Rendering in Autocad R2009

May as well put out a positive YES for R2009 here.

R2009 has improved rendering over R2008 : To get a good rendering now, just type in
LIGHTINGUNITS, set it to 2. Apply your materials-if you use realistic shading while doing so, then you get feedback that you have applied the materials.

Turn on Full shadows, then Sun and illumination-sky. You can use the visualising tab on the ribbon-just seems easier than fishing around in menus or typing.

Select the your geographical region, time of day etc and then press render, using say 640x480.

You should be pleasantly surprised. Ok, so not everyone is into rendering....but if enough users start out using the above approach, I would anticipate a huge increase in rendering.

I'm no expert in all this, but it seems to me that this business of "final gather" is involved.
Usually this is set to auto, and sometimes to get it kicked into life you need to set it to ON.

The thing about "final gather" is that, when it is enabled, all the shadows which used to be black, now look a lot more realistic.

Once you get a nicer rendering, save it as a tiff file, I find a resolution of 2400 x 1800 quite good for nice sharp pictures. They can take a while though-15 minutes is normal.

I hope to be able to post a typical rendering of mine soon.

R2009 Autocad

Oops! In a previous blog about R2009, I said the best thing about R2009 was that it drew blocks on the use of the soldraw command. This DID work in one of my drawings, but the other day I noticed it did not work in another. This is cause for some investigation on my part. I will keep you posted in case you do not have R2009.

It seems some people are having no problems at all with R2009, while others are complaining about some of the "features". For myself, I am perservering with it, as it may well be things like your video driver(is it up to date). I am using smpseesaw as a means of forcing acad onto one cpu (I have a dual cpu). I presume this makes a difference, but how much I am not sure.

It appears to be slightly weird that some have problems and some don't. I would like to know what the cause is. Any ideas, anyone?

Autocad R2009

R2009 Autocad.

In a nutshell as far as I can see, it has a few killer features:

1. The ability to have a permanently open layer dialog box. Only useful for some.

2. Click on something, and a properties box comes up. This is a bit disconcerting at first, but I predict some will just love this one. You can choose what properties will normally appear.

3. This is the absolute most wonderful item: Soldraw now does its thing on BLOCKS!(same with the section tool)

4. There are preview gadgets for drawing files and layouts, which in time may become a more useful feature, once we all get used to them.

5. The ribbon. I know I have raved on about going to keyboard entry, but my natural laziness has prompted me to use the ribbon. The reason is I have 2 screens and this really is a replacement for the Dashboard, which I have been using.

6. There are some 3D visualisation tools that may grow on me.

So there you go:
It looks prettier than R2008. Not a big consideration for some, but we spend 7-9 hours a day looking at it.....

It also allows me in my daily work to do a section on a set of solids, some of which might be a block, and have them appear....which would be worth the cost of the upgrade.