AutoCAD® 2012 FOR DUMMIES®

Visualizing 3D objects

It really doesn't seem like that long ago when the only way of viewing 3D models was wireframe mode. But the last several releases have dramatically improved AutoCAD's visualization capabilities. There are almost a dozen different display modes — called visual styles — that you can set with the click of a drop-down menu. Figure 21-7 shows the default visual styles — and you can add your own if you want — in the Visual Styles Manager palette.

Getting some (visual) style

Visual styles are collections of settings that build on the SHADEMODE settings found in earlier incarnations of AutoCAD. AutoCAD 2008 introduced five default visual styles, and that number doubled with AutoCAD 2011 to a total of ten:

Figure 21-7: Some new styles to try on.

• 2D Wireframe: AutoCAD's classic 2D viewing mode: full wireframe, dot-based grid, the 2D UCS icon, and no perspective.
• Conceptual: An illustrative kind of shaded view. Colors are unrealistic and edges are heavy, but you get a good sense of the model's form. Figure 21-3 shows an example of the Conceptual visual style.
• Hidden: Looks slightly like a wireframe view (no surfaces are visible) but edges behind faces are hidden.
• Realistic: Fully shaded, but not rendered visual style; edges are not displayed, and a default ambient lighting highlights the faces with different intensities of the object color. Materials and textures are ...