8

Basic File Link Settings 437
to the smooth angle, the faces are smoothed (that
is, put in the same smoothing group).
Unif y Nor mals —Analyzesthefacenormalsofeach
object and flips normals where necessary, so they
all point in a direction that is consistent with
adjoining faces. If the imported geometry isn’t
properly welded, or if the AutoCAD geometry
did not contain or specify normal information,
normals might be oriented in the wrong direction.
Use the
Edit Mesh (page 1–613) or Normal (page
1–738)
modifiers to flip norma ls.
When U nify Normals is off, normals are calculated
according to the face vertex order in the linked
file. Face normals for AutoCAD solids are already
unified. Turn off Unify Normals when importing
only Au toCAD solid models from Architectural
Desktop.
Cap Cl osed Objects—Applies an Ext rude modifier
(page 1–671)
to a ll closed objects, and selects the
CapStartandCapEndoptionsofthemodifier.
TheExtrudemodifierAmountvalueforaclosed
objectwithnothicknessissetto0.Cappingmakes
closed objects with thickness appear solid and
closed objects without thickness appear flat. When
Cap Closed Objects is off, t he Extrude modifier
CapStartandCapEndoptionsforclosedobjects
with thickness are clear. No modifiers are applied
to closed objects without thickness.
Tip: Unless you chose the One-to-One sort ing
option, you won’t immediately see the Extrude
modifier when selecting an object. To see it, look
through the modifier stack for the
VIZBlock (page
3–1125)
sub-objects. In a nested VIZBlock, the
Extrude modifiers appear at the bottom of the
stack. You can then edit the Extrude modifier
parameters.
Texture Mapping—The texture mapping
settings reduce the loading time of models that
have many objects with stored UVW Coordinates
for texture mapped materials.
Note: This setting only applies to geometry that
is stored as a mesh in the scene. Spline shapes
marked as renderable have separate controls
for UVW coordinate generation on the
Spline
Rendering panel (page 3–441)
.
•
Gener ate Coordina tes On Dema nd—When
Generate Coordinates On Demand is used, the
File Link Manager will not generate texture
coordinates that get stored in the mesh objects
that are linked.
Ac tively linked objects generate UVW
coordinates on demand, so if you assign a
material to an object and the material requires
texture coordinates, the UV coordinates are
silently assign to that object. If the material or
texture map is set to display in viewpor t, the
coordinates are assigned as so on as the m aterial
is applied; if not, the coordinates are assigned
when the scene is rendered.
This option gives you faster loading speed, but
no UVW coordinate generation.
Note: Objectsindrawingscreatedin
Architectural Desktop explicitly pass texture
coordinates to 3ds Max when you attach the
drawing. If you rely on ’on-demand’ coordinate
generation, they may not match the coordinates
that were specified in the original drawing. The
mapscalingisthesame,butthetextureoffsets
may be altered.
•
Gener ate Coordinates For A ll Obj ects—This
option forces all objects to have UVW
coordinates generated when the drawing is
linked.
This option tells the File Link Manager to
create UVW coordinates, but loading time
is increased while the coordinate generation
occurs.
Curve Steps— For objects such as splines, the
number of knot points determines the spline’s
shapeandcurvature. TheCurvestepsvalue