Adaptive Degradation

Turns off or minimizes display effects when performance drops below the minimum you specify.

Dynamic Tessellation

Sets the options that determine the smoothness of the objects in a drawing. Objects are drawn using many short lines (or triangles when drawing spheres). These lines are called tessellation lines. Objects in your drawing appear smoother when you use more tessellation lines.

Surface Tessellation

Determines the amount of detail for surfaces in your drawing. A higher setting provides more detail but uses more tessellation lines and more memory.

Curve Tessellation

Determines the amount of detail for curves in your drawing. A higher setting provides more detail but uses more tessellation lines and more memory.

Number of Tessellations to Cache

Configures your system according to memory and performance requirements. The 3D cache always stores at least one tessellation. When this option is set to 1, the tessellation for all viewports is the same; some objects in the drawing may be regenerated as you zoom in and out. Setting this option to 2 or more is useful when you have more than one viewport with different views. Increasing the number requires more memory.

General Options

Sets performance-related options that are not hardware dependent.

Discard Back Faces

Discards back faces when drawing objects. You cannot see the effect of discarding back faces on some objects, such as spheres, because you cannot see the back face even when it is present. The effect of discarding back faces is visible on objects such as those that don't have a top. Discarding back faces enhances performance.

Transparency Quality

Adjusts the transparency quality. At the Low setting, a screen-door effect achieves transparency without sacrificing speed. At the Medium setting, the default in software mode, blending improves image quality. The High setting, the default in hardware mode, produces an image free of visual artifacts at the cost of drawing speed. Materials must also be turned on for transparency to be visible.

The General Options prompt is redisplayed.

Acceleration

Specifies whether to use software or hardware acceleration in 3D.

If you select Hardware, you can also specify whether geometry acceleration are turned on or off.

Hardware

Specifies hardware acceleration. The hardware graphics card performs most of the drawing tasks in 3D to increase performance.

The available drivers are AcadDM10.hdi and direct3d10.hdi.

When you select Hardware, the default driver is set to the AcadDM10.hdi driver that is included with the program.

• Driver Name. You can select a driver from a list of available hardware-accelerated drivers found in the Drv directory. If you want to use a hardware driver from another vendor, it must be supported by the Heidi^® Graphics System.

  For more information, see Hardware Acceleration Troubleshooting in the Driver and Peripheral Guide.

• Enhanced 3D Performance
• Global Smooth Display
• Advanced Material Effects
• Gooch Hardware Shader
• Per-pixel Lighting
• Full Shadow Display
• Texture Compression
• Enhanced 2D Performance

Software

Specifies software acceleration. The software graphics system performs all of the drawing tasks in 3D.

Texture Compression

Enables the use of texture compression to reduce the amount of video memory required to open and display a drawing that contains materials with images or has attached images.

NoteWith this option on, the time it takes to load the images may increase the first time that they are accessed and there is a reduction in the quality of the images when they are displayed in the viewport or plotted.

Plot Emulation

Turns on or off the use of software emulation for unsupported hardware effects during the plotting of a drawing with shaded viewports. The use of software emulation happens when it is turned on, and hardware acceleration is disabled or is enabled, but does not support Shadows.