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CHAPTER 1 EXPLORING THE USER INTERFACE
Another change to the View Control Bar is the addition of styles to the Visual Styles tool. The
Consistent Colors setting has been added so that the colors of objects will appear in a shaded
view with the same consistency regardless of its orientation to a light source. So when you are
viewing the model in a 3D view, the color of all sides of an object looks the same. The Realistic
setting allows the rendering materials of objects to be displayed in an editable view. This setting
works only if you have Hardware Acceleration turned on.
Take some time to explore the new visual styles by completing the following exercise. If you
do not have Hardware Acceleration turned on, you can do so by clicking the Options button
on the Application menu and going to the Graphics tab. You must do this prior to opening the
fi le. If activating Hardware Acceleration causes problems because of your video driver, you can
choose to not activate it and skip step 4:
1. Open the Ch1_Project.rvt fi le found at www.wiley.com/go/masteringrevitmep2011.
2. Click the Visual Styles button on the View Control Bar. Set Visual Style to Shaded With
Edges. Zoom, pan, and orbit the view, and make note of the variations in color based on
the model orientation.
3. Click the Visual Styles button, and change the style to Consistent Colors. Notice that the
colors remain a consistent shade when you zoom, pan, and orbit the view.
4. Click the Visual Styles button, and change the style to Realistic. Notice that the render
material defi ned for the objects is now displayed.
5. Click any object in the model. If you do not already have the Properties palette active,
click the Properties button on the Properties panel of the contextual tab. Take some time
to become familiar with the behavior of the Properties palette.
Status Bar
Improvements have been made to the status bar for Revit MEP 2011. The status bar will still
report the information about a selected item or prompt with instructions for multilevel com-
mands, but it now also has an active workset indicator and design option indicator.
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