User Manual

UsIng the Inventor graPhIcal InterFace

The Visibility panel has tools for controlling which objects are visible. When you click

Object Visibility, a large list is displayed so you can control the appearance of objects in your

graphics window.

The Appearance panel has tools for controlling the way models are displayed. You can switch

between orthographic (parallel model lines appear parallel) and perspective (parallel model

lines converge on a vanishing point) views. Additionally, you can display the model in a num-

ber of visual styles, such as Realistic, Shaded, Shaded With Edges, Illustration, and many more.

Also on the Appearance panel you can set the model display to include shadows and reﬂec-

tions for an ultra-realistic on-screen look. You should be aware that depending upon your

hardware speciﬁcations, you may notice a performance lag when using some of these enhanced

styles. For that reason, you may want to use a basic set of settings during most of your work and

then switch to the more realistic ones once a model is complete. Experiment with these settings

to see what works best for you.

Visual Styles and Windows XP

Inventor 2011 and 2012 include a number of enhanced visual styles, shadows, and reﬂection options

not found in earlier versions. These enhancements are dependent upon the presence of DirectX 10. And

because Windows XP does not support DirectX 10, the enhanced visual styles might not be available. If

you are running XP, you will want to go to the Tools tab, select the Application Options button, click the

Hardware tab, and then select the Compatibility option. No loss of visual styles found in previous ver-

sions of Inventor will be experienced, but you will not be able to use some of the newer visual styles.

Another important option found on the Appearance panel is the View Camera Projection

setting, which allows you to choose between orthographic and perspective views. Setting the

perspective options to be current displays the model with a vanishing point, as it would be

in the real world. With the Orthographic option, points of the model are projected along lines

parallel to the screen.

Figure 1.18

The View tab

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