Advance Steel 2018 – Enhanced 3D Performance

One thing everybody always wants to improve in any CAD application is performance. Well, I am pleased to say we get a significant boost to graphics performance in Autodesk Advance Steel 2018 thanks to the “Enhanced 3D Performance” of AutoCAD 2018. However, to benefit from it you must make some changes to your visual style settings. The standard ASTemplate that comes with the install (UK build at least) is not set to utilise these settings nor will your existing models.

3D Rotate – not enhanced (a lot hidden)

3D Rotate – enhanced (nothing hidden)

To access your visual style settings, you can type the command VISUALSTYLES to bring up the Visual Style Manager. In this palette, you can select any of the available styles and adjust their settings. The main thing you will need to check / change is the edge settings. For any kind of shaded view make sure the colour is “ByEntity” in each case. Occluded, Silhouette and Intersection edges should all be set to Show = No.

For the Wireframe style the only difference is that Occluded Edges should be Show = Yes.

For any kind of view Face Setting Opacity should be off (negative number in the Opacity box). The Lighting > Shadow Display should also be off.

There are a couple of other settings here and there but they are unlikely to be set wrong in the first place.

Due to the nature of the style you will not be able to get the Sketchy or XRay styles to be compatible with 3D Enhanced Performance. If you set your styles accordingly you should see a big improvement. Try comparing the correctly set styles with XRay for example and you should notice the improvement.

I would recommend you make your own DWT model template with the correct settings so you only have to do this task once. REMEMBER: DO NOT edit the original ASTemplate.dwt provided with Advance Steel using Advance Steel. It is best to make your own different template.

For more information see this Help page from Autodesk.

Enjoy whizzing round your models.

If you’d like to learn more about Advance Steel licenses or Advance Steel training courses, please get in touch with us on 023 8086 8947 or by following the link below