGS dictionary, which resides in the named object dictionary, contains the user defined render presets for a drawing. The current active preset is stored in the ACAD_RENDER_ACTIVE_SETTINGS dictionary. The ACAD_RENDER_GLOBAL dictionary contains settings that affect how your model is rendered.
User-defined presets are objects of AcDbRenderSettings or a derived class. AcDbRenderSettings defines the general properties of a preset, such as the name and description. You can use the setPreviewImageFileName() member function to associate a preview image with a preset. This allows a user to determine some of the preset’s settings by simply looking at an image, instead of studying all the settings. The setDisplayIndex() member function allows you to control the order in which presets are listed in the Render Preferences dialog in AutoCAD.