Autodesk Design Review 2008: Lighting Effects

In a previous blog article, I provided an overview of new features in Autodesk Design Review 2008. This posting is a follow up that provides additional information for the new lighting options. The content in this blog posting is a "mutation" of the information you will find in the Autodesk Design Review 2008 help file created by Chris Blocher, Jonathan Geary, and Kim Schaefer of the Technical Publications group at our Ithaca, New York office.

Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison invented the concept of the light bulb. What a guy. Autodesk Design Review has predefined lighting schemes that offer variations in color and intensity. Selecting a different lighting option makes it easier to discern darker objects in a 3D model where the settings at the time the DWF was created were optimized for the user working in the publishing application. To determine the current lighting effect, you place the mouse pointer over the Lighting Effects button () on the Canvas Pane Toolbar. A tool tip displays the current selection.

Menu	Lighting Effect	Description
	Headlamp	A single bright light from the front. This is the default effect unless Published Lights exist.
	Bright	Employs two lights and provides increased ambient brightness.
	Daylight	A single intense light from above with slight bluish tint from the side and below.
	Night Time	Three lights in blues and purples to darken the model on the canvas.
	Primary	Three opposed lights in primary colors.
	Blue	A single intense blue light.
	Red	A single intense red light.
	Engineering	A single cool-white light from the front with less intense fill light from the side. Ambient light is increased to avoid pure black spaces.
	Published Lights	Enables lighting effects created in the authoring application. This is the default effect, if the DWF file was generated with Published Lights.

From these descriptions. you are probably curious as to what these look like. A picture is worth a thousand words:

1. Headlamp
   

2. Bright
   

3. Daylight
   

4. Night Time
   

5. Primary
   

6. Blue
   

7. Red
   

8. Engineering
   

9. Published Lights
   

Lighting effects persist only as long as the DWF file is open in Design Review. If you exit Design Review and reopen the same file, or open the same file in a separate instance, you will have to reapply your preferred lighting effect. You can, however, save a view with applied lighting effects using My Views, or by creating a markup. When printing the DWF file or the currently loaded sheet, any lighting effect applied during the current session will be applied to the printed output.

In addition to these lighting effects, shadows can be turned on () or off () from the Toolbar.

Having one file format that can house all of your project data, in one file, for all of your project members, that can be shared across the entire life cycle of your project offers advantages for the mechanical industry. The ability to light this data to suit the recipient's, not the sender's, needs allows DWF to go beyond the paper.

Comments

[Kody]

I like the lighting features in the new version of design review (which I hear is being released in April?) and you make a great post to demonstrate the differences.

However, just had to point out that Edison didn't invent the light bulb... ;)