Manual Performance Tuning Dialog Box

Hardware Settings

Sets the options for hardware acceleration.

Enable Hardware Acceleration

Enables the use of hardware acceleration.

• Green check mark indicates a graphics card that is certified and can run all hardware effects.
• Yellow warning indicates a graphics card that is certified, but does not support all hardware effects. If the graphics card is unknown, the performance tuner displays the yellow warning, and you can use hardware acceleration at your own risk.
• Red alert indicates a graphics card that is not certified. The check box is cleared and hardware acceleration is unavailable.

For additional information on improving hardware performance and hardware acceleration, see About Evaluating and Improving Hardware Performance.

Current Effect Status and Value

Lists the hardware effects available for the current driver and reports their status and availability.

A green check mark indicates an effect that is supported. A yellow warning indicates that the effect is not recommended. A red alert indicates that the effect is not supported.

• Enhanced 3D Performance. Enables a more efficient use of the graphic card when working with 3D objects.
  NoteIf you experience problems with precision, turn this effect off.
• Smooth 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.
• Advanced material effects. Controls the status of the advanced materials effect on-screen.
• Gooch hardware shader. Enables the use of Gooch shading. With this option turned on, the details of a 3D object are shown by softening the contrast between lighted areas and shadowed areas by using warm and cool colors as a substitute to light and dark colors.
• 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 shadows to be displayed in the viewport.
  NoteThe Enhanced 3D Performance effect must be turned on.
• Texture compression. Enables the use of texture compression to reduce the amount of video memory required to open and display a drawing that contains materials with images or has attached images.
  NoteWith this option turned on, the time it takes to load the images might 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.

Emulate Unsupported Hardware Effects in Software When Plotting

Controls whether software emulation is used for unsupported hardware effects, including plotting shaded viewports with shadows.

WarningIt is recommended that you do not use any type of remote access application, such as NetMeeting, Remote Desktop, or any other windows emulating software in conjunction with hardware acceleration. Most remote access applications do not support hardware acceleration, and as a result, can cause general display failure and instability. Prior to using a remote access application with an AutoCAD-based products, check with the software vendor to see if it supports hardware acceleration and if not, disable hardware acceleration prior to starting the remote access software or use the /NOHARDWARE command line switch to start an AutoCAD-based product in Software mode.

General Settings

Sets performance-related options that are not hardware dependent.

Discard Back Faces

When selected, the back faces of objects are not drawn.

Smooth Faces by Default

Smooths the facets of a polyface mesh object when displayed in a viewport or rendering.

This is useful when using objects that were imported with the 3DSIN command, or when a drawing contains polygon mesh objects. When you select this option, 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.

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.

Drawing Settings

Sets performance values on a drawing level.

Dynamic Tessellation

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) called tessellation lines. Objects in your drawing appear smoother when you use more tessellation lines.

Surfaces

Determines the amount of detail for surfaces in your drawing. The low end of the slider provides fewer tessellation lines and uses less memory.

Curves

Determines the amount of detail for curves in your drawing. The low end of the slider provides fewer tessellation lines and uses less memory.

Number of Tessellations to Cache

Configures your system according to memory and performance requirements. The 3D cache stores at least one tessellation. Increasing the number improves performance, but requires more memory.

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.

Reset to Recommended Values

Resets the values to the defaults based on the Performance Tuner’s evaluation of the graphics card.