Rendering

DESKARTES uses a system called OpenGL to generate shaded views of your model. The speed of the shading will be greatly affected by the quality of the graphics card in your computer. A good quality graphics card will allow you to work in shaded mode all the time if you wish! The shading you normally see in the graphics window is the lowest quality and therefore fastest shading available in DESKARTES. To achieve this speed it does not use any of the material properties assigned to the objects. Even the color of the models is derived from element color and not the material.

Higher quality shading is available using the command RENDERÞPreView:Shaded View. This automatically renders all the objects that are currently shown on the screen from the eye view, using a single light, the defined colors, but not accounting for the material properties or textures. The shaded object is displayed in separate graphics window not in the main window. This window has a pop-up menu accessed by the right hand mouse button. This menu contains many useful commands for controlling the display of the model.

The command RENDERÞPreView:Camera View renders the model using all the scene definitions that can be shown with OpenGL and is therefore the highest quality rendering available.

The accuracy of the shading with both modes is controlled with the RENDERÞPreferences command. Rendering achieves high speed shading by first converting the your surface models into faceted models made out of many small triangles. The accuracy affects how fine the model is faceted. The higher the accuracy the smoother the model will appear but at the expense of rendering speed.