Viewport Preferences

Use Dual Planes—Uses the front/back plane system when redrawing the viewport. The selected object is manipulated in the front plane and is redrawn, while other objects remain on the back plane and are not redrawn. This default setting provides the fastest redraws under normal circumstances. If your assigned display driver doesn't support dual planes, this option is not available.

Turn off this setting to improve redraw speed if you are rotating the whole scene or moving a camera through the scene (usually situations in which the whole viewport needs to be redrawn anyway).

Show Vertices As Dots—When on, the software displays vertices in mesh and patch objects as small, solid-color squares, whose size you can set with the Size parameter. When off, the vertex display is a tick mark.

Size—Lets you specify the vertex size displayed in the viewports. Range=2 to 7. Default=2.

Handle Size—Lets you specify the display size for handles attached to patch vertices and spline vertices. Range=2 to 7. Default=3.

Draw Links as Lines—Displays the hierarchical links between parent and child objects as plain lines, rather than shapes when Display panel > Link Display rollout > Display Link is turned on.Show Links is enabled in the Object Properties dialog.

Backface Cull on Object Creation—Determines whether to display faces with normals pointing away from view. When turned on, you see through the wireframe to the backfaces. This option applies to wireframe viewport displays only. In most cases, you'll want this item turned on. However, if you're modeling with NURBS surfaces, which consist of single-sided planes, it's easier to view them from all angles when backface culling is turned off.

Attenuate Lights—Turns the display of attenuation effects on or off from start to end in the interactive viewport renderer. When turned off, attenuated lights behave as though there was no attenuation. Default=off.

Mask Viewport to Safe Region—By default, the viewport area outside the outermost safe frame displays the contents of the viewport. When this box is turned on, that area is left blank.

Update Background While Playing—Turns on the updating of bitmaps in the viewport background when you play an animation. When turned on, an IFL file, AVI file, or MOV file updates on each frame when you click the Play button. Turn off the real-time switch in the Time Configuration dialog to use this feature.

In Autodesk VIZ, the viewport updates not only when you click Play, but also when you drag the time slider.

Filter Environment Backgrounds—Affects the background displayed in the viewport only when the Viewport Background dialog > Use Environment Background switch is on.

When you turn on Filter Environment Backgrounds, the environment background is filtered in the viewport, resulting in an antialiased image. When you turn it off, the background image is not filtered, resulting in an aliased, pixelated image.

Note the following:

Low Res Environment Background—Reduces the size of the environment background map by half, and then magnifies it to the size needed for the viewport. This results in a chunkier, pixelated appearance, but speeds the rendering in the viewport by four times (because it halves the width and the height of the original image).

Tip: Unless you need fine detail in your environment background, it's best to leave this item turned on.

Display World Axis—Displays a world axis in the lower-left corner of all viewports when turned on. Default=on.

Grid Nudge Distance—Sets the nudge distance for the Nudge Grid Down and Nudge Grid Up keys, which you can use to move selected objects into position.

Non Scaling Object Size—Sets the display size of cameras, lights, and other nonscaling objects. Default=1.

Currently Installed Driver—Displays the name of the currently installed driver.

Choose Driver—Displays the VIZ Driver Setup dialog. Use this dialog to select a different software display driver, or to switch drivers if you installed a hardware accelerator card.

Configure Driver—Displays the Configure Driver dialog, where you can change the driver options for your currently selected driver.

Ghosting Frames—Specifies the number of ghost images that appear before and after the current frame when you choose Show Ghosting from the Views menu. If you display ghosts both before and after the current frame, the total number of ghosts is twice this number.

Display Nth Frame—Specifies the number of frames between the appearance of each ghost. The smaller this number, the closer the ghost images appear to each other.

Ghost Before Current Frame—Displays only ghost images that occur before the current frame. This makes the ghosts trail the object.

Ghost After Current Frame—Displays only ghost images that occur after the current frame.

Ghost Before and After—Displays ghosts both before and after the current frame.

Ghost in Wireframe—Displays ghosts in black wireframe in shaded viewports. When turned off, the ghosts appear as shaded objects, using the same colors as the wireframe ghosts.

Show Frame Numbers—Displays a frame number in the upper-left corner of each frame.

Middle Button Pan/Zoom—Sets the middle mouse button to pan in the viewport if you have a three-button mouse. If you have a Microsoft Intellimouse, you can also roll the middle wheel to zoom the viewport.

To Zoom with a three button mouse, press Ctrl+Alt and drag the center button.

Note: By default, the Intellimouse slows the speed of the mouse when you hold down the wheel button. You can increase the mouse speed in the Mouse Properties dialog in the Windows Control Panel. Choose the Wheel tab, click the Settings button in the Wheel Button group, and turn the slider up to Fast.

Stroke—Assigns command shortcuts to stroke patterns applied by dragging with the middle mouse button. See Strokes.

Zoom About Mouse Point (Orthographic)—When this control is turned on, viewports zoom about the point where you click the mouse. With it turned off, viewports zoom about the center of the view. This applies to orthographic viewports only.

Zoom About Mouse Point (Perspective)—When this control is turned on, viewports zoom about the point where you click the mouse. With it turned off, viewports zoom about the center of the view. This applies to perspective viewports only.

Right Click Menu Over Selected Only—Limits the right-click menu display over a selected object. Default=off.

When this option is turned off; you can right-click anywhere in the viewports to display a menu.

Wheel Zoom Increment—Determines the sensitivity of the zoom when you use the wheel on the mouse. Increase sensitivity up to a maximum value of 100 or reduce it to a minimum of 0.01. Default=1.0.