Use various display options to establish the model scene environment you want to work in.
What's New: 2020
The graphics display of a model is referred to as a view on the model, or a scene. The view is based on the settings you apply for visual styles, ground plane, ground reflections, shadows, lighting, and camera projection.
In the Engineer's Notebook, you can change the visual style of an individual view or all views in the note.
Scenes, what you see in the graphics area, display using either hardware (GPU) rendering or software (Ray Tracing) rendering. Hardware rendering is optimized for use when designing and working with your data. Ray tracing is optimized to provide a rich, real-time visualization environment, and uses all of the available core processors of the machine.
Ray tracing enhances model visualization by taking multiple samples of light as it contacts various objects in the scene. It enhances shadows and transparency effects, which provide a realistic visual experience. Ray tracing uses the highest resolution of the installed Autodesk Material Library. Scene images can be saved.
Visual styles apply to the scene and determine how the model is presented in the graphics region, be that realistically with the option of using ray tracing, using simple shading, as wireframe, etc. Some tasks are better performed under certain visual settings. Thus, you can change visual styles as needed throughout the process of designing your product. Two visual styles are provided for use with Ray Tracing - Realistic and Monochrome. The other visual styles utilize GPU rendering to present the scene.
Ground reflections give a sense of depth and dimension to the model view. They can reveal features that are hidden from the current camera angle.
Lighting dramatically affects the appearance of a model, and plays an important part in communicating your design. Light direction, color, and brightness work together to complement your design. Lighting also affects the shadows in the scene.
Lighting styles support environment lighting, and can show the model in a surrounding environment. Choosing a complementary light and modifying to fine tune the style is important to the visualization task. Each document supports one active lighting style, which you can modify. Before modifying a lighting style, display the shadow options you intend to use with it to ensure fidelity. You can change lighting styles at any time.
You can enhance the appearance and clarity of the model by applying ground shadows, object shadows, and ambient shadows, either individually or as a whole. For example, you could use ambient and object shadows when working on complex shapes to bring out subtle details. Ground shadows can provide a sense of orientation. Turning on all shadow options provides the most realistic result.
During modeling, you can turn off texture display on solid surfaces modeling tasks to reduce surface complexity.
Choose from either orthographic or perspective projection. When modeling, orthographic projection is often easiest to use. When creating realistic imagery, perspective is the preferred view projection.
Section views graphically slice portions of a model to display internal features.
You can override view elements temporarily by using the controls on the ribbon View tab, in the Appearance panel. Changes from the ribbon temporarily override the scene elements, and are not stored with the document or application appearance settings.
View effect settings access points are at the bottom of each list, such as lighting styles, shadows, and so on. Click Settings... to launch the document-based dialog box for that view effect. Your modifications appear in the document immediately and persist when you save the settings.
Application options provide control over the initial view appearance. You can specify that all documents open with a specific visual style or that each document will open with its assigned style. Then, at the document level you specify a visual style the document opens with. Each document is able to use specific display appearance parameters for the elements mentioned. Use the Document appearance control to open any document in the manner you want to display it, regardless of how other models display.