Hopefully you are loving Inventor 2011's new Visual Styles and Image Based Lighting as much as I am. Unfortunately sometimes companies do not upgrade their CAD Monkey's computers as often as they do their secretaries and marketing folk. Those users are left with a few issues with Inventor 2011. Here are some settings that may help you out if you are one of those unfortunate with an aging machine...
First off lets go to our Hardware Tab of the Application Options. Here we find some new options for Inventor. Quality, Performance, and Compatibility. All sound like good things right? Well let's make sure we pick the right options.
- Quality: This setting favors graphics presentation over system performance. For machines running Windows 7 or Vista, turns on anti-aliasing and improves the visual quality of the graphics display. There is no impact or difference between Quality and Performance for machines running Windows XP.
- Performance:This setting favors system performance over graphic presentation. Anti-aliasing is turned off for machines running Windows 7 or Vista. This is the default setting.
- Compatibility: This setting uses the same graphics processes as the Inventor 2009 and earlier releases. Advanced display options, such as Visual Styles and Realistic Appearance materials, are not available.
- Software graphics: Specifies the use of software based graphics processing rather than hardware based. The setting has often been seen as a last resort for graphics choices. However, if the machine has an older graphics card, but a newer operating system, Windows 7 or Vista, then it would be possible to use this option to access DirectX 10 supported features.
Remember, Autodesk is throwing away OpenGL because its just too much darn work to program for everyone and Micrsoft has pretty much dumped it too. Long live DirectX10! Good riddance to code based on a 1997 programming structure with a horrible API to work with. Doing this has also opened a lot of doors for more cost effective graphics cards that are found a lot cheaper than Quadros or FireGLs which are built on the same overall GPU structure so users can use more name brand cards and not be punished by the software for doing so (cough, cough SolidWorks).
Some other settings to adjust if you are actually one of the privileged with newer system specs (I got my new HP Elitebook four weeks ago and I love it), then there are some settings with the Visual Styles you might also want to check out. You can control the behavior of your files by use of Document Settings found in your Inventor templates or use predefined Application options to make the software open the same way each time. If you choose to allow the App Ops to control everything you can fire up the settings button shown below and predefine Visual Styles, Shadows, Reflections, Projection, Model Edges and well you can see the image so I won't bore you.
Do some upfront testing to see how your system behaves and then set your options accordingly. Personally, I run my interface Shaded with Edges, Ambient Shadows only, and the background to the Winter Day single color. When the time calls for it though, it is pretty easy to switch some of these options quickly to get a quick render right from the interface instead of Inventor Studio. You can actually export a image file right from your modeling space by using the Export option in the Application Menu.
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