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INTRODUCTION 2. RELEASE NOTES A. Improvements B. Known Problems and Workarounds C. Environment Variables D. Driver Files 4. DRIVER CONFIGURATION A. Single/Dual/Default screen operation B. Display list page size C. Display list cleaning D. Button hold time and frame rate E. Single and double buffer modes 5. DRIVER OPERATION A. BirdsEye View B. Real-Time BirdsEye View C. Display List Memory Pagesize D. Command Palette E. Other ADI Driver Commands F. Command Palette File Format G. Driver Configuration Menu H. Status Line Menu and Indicators I. 3D View Selection 6. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS 7. TROUBLESHOOTING APPENDICES: A. TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS B. CONFIGURABLE OPTIONS C. TECHNICAL INFORMATION 1. ADS-ADI Link 2. Supported ADS-ADI packets 3. 3D Capabilities 4. Double-buffering 5. Operation under Microsoft Windows. 6. Operation with other GL applications. ############################################################################ 1. INTRODUCTION: This is a technical documentation file for the IRISVISION ADI display/rendering driver. This document may contain information that supersedes that in the "ADI Driver User's Guide". The remainder of this document is devoted to describing the operation and use of the ADI driver. Please refer to the "Frequently Asked Questions" (FAQ) section at the end of this document for answers to specific questions regarding the use of this driver with Autodesk products. NOTES: (R13) means that the feature is only available under Release 13. (R12) means that the feature is only available under Release 12. (R11) means that the feature is only available under Release 11. (RFU) means Reserved for Future Use. Users of AutoShade and 3D Studio will find that most of this document pertains to using the driver with AutoCAD. You should therefore skip ahead to the FAQ section for specifics on using the driver with those products. ############################################################################ 2. RELEASE NOTES: 2.A. Improvements: - Removed dependencies on TMP and ACADPATH variables in scripts. If TMP not set, temporary files go to /usr/tmp - Inventor (and VRML) exported files now oriented properly. Allows easier use of walk and fly viewers. Uses the new 'ivOrient' filter to orient the files. - Support for full 32-bit AutoCAD display list resolution. - New configurable line highlighing mode. See: @VENDOR@HILITE command. - Birdseye view now cached during drawing modifications. Use CLEAN to refresh birdseye view image. - Corrected _ZOOM _DYNAMIC display of current view. - Corrected BIRDSEYE display of current view. - 3D display list pipeline is now disabled on non-zbuffered graphics. - Corrected erasure of entities on non-black backgrounds. - Improved Real Time Cleaning operation with polylines. - Improved _REGEN, _REDRAW and _ZOOM in PAPERSPACE viewports. - Unified screen color settings in CONFIGURE menu. - Display list drag speed under Frame Rate control. - Stray pixels during multi-page drag operations eliminated. - Display list drag feature may now be configured on or off. - Improved command prompt display and update during FLIP SCREEN (F1 key). - Added double-buffer control command set. - Extensive code optimization for improved _REGEN performance. - Corrected Real-Time BirdsEye update with extreme zooms. - Improved crosshair display when pickbox is active. - Corrected vector drop-outs in Real Time BirdsEye view. - Increased status line text buffer from 37 to 128 characters for MODEMACRO. - Corrected graphics text display with non-black background color. - Corrected bell sound on graphics window from AutoLISP, e.g.(princ (chr 007)). - Corrected Command Palette/BirdsEye View window placement problems. - Added multiple Command Palette menu files with direct access. - RealTime BirdsEye View does not redraw while switching modes (Panning & Zooming). - Improved position indicators in the BirdsEye View window. - Added polygon/polyline outlining mode. - AVE Render material preview dialog now supported. (R12) - Added operating instructions for use with IrisView. - Added operating instructions for use with Windows. - Corrected NTSC/PAL behavior while rendering in a viewport. (R12) - Driver functions operate with digitizing tablet. (Tested with Summa Sketch II) - Fixed 3D Studio v1 MATERIAL-DISPLAY blank screen problem. - 3D Studio v2 RENDER-DISPLAY in RGB mode works properly. - 3D Studio v2 reboot on RENDER-DISPLAY now eliminated. - Causing critical DOS errors no longer terminate driver or AutoCAD. - Single screen mode in AutoShade correct after flip screen. - 3D Studio material preview screen now supported. - Colors in 3D Studio are correct. - Checkmarks in AutoShade dialog boxes display. - Command Palette cursor aligns with crosshair. - Path no longer needs to include gl.src. - Allow other GL programs (like IrisView) to be run from AutoCAD SHELL. - Fixed font loading after AutoCAD SHELL command. - Support "Contrast Stretching" for Continuous Color rendering. - Fixed cursor display on 3D Studio display screen. - DSPADI/RDPADI/RCPADI no longer need be set for AutoCAD. (R12) 2.B. Known Problems and Workarounds: - Status line "Current Layer" display is limited to first 8 characters. This problem is due to a bug in AutoCAD's ADI interface. This driver is capable of a minimum of 37 characters for this field. If this is a major problem, you should report this problem to Autodesk. - Boundary outlines are erased during _BHATCH operations while any (R12) dialog boxes are present. This is a known problem with AutoCAD and display list drivers. - AVE Render does not support the 3DFACES option. (R13) This is due to a feature change in the Autodesk product. Unfortunately, this precludes the use of the 3D display list features in the GL display driver. Some of this functionality has been superceded the the Inventor export functionality under the Files/Collaboration pull-down menu. - AVE Render does not pass material finish parameters with 3DFACES on. (R12) This is a bug inside of AVE Render. There are three possible workarounds: 1) Set the entity color of the object as close to the finish color as possible, as it appears Render passes the entity color to the driver, along with default material parameters. 2) Turn 3DFACES off and render in 2D to see exact finishes. 3) Call Autodesk and complain and perhaps they will fix this bug. - AVE Render does not pass edge visibility flags with 3D polygons. (R12) This is a bug inside of AVE Render. There is no known workaround. This is most evident when doing hidden line removal with the 3D display list. - Ctrl-C (*Cancel*) is sometimes not recognized. Configure driver options for "Interruptable redraws" in the "CONFIGURE" - "Driver Options" menu. - 3D Studio will not support combined rendering and display with this driver. Use either display or rendering mode, but not both. - 3D Studio v1 and AutoShade v2 will display the following warning message: "xxx dispatcher, packet 165 not defined." This is a problem with the older Autodesk application not recognizing the new (ADI 4.2) driver properly. Contact Autodesk for information on upgrading your application. - 3D Studio in will not retain rendered image on dual-screen monitor. When rendering is complete and display mode (on VGA) is re-entered, the rendering screen blanks. See details in the 3DS section of the FAQ, below. To review the last image, you can use the "Renderer/View Last" function. 2.C. Environment Variables: SET DSPADI=d:\path\[driver].EXP : AutoCAD/AutoShade Display SET RDPADI=d:\path\[driver].EXP : AutoShade Rendering SET RCPADI=d:\path\[driver].EXP : 3D Studio Display/Rendering SET ACADDRV=d:\path : For AutoCAD Release 12 (only) Where [driver] is replaced with one of: - RCIVA.EXP : AT (ISA/EISA) Bus IRISVISION driver. - RCIVM.EXP : MCA Bus IRISVISION driver. SET USER=name : Overrides configuration file name SET ADI_UNDERSCAN=nn : Set percent underscan in NTSC/PAL : Note: Default is 8%, range is 1-25 SET ADI_SATURATION=nn : Set percent saturation in NTSC/PAL : Note: Default is 95%, range is 50-100 2.D. Driver Files: iv_com.txt : Command Palette menu resource text file. _blank.txt : A blank Command Palette text file _*.txt : Secondary Command Palette menu text files iv_strs.txt : Internal driver text string resource text file. iv_cmds.txt : Internal driver commands resource text file. iv_acad.txt : AutoCAD commands issued by driver; resource file. iv_dview.lsp : AutoLISP commands written by driver, do not modify. iv_lisp.lsp : AutoLISP commands issued by driver, do not modify. rciva.exp : DOS/P386 ADI driver for AT bus. rcivm.exp : DOS/P386 ADI driver for MCA bus. gl.stc : Dynamically linkable GL data. *.snf : X-Window "Server Natural Format" font files. %USER%.cnf : Configuration file (created at runtime). If %USER% is unset, iv_adi.cnf is used. Example menu files (move to a directory in %ACAD%): screen11.mnu : Sample AutoCAD R11 screen menu file. (R11) screen12.mnu : Sample AutoCAD R12 screen menu file. (R12) button.mnu : Sample AutoCAD R11 button menu file. (R11) popup.mnu : Sample AutoCAD R11 pop-up menu file. (R11) sidebar.mnu : Sample AutoCAD R11 side bar menu file. (R11) Example startup scripts (move to a directory in %ACAD%): 1.scr : new drawing (R11) 2.scr : existing drawing (R11) 2r.scr : existing drawing, rendering activated (R12) readme.adi : This file. ############################################################################ 3. DRIVER OVERVIEW: This block diagram will illustrate how the various components of this ADI driver interact. +-------------------+ | AutoCAD | | . . . . . . . . . | | Internal Commands |<--- file: screen*.mnu +-------------------+ - sidebar.mnu (side bar) ^ | - popup.mnu (pop-up) | | - button.mnu (button) | V +-------------------+ | ADI Driver | | . . . . . . . . . | | AutoCAD Commands |<--- file: iv_acad.txt, iv_lisp.lsp | . . . . . . . . . | | Internal Commands |<--- file: iv_cmds.txt | . . . . . . . . . | | Command Palette |<--- file: iv_com.txt, [_*.txt] | . . . . . . . . . | | Configuration |<--- file: iv_strs.txt +-------------------+ As can be seen in this diagram, AutoCAD reads and interprets the ".mnu" file. The supplied menu is constructed from the standard "acad.mnu" file with the addition of the button, side bar and pop-up menu components. If you would like to add any or all of these features to you own menu file, the component parts are furnished in separate files. The ADI driver processes the ".txt" files for its own use. When the driver is initialized, it reads the contents of these files into memory, overwriting its internal version. Thus, if you wish to change any of the command or text strings, you may simply edit the appropriate file. Each file contains a brief description of its format and contents. The Command Palette file will be described later in this document. The driver's internal command interpreter is controlled by the "cmds" file. The AutoCAD commands that the driver issues are controlled by the "acad" file. The internal configuration utility is controlled by the "strs" file. HINT: A good use of this feature is for localization of commands and prompts. ############################################################################ 4. DRIVER CONFIGURATION: The P386 AutoCAD ADI driver runs in protected mode. As such, it is supplied in the form of a PharLap 386|DOS file (extension .EXP). Unlike older ADI drivers that are Terminate and Stay Resident, this driver is loaded by AutoCAD when you first enter the Drawing Editor. Therefore, AutoCAD needs to know what the driver file name is. To do this, set the DSPADI environment variable to the path and file name of our driver, which is done automatically by the installation program. Then, inform AutoCAD that you wish to use the P386 driver and the rest is automatic. AutoCAD Release 10 and 11 users should select menu option: "5. Configure AutoCAD" and then select: "3. Configure video display" and select: "ADI P386 v4.0/v4.1" display driver option. DOS AutoCAD Release 12 users will find the selection: "@DRIVER_TITLE@" listed directly in the Display driver list. Once you enter the AutoCAD Drawing Editor, you may choose to configure the driver by entering the CONFIGURE command. Some of the configurable options are self evident, others need a bit of description: 4.A. Single/Dual/Default screen operation: If you are running with the VGA pass-through cable connected, such that you will be using a single monitor for both AutoCAD graphics and DOS text, you will want to enable Single Screen mode. In this mode, pressing the "F1" key will toggle you from graphics to text and back, as well as the standard TEXTSCR and GRAPHSCR AutoCAD commands. In this mode, three command prompt lines is the default configuration. If you are running with two monitors, one for text and one for graphics, you will want to enable Dual Screen mode. In this mode, one command prompt line is the default configuration. By default, the monitor setting entered with the IV_CONF utility is used. Once you use the ADI driver, it will record and save to disk a copy of its configuration state. If you subsequently change the IV_CONF setting, the ADI driver will change its configuration to match. This is the recommended mode. 4.B. Display list page size: The display driver uses a paged, hierarchical display list architecture. That is, drawing entities are stored in pages of memory allocated from the operating system. The individual pages are linked together, on a per-viewport basis, to form the display list for that viewport. This results in an efficient and responsive driver. The page size setting controls the size of individual display list pages. The default value is 4 KBytes. The size of the page controls how much memory is allocated at a time. During the drawing regeneration process, as each page of memory is filled, the accumulated drawing entities are sent to the graphics pipeline for display. This setting is also used to determine how many vectors/polygons to draw during real-time panning and zooming operations. The algorithm used is to draw for the greater of one display list page or about 1/10 of a second (this time is also user-selectable, see the section on Frame Rate, below). The default value of 4 KBytes has been selected to give the optimum redraw performance and response. This 4 KByte memory page happens to be the standard memory allocation unit for the operating system. Memory consumption per entity is as follows: Display List Memory Consumption ------------------------------- Mode | Polyline Polygon Per Vertex --------+------------------------------------------------- 16-bit | 16 bytes 20 bytes 4 bytes 32-bit | 24 bytes 32 bytes 8 bytes NOTES: 1) The "Per Vertex" figure is the amount of memory consumed for each additional vertex beyond three in a polygon and each segment beyond one in a polyline. 2) The maximum number of segments in a polyline is 65535. 3) Due to increased data size, both size of vertices as well as the number of connected vertices in polylines, a 16K Byte page size may result in improved operation with 32-bit display list mode. 4) You should be careful with the AutoCAD VIEWRES system variable setting. In versions prior to R12, the maximum (effective) value of VIEWRES was approx. 3000 (i.e. a 30X zoom was the greatest possible value in 16-bit mode). However, in 32-bit mode, the maximum VIEWRES setting of 20,000 is attainable. VIEWRES should be set the the approximate zoom value you will be working at. This will ensure that when zoomed into that factor, curved entities will remain curved. Setting it to a higher value will needlessly fill the display list with excess data, potentially slowing operation due to virtual memory overhead. 4.B.1. Technical Background: AutoCAD maintains an internal integer drawing data base in which it represents your drawing in a logical coordinate system extending from 0 to 32766 (see figure below). This ADI driver maintains a corresponding display list for its own use. As drawing entities are sent from AutoCAD to the ADI driver, they are placed into a page of the display list. In addition, a calculation is performed to determine how large the entity will be in terms of how many sections of the logical display extent will the entity appear in. In the figure below, a line drawn from section 0 to section 3 will appear in sections 0, 1, 2, and 3. This information is kept for each entity in the display list as well as for each page of the display list. When it comes time to redraw a given display list, the current view is compared in turn to each page in the display list to determine if any of the page's contents are visible. If so, then the current view is compared to each entity in the page. Any entities outside the current view do not need to be redrawn, resulting in a decrease in the time required to redraw the drawing. Logical display list extents ---------------------------- (XMAX,YMAX) +----+----+----+----+ | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | +----+----+----+----+ | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | +----+----+----+----+ | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | +----+----+----+----+ | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | +----+----+----+----+ (0,0) NOTES: 1) Although the actual algorithm is more complex than that shown above, it is similar in nature. 2) In 32-bit mode, the maximum logical coordinate is many times larger. 4.B.2. Using the Display List Efficiently: With the above in mind, there are a number of considerations that affect the efficiency of this technique. The major factor is to be sure to keep the extents of you drawing as close to the maximum size as possible. The easiest way to do this is to zoom to the drawing extents (_ZOOM _EXTENTS) or if you are only working on a small part of the drawing zoom to the extent of that area (_ZOOM _WINDOW) and then do a _REGEN. You may _SAVE the drawing to retain these settings. Generally, it has been observed that the redraw speed of the display list only varies a few percent with changes in page size. However, depending on how your drawing is laid out, you may want to do your own experiments. The greatest speed gains are seen when entire pages of display list can be skipped over. This occurs when all the entities in a given page are physically near each other on the drawing, like a title block. In this case you may want to increase the page size to take advantage of the slightly lower overhead of larger pages. However, if your drawing tends to have entities that appear all over the viewport, such as if each layer were created sequentially, you may find smaller pages offer a more responsive "feel". In addition to the main display list, the page size also affects the Display List Cleaning operation (below) as well as display list dragging feature (used during _MOVE, _DVIEW, etc.), the Real-Time BirdsEye View. So you may want check out the operation of these features as well if you decide to change the page size. NOTE: This driver features full-color display list drag capabilities. The size of the "drag display list" is only limited by the need for interactivity in the interface. In order to allow full driver- controlled dragging, you should allow AutoCAD to send the entire drag-selection list to the driver before moving your digitizer. You can tell when this is done if you move and the entire selection drags smoothly. If it doesn't, just wait until the display list update is complete before moving again. HINTS: 1) When using the 32-bit display list option, larger page sizes will allow for longer polyline segments to be stored, resulting in a more efficient use of memory. 2) The using the Real-Time Cleaning option, smaller page sizes will result in more efficient use of memory. See discussion below. 3) You may disable display list dragging to conserve memory. 4) You may adjust the Frame Rate value for better interactivity while dragging and or using the Real Time BirdsEye view. 4.B.3. Display list coordinate size: Beginning with AutoCAD Release 12, there are now two possible display list coordinate sizes: 16 and 32-bit. Internally, AutoCAD maintains a "master copy" of the drawing in a floating point data format. It would be too slow to support interactive access to this data so, as described in the preceding sections, AutoCAD uses a "logical coordinate space" to represent the drawing for display and editing purposes. This data format conversions is what takes place during an AutoCAD _REGEN command. This logical coordinate system may either be in one of two formats: Format Range Typical Zoom (depends on viewport size) --------------------------------------------------------------- 16-bit 0..32766 25-100x 32-bit 0..2147183645 5000-100,000+ As you can see, the 32-bit coordinates allow for significantly higher zoom factors without the need for a _REGEN. It is quite useful for GIS other drawings where a high degree of detail is maintained. However, for most other use, a 16-bit coordinate system provides for sufficient detail. For example, zooming in 50x on some text in an E-size drawing will result in individual characters that nearly fill the screen. As discussed above, there is a trade-off that must be considered when selecting between 16 and 32-bits. That is, faster operation and lower memory consumption with 16-bits vs. higher detail ands fewer _REGENs with 32-bits. The bottom line should be, if you need the detail allowed in 32-bit mode, by all means use it, but if you don't switch to 16-bit mode. The display list coordinate size has an affect on _REDRAW and _REGEN performance. In 32-bit mode, AutoCAD makes use of a more efficient mechanism for transferring display list information to the driver. This produces about a 15% improvement in _REGEN speeds for typical drawings. The speed of _REDRAW (including _PAN and _ZOOM) commands will be somewhat (less that 5%) slower in 32-bit mode due to the factors described above. NOTE: The default setting is 32-bit mode. 4.C. Display list cleaning: Display list cleanup is a process whereby the display driver will transparently mark removed drawing entities in its internal display list so that they will not be displayed. This is a by-product of the way AutoCAD handles erasing entities. If an entity is erased, AutoCAD will issue a duplicate copy of the erased entity to be drawn in the background color. Thus, when this entity is drawn over the existing one, it will appear to disappear. However, every erased entity in the display list will be drawn twice and there is the potential for this background color write to erase some subsequent entity on the screen. With Real-Time cleanup enabled (denoted by "RT Clean"), the ADI driver, will search for the matching (visible) entity and mark it such that they will not be drawn in the future. The erasing entity is NOT stored in the display list, thus eliminating the extra memory usage. In addition, when all entities within one page of memory are marked as erased, the entire page of memory if returned to the operating system for reuse. To demonstrate this feature, load a drawing and then erase everything. You can then watch the display list memory indicator shrink back towards zero as the drawing is erased. This function will make the 'erasing' process about half as fast as with no cleaning on. However, you will not need to do a _REGEN or _REDRAW after a large ERASE or MOVE. If the combined time to ERASE and _REGEN is considered, the Real-Time cleaning function is actually twice as fast and it happens automatically and transparently. HINTS: 1) This mode is most useful for running AME/ADS/AutoLISP applications. These applications tend to create and erase entities a lot as they run. Since these programs are feeding input non-stop into AutoCAD, there is never any 'free' time available for keeping the display list clean. Doing it on the fly, will keep display list to a reasonable size. For as simple demonstration of this, take a look at the example AutoLISP file "tower.lsp" and its accompanying instruction file "tower.doc" or run the "tower" program in the ADS subdirectory. 2) With display list cleaning disabled, the overhead of checking for erased entities is not needed. As such, the display driver will operate somewhat faster. However, if during editing sessions, you notice significant evidence of erased entities, simply issue a "CLEAN" command to remedy the situation. This mode is most useful when you are interested in getting maximum performance from AutoCAD. If you are creating a new drawing or doing touch-up work involving lots of panning and zooming, this is the time to turn off display list cleaning. 3) Keeping the page size small will increase the chances that all entities in a page will be erased (there are less entities in smaller pages) and thus be returned to the operating system for later re-use. NOTE: Unlike some other implementations of display list cleaning, the RT Clean feature preserves the drawing order of the display list at all times. This ensures that what you see on the screen matches as accurately as possible what is in AutoCAD's internal display list. Also, the process does not rely on "free-time" to operate, so it works equally well for manual or automated drawing modification. 4.D. Button hold time and frame rate: These two parameters are user-configurable to allow you to adjust the "look and feel" of the display driver during interactive commands. The button hold time (HOLDTIMEnn) sets the delay time for detection of a "long button click" or a "click and hold" event. The numeric value for this parameter is the number of system clock ticks (18 per second) to wait before checking for additional user input. Larger values let the driver process for a longer time, giving you more leeway for using short button clicks. Smaller values will give you a move responsive feel to your input. The default value is about 1/4 second, minimum value is 1 tick and the maximum is about 1 second. The default frame rate value is set to about 1/5 of a second, but you may adjust it as needed. The frame rate (FRAMERATEnnn) lets you adjust the "frames per second" that the the screen updates at. It uses the same time scale as the hold time. The default rate is set to about 5 frames per second. The minimum value is 1 tick and the maximum is about 10 seconds per frame. NOTE: To convert either of these values to their time representation, use the following formulas: HoldTimeInSeconds = NumberOfTicksSet / TicksPerSecond FramesPerSecond = TicksPerSecond / NumberOfTicksSet 4.E. Single and double buffer modes: All hardware supported by this driver is capable of "single-buffer" operation. That is, all the available pixel color depth is used for displaying the image. This is the best mode to use when doing screen captures of images and where accurate color representation is an important consideration. Certain hardware is also capable of "double-buffer" operation. In this mode, the available pixel color depth is divided between a "front" or visible buffer and a "back" or invisible buffer. During interactive operations, like the RealTime BirdsEye view, a new view is drawn in the "back" buffer, then the buffers are "swapped" bring the new view instantly to the "front". This technique provides flicker-free motion. The default mode is double-buffering, unless you hardware can't support that capability. The mode may be changed in the driver's configuration menu. The double buffer item will be greyed out if it is unavailable. ############################################################################ 5. DRIVER OPERATION: This ADI driver is a display list driver. In addition to the basic AutoCAD functionality, it offers a number of additional features to increase user productivity. The display list is the central feature of this driver, upon which all the other functionality is built. It uses the 32-bit system memory in your computer to keep track of all the graphics primitives (i.e. lines and polygons) that make up the current drawing. The driver will make full use of AutoCAD's "virtual" memory manager, which allows the display list to be larger than the physical memory installed in your computer. Once the drawing is in memory, the driver is able to redraw all or part of the drawing 10 to 100 times faster than AutoCAD alone. This driver allows display list support for up to 64 AutoCAD "viewports". This display list mode may be configured in the CONFIGURE menu. When first loaded into memory, the display list is "clean", meaning that all entities in the list are actually displayed. As you edit and delete items from the drawing AutoCAD will send down drawing entities marked for deletion. When this happens, the entity will initially display, and will then subsequently be erased. In light of this, this driver supports real-time display list cleaning, whereby, each matching pair of a displayed and a deleted entity are matched up and marked so as not to be displayed. A status indicator showing the amount of display list memory in use is displayed in the upper right hand corner of the status line, if one is enabled. If you do a significant amount of editing with cleaning disabled, the size of the display list will grow as each entity will be duplicated. In this case, you may choose to issue the built-in command "CLEAN" which instructs AutoCAD to send a fresh copy of the display list to the driver, freeing up unused memory in the process. There is a replacement AutoCAD menu file which allows easy access to these additional features as well. It will be loaded into the drawing editor for any drawing using the default ACAD menu. From the pull-down menu bar, select the "SGITools" menu item (at the extreme right end of the menu bar). Clicking the pick button will pull down the desired menu. There is also a side-bar menu item added to the bottom of the standard menu with a similar feature set. In addition, there is a replacement for the standard Button menu to allow the Command Palette to be invoked by pressing the middle (or third) digitizer button. The left button is still the Pick button while the right (or second) button still duplicates the Enter key. 5.A. BirdsEye View: This ADI driver supports two versions of a BirdsEye view. One version is a full-color version of the entire drawing displayed in a scaled down window (the BirdsEye View). The user-interface is modeled after the AutoCAD _ZOOM _DYNAMIC command. It has two modes, panning (designated by an outlined box with an "X" in it) and zooming (designated by the same box with an "arrow" in it). Issuing single clicks of the pick button will toggle you between these two modes. In the regular BirdsEye view, a solid white rectangle will show the area of the drawing you are presently viewing, while the movable outline will show the area you will view if you press and hold the pick button. After holding the button down for about 1/2 second, you can release it to initiate the panning or zooming operation. When the time interval is over, the BirdsEye view will be erased. At this point, control is returned to AutoCAD, which will wait until you release the pick button before initiating the requested zoom operation. NOTE: Certain digitizing tablet drivers do not send data while a button is being held down. If you are using such a driver, you will not be able to use the "click and hold" feature. You may try changing driver modes, i.e. Interrupt to Polled mode, or switch to another driver, like Packet mode to In-line, for example, to see if one of the combinations work better. Otherwise, you will have to use the digitizer's "Enter" button, or "Enter" on the keyboard to initiate the action. In addition to the standard pick-button interface, this version allows several other user-interface additions. You may now press the second digitizer button to initiate the action. You may press the third digitizer button to cancel the action. HINT: On a three-button mouse, the right button is the second and the middle button is the third. Also, you may press the Enter, Space, or Tab keys to initiate an action and press the Escape key to cancel the action. The other version of the BirdsEye view features real-time panning and zooming. In this mode the drawing will move beneath the monochrome BirdsEye window as you move about. Once again, a click and hold of the pick button will perform the desired operation. This feature makes use of the double-buffer video display mode to provide smoother panning and zooming. When the BirdsEye view is initially displayed, it will be in one of the two modes described above. If the visible portion of the current viewport is greater than about one half of its extents, then the initial BirdsEye state will be zooming. Likewise, if less than half the viewport extents are visible, then the initial state will be panning mode. 5.B. Real-Time BirdsEye View: The "R-T Bird" button will bring up the Real-Time BirdsEye View, while "BirdsEye" will bring up the static, full-color BirdsEye view. Any of the user-interface components may be closed by clicking on the close box (located on the left end of the title bar indicated via a Windows-style close icon). Any item may be moved by clicking on the text of the title bar and then moving the digitizer (and the window frame) to a new area and then clicking again to anchor the item. The BirdsEye window may also by sized by clicking in the resize box (to the right of the title, indicated by overlapping window frames) and sizing as desired by moving the digitizer and finally anchoring the frame by clicking the pick button again. HINTS: In the "zooming" mode, you will notice that the left edge of the "zoom" box remains fixed. Motion to the right will increase the box size, to the left will reduce it. Motion up and down will result in a "panning" motion. In light of this, if you wish to pan to a particular area and then zoom in on it, you should make sure that the area you want to zoom in to is centered vertically and to the left of center before beginning the zoom. That way, as you zoom in, the object will end up centered and save you from having to pan back to center. NOTE: The image in the BirdsEye view window is retained for later re-display. This ensures that subsequent invocations of the BirdsEye view are nearly instantaneous. However, if large changes are made to the drawing, the saved image may not accurately reflect the drawing. Several actions can be used to trigger the refresh of this image: 1. Change viewports. 2. Change BirdsEye mode (Real Time <-> Full Color) 3. Use the CLEAN (or AutoCAD _REGEN) command. 5.C. Display List Memory Page Size: An additional command series has been added to allow dynamic changes to the internal display list page size. The command "@VENDOR@PAGESIZE" where "xxxx" may take on any value from "1" to "1000" will cause AutoCAD to send down a new display list in the requested page size. This change will only be in affect for the current drawing. If a permanent change is desired, you may reconfigure the display driver from the CONFIGURE Menu or issue a "WRITE_CONFIG" command to save the settings. How does the size of a display list memory page affect the performance of the driver? The answer is that it affects many things at once. The following examples represent elapsed times measured with the drawing AKSLAND. This drawing contains approximately 212,000 vectors and no filled polygons. PAGESIZE(KB) 10 _REDRAW(sec) 1 _REGEN(sec) MEMORY USED(KB) 1 8.68 36.56 1318 2 8.56 36.84 1278 4 8.58 35.66 1260 8 8.52 34.83 1248 16 8.54 35.01 1248 32 8.49 35.40 1248 64 8.47 35.70 1280 These values will vary depending on many factors, but a few general conclusions may be drawn. Redraw speed increases with increasing page size. Regeneration speed and memory usage is optimum in the 4-32 KB range. However, due to the design of the driver, you will notice that these variations are less than 5%, so most likely you will want to adjust the value of @VENDOR@PAGESIZE so that the "feel" of the driver is to your liking. HINTS: 1) Use larger page sizes for 32-bit mode and when display list cleaning is off. 2) Use smaller page sizes when display list cleaning is on. 3) If interactive operations feel "sluggish" reduce the page size. 5.D. Command Palette: The next user-interface item is the "Command Palette" which may be called up via the command line entry of "PALETTE". This will bring up a Command Palette. All five rows of buttons are user programmable. To do so, simply edit the appropriate text file "*_com.txt" in the sub-directory where the ADI driver is installed. See the following discussion of the menu file format. Please note that this menu file format is exactly the same as a standard AutoCAD menu file, with the exception of sub-menus, which are described below. For your convenience, you may also bring up the Command Palette with the "transparent" driver key, ^L (hold the Ctrl key and press the L key). In addition to the standard commands listed below, the Command Palette may also read in a different file. To do this, a variant of the "PALETTE" command is used. If a file name is appended to the "PALETTE" command, i.e. PALETTEtestfile the file "testfile.txt" will be read (in place of the default file "*_com.txt"). Note that the ".txt" extension is added automatically by the driver. A special file name is reserved, namely "LAST" which will re-load the last palette menu file. This is useful for sub-menus that are invoked from a number of higher level menus. The file name will be used as entered and if no matching file is found, it will be converted to "lower case". For clarity, it is suggested that you use our convention of "PALETTEfilename". Menu files are searched for along the path specified by either the "RCPADI" or "ACADDRV" environment variables. NOTE: In our file naming convention, all sub-menu files begin with a leading underscore "_" so that the loading command line looks like: "PALETTE_file" HINT: This feature will be most useful if you CONFIGURE the Command Palette to remain visible or iconified after use. 5.E. Other ADI Driver Commands: CONFIGURE - Bring up the on-line configuration menu. PALETTE - Bring up the Command Palette. PALETTEabc - Bring up the Command Palette w/ "abc.txt". PALETTElast - Bring up the Command Palette w/ last file. CLEAN - Request a clean display list from AutoCAD. RTBIRD - Bring up the Real-Time BirdsEye View. BIRDSEYE - Bring up the full-color BirdsEye View. ^L - Bring up the last Command Palette. @VENDOR@PAGESIZEnnn - Set the display list page size to "nnn" KBytes. Where "nnn" can range from 1 to 256 KB. STATISTICS - Display display list statistics on text screen. @VENDOR@ZOOMVX - _ZOOM to current viewport extents. @VENDOR@PANUF - _PAN up one full screen. @VENDOR@PANDF - _PAN down one full screen. @VENDOR@PANLF - _PAN left one full screen. @VENDOR@PANRF - _PAN right one full screen. @VENDOR@PANUH - _PAN up one half screen. @VENDOR@PANDH - _PAN down one half screen. @VENDOR@PANLH - _PAN left one half screen. @VENDOR@PANRH - _PAN right one half screen. *************************************** *** NEW COMMANDS for the power user *** *************************************** CP_OFF - Force Command Palette OFF after button press. CP_ON - Force Command Palette ON after button press. CP_ICON - Force Command Palette to iconify after button press. WRITE_CONFIG - Save current configuration state to disk. CLEAN_ON - Turn on display list cleaning. CLEAN_OFF - Turn off display list cleaning. DLIST_ON - Turn on main display list. DLIST_OFF - Turn off main display list. SINGLE_SCREEN - Enable single screen text/graphics mode. DUAL_SCREEN - Enable dual screen text/graphics mode. DEFAULT_SCREEN - Enable default text/graphics mode. GLSHELL - Initiate SHELL capable of running GL program. TOGGLE - TOGGLEnnn visibility of color 'nnn'. HOLDTIME - Set button hold time to HOLDTIMEnn ticks. FRAMERATE - Set the update frame rate, in ticks. TUMBLE - Initiate tumble mode. (R12) @VENDOR@OUTLINEn - Polygon outline mode, n: on=1,off=0 RMODE - Set rendering mode: (R12) RMODE_SMOOTH - Gouraud RMODE_FLAT - Flat RMODE_HIDE - Hidden line RMODE_LLINE - Lit lines RMODE_DLINE - Depth-cued lines RMODE_LINE - Lines (Wireframe) RMODE_LPOINT - Lit Points RMODE_DPOINT - Depth-cued Points RMODE_POINT - Points DMODE - Set degenerate mode: (R12) DMODE_OFF - Disable degenerate mode (R12) DMODE_FLAT - Flat DMODE_HIDE - Hidden line DMODE_LLINE - Lit lines DMODE_DLINE - Depth-cued lines DMODE_1LINE - 1 Line per entity DMODE_LINE - Lines (Wireframe) DMODE_LPOINT - Lit Points DMODE_DPOINT - Depth-cued Points DMODE_1POINT - One point per entity DMODE_POINT - Points IVIEW - Interactive DVIEW command replacement (R12) BUFFER_ON - Select back buffer mode (if double-buffered) BUFFER_SWAP - Swap display buffers (if double-buffered) BUFFER_OFF - Return to normal buffer (if double-buffered) @VENDOR@HILITE - Set vector highlighing mode: True = @VENDOR@HILITE1 Fast = @VENDOR@HILITE0 Notes: 1. Internal commands preceded with an apostrophe are forms that are "transparent" to AutoCAD. That is that they may be issued in the middle of a pending AutoCAD operation. As such, they are useful for constructing menus. For instance, if you are in the middle of drawing a polyline and need to pan the drawing a little further to the right, you could use the 'PANRH command in a menu (or from the keyboard) to do that. 2. If you would like to customize your Command Palette to turn ON, OFF, or ICONify on a per-button basis, simply append a ";" followed by one of the "CP_xxx" commands. The default action of the Command Palette is to return to its initial state, but these commands allow you to change this default state for the given session. Be advised that you may need to insert these commands for every button, as there is only one internal default value. 5.F. Command Palette File Format: The "Command Palette" button functions are defined in the file "*_com.txt". This file is similar in format to an AutoCAD menu. The values within square brackets "[]" are used to define the button title. Note that there is a limit of eight characters inside the brackets, just like in the AutoCAD side bar menu. If there is no square bracket entry, then the first eight characters of the line are used for the title. When the button is pressed, by clicking the digitizer pick button, the contents of the line following the closing square bracket "]" is sent out verbatim to AutoCAD, just as if the same text were in an AutoCAD menu file. The Command Palette is meant to be user programmable. Feel free to put in you favorite AutoCAD commands using an ASCII text editor. You may even SHELL out of AutoCAD, edit the file, and see the new file loaded when you re-enter AutoCAD. AUTOCAD MENU COMMANDS RECOGNIZED -------------------------------- ^B - Toggle Snap On/Off ^C - *Cancel* ^D - Toggle Coords On/Off ^E - Toggle Isoplane Top/Right/Left ^G - Toggle Grid On/Off ^O - Toggle Ortho On/Off ^P - Toggle Echo On/Off ^T - Toggle Tablet On/Off ; - Same as carriage return ' - Transparent command prefix [] - Enclose menu button title string (max. 8 chars) NOTE: Commands entered from the Command Palette are echoed on the prompt line(s) and become the AutoCAD default command. That is, if you press the Enter, Tab, or Space keys, that command will be repeated. 5.G. Driver Configuration Menu: The CONFIGURE menu allows you to change various parameters in the driver, like colors, fonts, etc. If you change items that cause the drawing area to change, you will see a "Warning Box" informing you that you will need to exit and re-enter the drawing editor in order for the change to take affect. The Command Palette color scheme will follow that of the AUI pop-up menu colors. 5.H. Status Line Menu and Indicators: If you have configured AutoCAD to supply a Status Line across the top of the graphics screen, several useful items will be displayed. An outlined box at the extreme left edge of the status line will display a sample of the current drawing color. Other information may include the current layer name, cursor coordinate display, DIESEL strings and display list information. :1x:0K The ":1x:" item shows the zoom factor of the current viewport, with "1x" representing the viewport zoomed-out to its maximum extents. The maximum zoom factor is dependent on the physical size of the viewport, among other things. An easy way to determine it, is to zoom in as far as you can without causing a _REGEN and note the resulting factor. Then, any value between 1 and the maximum value represents the "dynamic range" of the display list for that viewport. Going outside that range will force AutoCAD to perform a _REGEN. Finally, the "0K" item represents the amount of memory being used by the driver's display list. It is displayed in KBytes (1024 bytes). 5.I. 3D View Selection: (R12) The IVIEW command: The purpose of this command is to make 3D drawing manipulation easier by providing you real-time 3D interaction with your drawing. The primary mechanism for this will be to augment the basic AutoCAD "3D View Control" functions. When these commands are invoked, a 3D representation of your drawing will be presented to you in the current AutoCAD viewport. You will be able to interact with the rendered image using your digitizer. When the interaction is complete, the ADI driver will issue the appropriate AutoCAD DVIEW or VPOINT commands and parameters to effect the desired action. This will cause AutoCAD to _REGEN the drawing in the desired orientation. NOTE: If you desire a keyboard interface for 3D View Selection, you may continue to use the standard DVIEW command as usual. Since these commands are intended for interactive view selection, no keyboard input is accepted. You can view a drawing from any point in model space. From your selected viewing point, you can add new entities, edit the entities you see, or suppress the drawing of hidden lines. The following section describes the 3D viewing command options. These 3D viewing commands are not allowed while you are working in Paper Space. These commands rely on the functionality of AVE Render to extract and pass the three-dimensional data from your drawing to the ADI driver for display. Therefore, it is necessary that you have AVE Render installed, loaded in memory and have set AVE Render to generate 3D data, with the "3DFACES" command. This may be easily accomplished by adding the following two lines to your AutoCAD startup script or in the AutoLISP STARTUP command: (xload "averendr") 3dfaces NOTES: 1) If AVE Render is not loaded, you will not be able to set 3DFACES on. The Command Palette button to load AVE Render will both load AVE Render into memory as well as enable 3DFACES for you. The driver will detect when it is able to do this command. If something is not right, you will get one of the following warning messages: 1) Viewport not rendered with 3DFACES set. 2) Selected viewport is not the current viewport. In case 1, you will need to do a RENDER with 3DFACES on, and in case 2 the current viewport (the one with the crosshair cursor in it) is not the viewport that was rendered. You may either change to the rendered viewport, or do a RENDER with 3DFACES on in the current viewport. HINTS: 1) If you are using AutoShade/AVERender "SCENES" you will not be able to change the rendered view, as AVE Render uses the SCENE/VIEW information instead of the current AutoCAD view information. If you wish to use the 3D view selection functions to help define a SCENE/VIEW, set the VIEW to *CURRENT* then modify the AutoCAD view, then select VIEW/NEW/CURRENT DISPLAY. After changing SCENE parameters, it will be necessary to re-RENDER the drawing to see the change. 2) You are not allowed to render while in PAPER SPACE. You can set the current viewport to MODEL SPACE by using the MSPACE command in AutoCAD, or you may leave PAPER SPACE by turning TILEMODE on. 3) If you used AME to create your model, be sure that you load AME prior to rendering the model. This is so that AME can be invoked by AVE Render in order to properly mesh your solid objects for rendering. If this is not done you will see a prompt asking to load AME or you will see parts of your drawing render improperly. In either case, just load AME with the command: (xload "ame") For all of the available options, the status line will be kept updated with a numerical representation of the viewing parameters as you adjust them. Similar to the BirdsEye View, you may accept the set position by a "click and hold" on the pick button. The duration of the button hold time is specified by the HOLDTIMEnn command, with the default value as 1/2 of a second. If you would like to leave the rendered image in its present location (without informing AutoCAD of the change in view), press the second digitizer button. The original view (in wireframe) of the drawing can be restored by pressing the third digitizer button. Here is a sample scenario to illustrate one possible use of these features. Assume you are working on a 3D model and have the display split up unto the classic 4 viewports, top, front, side and perspective views: +-------------+-------------+ | TOP | PERSPECTIVE | +-------------+-------------+ | FRONT | SIDE | +-------------+-------------+ You would then render the perspective viewport (with 3DFACES enabled) and then, whenever you desired to view and/or rotate the model, you could click in the perspective viewport, issue the appropriate view selection command, reorient the model, then click the second digitizer button, leaving the rendered view in the viewport. Then, select another viewport to continue editing. By using this technique, you can have instantaneous access to a 3D rendered view of your model. If you then make sufficient changes to the model geometry, you can re-render the view to reflect the changes. HINTS: 1) On a three-button mouse, the second button is on the right and the third button is in the middle. 2) If you wish to do a series of 3D view selection commands, such as rotate you camera angle and then zoom in closer to the target, you will need to use the left digitizer button to issue the appropriate AutoCAD viewing commands to ensure that the current view information (in the AutoCAD drawing file) is updated. At present, there is no way to concatenate viewing selection operations. 3) Cursor motion is limited to the viewport extents. Further motion beyond the viewport edge is ignored, although the second direction may still change. 4) Leaving the rendered view, without informing AutoCAD, will not allow you to chain view selection commands together. That is, if you change the camera angle, then leave the rendered image in place, then try to change the camera target, you will resume with the original camera view, rather than the newly "set" one. In order to ensure accuracy, the ADI driver reads the values of the current view settings from both AutoCAD and AVE Render. 5) However, if you are using multiple viewports, for example, top, side, front and perspective views, you may choose to render the perspective viewport. Then, any time you wish, just click in that viewport, select a 3D view and then "leave" the image there without doing a _REGEN. You may then return to the orthographic viewports to continue work. This is useful for looking at some part of your drawing as you are editing. The available command options are: VP - Select a 3D Viewpoint by rotating the model. Complements the VPOINT AXES command. This command causes AutoCAD to zoom the new view to the drawing extents. This option will force AutoCAD into an orthographic projection, turning off the perspective view if it was enabled. If you wish to continue in perspective mode, use the CAmera option. You adjust the model via a trackball-like interface, that allows selection of an arbitrary 3D viewing direction. CA - Rotate camera position about the target point. Complements the DVIEW CAmera command. This is most useful when your view point is outside the model, for example; in front of a house. You adjust the camera angle through a rotation from the X-axis of -180 degrees on the left to +180 degrees on the right. Vertical motion adjusts the angle from the XY-plane of +90 degrees at the top to -90 degrees at the bottom. TA - Rotate target point about the camera. Complements the DVIEW TArget command. This is most useful when your view point is within the model, for example; inside a house. You adjust the target angle through a rotation from the X-axis of -180 degrees on the left to +180 degrees on the right. Vertical motion adjusts the angle from the XY-plane of +90 degrees at the top to -90 degrees at the bottom. D - Moves the camera in or out along the line of sight. Complements the DVIEW Distance command. Horizontal motion adjusts the viewing distance from 1/16 the original value on the left to 16 times the original value on the right. The center is 1X. Setting the distance will automatically place the current viewport into perspective mode. As such, this option will not be allowed unless you explicitly set the viewport perspective mode. HINT: Use the standard DVIEW DISTANCE command in AutoCAD. Z - Zooms the camera magnification factor. Complements the DVIEW Zoom command. Horizontal motion adjusts the zoom factor from 1/16 the original value on the left to 16 times the original value on the right. The center is 1X. In perspective mode, the camera's lenslength is changed, while in orthographic mode, the effect is similar to a _ZOOM _CENTER command. TW - Rotate or twist the view about the line of sight. Complements the DVIEW TWist command. You adjust the twist angle through a rotation of 0 to 360 degrees about the center of the viewport. The fixed line shows the initial twist and the moving line shows the current twist. Note that the twist setting is overwritten when changing other DVIEW parameters. HINT: You should set the view twist last. FL - Flush the 3D display list (to reclaim the allocated memory). As AutoCAD maintains no 3D display list, there is no complement of this command. Simply put, it erases and reclaims the memory used to store the 3D display list. @IRIX_BGN PO - Set the target and camera points directly. The format of the data is: PO_tx,ty,tz,cx,cy,cz Where (tx,ty,tz) is the target point in world coordinates and (cx,cy,cz) is the camera point. There is no interactivity in this command, it simply sets the specified camera and target and redraws the scene. This is useful for scripting a walk-through path. If this command is interspersed with "QPLOT" commands, each frame of the walk-through will be saved in a sequentially numbered image file on your hard disk. See the MovieMaker section in the appendix. @IRIX_END NOTE: For additional information on the use of the 3D View Controls in AutoCAD, consults the section on "3D View Control" in your AutoCAD Reference Manual. In order to facilitate interactivity during 3D view selection, there are several adjustments that will help you fine tune the driver to your preferences. You may customize the following options: 1) The rate at which the drawing is updated while in motion. (see FRAMERATEnn) 2) The mode in which the drawing is updated while in motion. (see DMODE_xxx) 3) The mode in which the drawing is updated when stationary. (see RMODE_xxx) FRAMERATEnn ----------- The FRAMERATEnn command influences the rate at which the drawing is redrawn while in motion, during both the 2D and 3D view selection. You can adjust the numeric value from 1 (which is the fastest update rate) to a maximum of value corresponding to approximately 2 seconds. The action of this setting is to redraw the scene for a time period equal to this setting while you are interactively positioning the drawing. At the end of this time period, if further motion is detected, the drawing is restarted at the new position, otherwise, drawing continues at the current position. DMODE_xxx --------- The DMODE_xxx command influences the mode in which the drawing is redrawn while in motion. Valid options are: DMODE_OFF Use the current RMODE setting while in motion DMODE_SMOOTH2 Smooth shaded with 2-sided lighting DMODE_FLAT Smooth shaded DMODE_FLAT2 Flat shaded with 2-sided lighting DMODE_FLAT Flat shaded DMODE_HIDE Hidden line DMODE_DLINE Depth-cued lines DMODE_LINE Lines (Wireframe) DMODE_1LINE 1 Line per entity DMODE_DPOINT Depth-cued Points DMODE_POINT Points DMODE_1POINT 1 Point per entity These options are ordered in decreasing order of drawing time. That is, drawing a flat shaded object takes longer than using a wireframe representation. Therefore, at a given FRAMERATE, you will "see" more of your drawing while in motion with a "faster" drawing mode. Feel free to experiment with various combinations until you find one that meets your needs. RMODE_xxx --------- The RMODE command influences the mode in which the drawing is redrawn while stationary. Valid options are: RMODE_SMOOTH2 Smooth shaded with 2-sided lighting RMODE_FLAT Smooth shaded RMODE_FLAT2 Flat shaded with 2-sided lighting RMODE_FLAT Flat shaded RMODE_HIDE Hidden line RMODE_DLINE Depth-cued lines RMODE_LINE Lines (Wireframe) RMODE_DPOINT Depth-cued Points RMODE_POINT Points Note, that in order to use the smooth shaded option, you must have selected the SMOOTH shaded option the the AVE Render Preferences menu. In effect, the RMODE_SMOOTH option instructs the driver to use the "best" drawing mode to draw your object. The default setting of the rendering mode is is controlled by the setting in the AVE Render Preferences dialog box, and will this be reset to this value at each RENDER command. HINTS: 1) If your drawing contains rounded surfaces, you should select smooth shaded rendering in order that the maximum information is available to the driver. However, if you drawing consists primarily of flat surfaces, you may select to disable smooth shading to speed up the rendering time. It is often 30% faster to use RENDER/3DFACES with flat shading as opposed to smooth shading due the the additional calculation time involved in generating the surface normals. 2) This display driver uses the same amount of memory to store each face, regardless of the rendering mode you choose in AVERender. The memory usage is approximately 1 MB per 7000 faces. You can observe the memory used in the display list memory indicator on the status line. 3) Two-sided lighting will often improve the appearance of the display, especially when your drawing includes point light source, smooth surfaces, or other complexities. However, you may notice up to a 50% slowdown while using this mode. ############################################################################ 6. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS: Q. How do I set up the AutoCAD and the driver for maximum performance? A. Optimum settings for AutoCAD and the GL driver depend to some degree on the type of work you are doing. Possible scenarios are: 1. Interactive (manual) editing on relatively small drawings. 2. Interactive editing on relatively large drawings. 3. Using automated tools for design (like AME and Designer). Optimum settings are as follows: AutoCAD: Disable command prompt area (if possible and especially when running SCRIPT files). Set FILLMODE to "1". Set VIEWRES to an appropriate value, (be sure to answer YES to Fast Zooms). 100 is a good value for working at full view or for shrinking memory requirements to a minimum on large drawings. Values up to 1000 (or so) produce acceptable curve quality for most work. See the discussion on VIEWRES settings following. Use a single viewport, if possible. Multiple viewports increase the display list size and force each drawing entity to be drawn multiple times. GL Driver: Use the GL user interface: - AutoCAD-Graph*useCommandArea: False - AutoCAD-Graph*useSideMenu: False - AutoCAD-Graph*useMenuBar: False - AutoCAD-Graph*useStatusBar: False Reduce the text back-scroll buffer sizes: - AutoCAD-Text.scrollLines: 32 - AutoCAD-Graph.scrollLines: 3 Select "Single Screen Mode". Select 32-bit Display List mode. (1) Select 16-bit Display List mode. (2,3) Set page size in range of "4K-32K". Set Display List to "ON". (1,2) Set Display List to "OFF". (3) Set Non-Stop Redraws to "ON". (1,3) Set Interruptable Redraws to "ON". (2) If command prompt area is enabled, set number of prompt lines to "1". Set @VENDOR@OUTLINE to "0" (unless this causes visual artifacts with your drawing, then set it to "1"). Set @VENDOR@HILITE to "0" to reduce the complexity of the line highlighting procedure during selection. Q. How does the AutoCAD VIEWRES setting affect this driver? A. If you are using a 32-bit display list processor with R12, be really careful setting the VIEWRES value if you use a lot of curved entities (circles, arcs, text, linetypes, etc) in your drawing. Here are some typical results showing line segments in a single, full-screen circle and corresponding memory used to store the display list data (assuming no vector compression or overhead). Line segments in a single, full-screen circle and corresponding memory used to store the display list dat (assuming no vector compression or overhead). Memory to store 16-bit vector (x1,y1)-(x2,y2) = 4 * 16/8 = 8 bytes Memory to store 32-bit vector (x1,y1)-(x2,y2) = 4 * 32/8 = 16 bytes VIEWRES: SEGMENTS:16 MEMORY:16 SEGMENTS:32 MEMORY:32 -------- ----------- --------- ----------- --------- 1 8 64 b 8 64 b 10 16 128 b 16 256 b 100 48 384 b 48 768 b 200 64 512 b 64 1.0 Kb 500 104 832 b 104 1.6 Kb 1000 144 1.1 Kb 144 2.3 Kb 2000 204 1.6 Kb 204 3.2 Kb 5000 316 2.5 Kb 324 5.2 Kb 10000 316 2.5 Kb 456 7.3 Kb 20000(max) 316 2.5 Kb 600 9.6 Kb You mileage may vary, but setting VIEWRES too high can use up to 4 times more memory on a 32-bit display list system than on a 16-bit system. A good way to think about setting VIEWRES is that at a setting of 100, you are telling AutoCAD you want a circles to look smooth at a 100% (1X) of the current zoom level. If you then zoom in farther, you will begin to notice the individual segments of the curves. If you set VIEWRES to 1000, you are telling AutoCAD that you wish to have smooth circles displayed at a 10 times the current zoom level (100/100=10). I have seen at least one AutoCAD benchmark (from 16-bit days) that will not run on many systems, because the internal VIEWRES setting is set arbitrarily high. Q. Why does the drawing "flicker" or only partially draw when I pan and zoom in the Real-Time BirdsEye View? A. The driver is attempting to maintain a specified frame rate as you pan and zoom. Since this is an interactive command, your feedback is the updated view of the drawing. If there are too many vectors and polygons to draw in a given time, they are not drawn unless you cease movement. You can try to increase the FRAMERATEnn value to a larger number. The default value is about 1/10 of second, or 10 frames per second. You can adjust the value up to 1 frame per second. - If you wish to save this setting, issue the command WRITE_CONFIG. - Entering FRAMERATE with no parameter will display the current FRAMERATE setting. Q. When I switch between pan and zoom mode in the BirdsEye views, sometimes I exit out, why? A. A feature of the driver is that it detects the "click and hold" of the pick button of certain digitizers and mice and uses this information to initiate the zoom command from the BirdsEye view. The default setting is about 1/4 second. You may change it with the HOLDTIMEnn command. Smaller numbers are shorter times, larger ones are longer times. Find the value that you are most comfortable with. - If you wish to save this setting, issue the command WRITE_CONFIG. HINT: Entering HOLDTIME with no parameter will display the current setting. Q. Some of the items in the Driver Configuration menu are "greyed" out, what does this mean? A. These items are greyed out to indicate that they are inactive. This might be an option that does not pertain on your platform or it might be an option to a future function, still under development. Q. When I drag (MOVE, COPY, INSERT, etc.) an object, sometimes the whole selection set moves, sometimes not, why? A. This driver supports Display List Dragging. When you initiate a dragging operation in AutoCAD, the driver "captures" the data in a display list for subsequent (fast) playback. However, if you move the cursor before all the data is captured, AutoCAD "starts all over" by resending the vectors again. Likewise, if any part of the selection set is off the current viewport when it is highlighted, or if you move off of the drawing area, for example, into the menu bar, while dragging, AutoCAD will start over. A general guideline is, wait until the selection set is captured, if it is not, wait again. If you don't like this feature, you can either ignore it, the driver will still try to capture the data, or, better yet, simply turn off the Display List Drag feature in the configuration menu. Q. How do I get the "IV Tools" menu into my custom menu? (R11) A. We have separated the components of our sample menu into its constituent parts. The pull-down menu source is in the file gacad.pop, it has been set up as the tenth pop-up menu (POP10). Likewise, the side bar menu items are in gacad.sid and the button menu entries are in gacad.but. Consult your AutoCAD Reference Guide for instructions on modifying menu files. Q. When I bring up the BirdsEye view, why don't I see the whole drawing? A. The drawing you are working on was saved in a "zoomed-in" state. Whenever you save a drawing in AutoCAD, the current viewport extents are saved as well so that when you next load the drawing, you are brought back to the same location. Therefore, in order to achieve maximum benefit from the display list features, type the AutoCAD commands: _ZOOM _EXTENTS _SAVE This will ensure that an entire copy of you drawing is loaded into the display list. Q. When I bring up the Real-Time BirdsEye View, why can't I see the drawing move? A. You are probably in "Pan" mode and at the full extents of the drawing. The BirdsEye view has been designed to prevent you from doing anything that will cause a _REGEN. To correct this, quickly click the PICK button on your digitizer to enter "Zoom" mode. After zooming in a little, you will be able to pan. This works exactly like AutoCAD's _ZOOM _DYNAMIC command with the exception of the _REGEN prevention. Q. When I do an AutoCAD _PAN command, why does a _REGEN occur? A. If you are at the display list extents (i.e. you are "zoomed- out" as far as possible) and you issue a command to _PAN off the edge, AutoCAD will begin a _REGEN sequence in order to bring additional drawing information into the working display list. Q. Why can I only zoom-in so far in the BirdsEye view? A. The minimum zoom-extents in the BirdsEye view is set to the smallest value that AutoCAD will allow the display list driver to process on its own. If a further zoom-in is required, it will be necessary to issue an AutoCAD _ZOOM _WINDOW command, forcing a _REGEN. Q. Why can't I zoom into a drawing once I have run the HIDE or SHADE commands? A. Once AutoCAD performs either of these two commands, or a 3D perspective view for that matter, the contents of the display list are only issued at the physical screen resolution. Therefore, it is not possible to zoom-in any farther, without sacrificing the accuracy of the displayed drawing. This is a feature of AutoCAD in that in HIDE and SHADE modes, the drawing is rendered at exactly the resolution of the screen. If this were not done, the process would be about 30 times slower! AutoCAD informs the ADI driver when a viewport is not zoom-able and thus the BirdsEye view function will not be active while this condition is present. You may override this feature in the CONFIGURE/DRIVER OPTIONS menu. Q. When I go into PAPER SPACE, why doesn't the BirdsEye view work correctly, why? A. In this mode (i.e. TILEMODE == 0), the only entities that AutoCAD sends to the display list are the fixed drawing outline and title box. This mode is intended to be used for arranging and plotting groups of detail views. If you desire to use the display list editing features, you may simply set the TILEMODE variable to 1 and then switch back to TILEMODE 0 to finish plotting. AutoCAD informs the ADI driver when a viewport is not zoom-able and thus the BirdsEye view function will not be active while this condition is present. You may override this feature in the CONFIGURE/DRIVER OPTIONS menu. Q. Why do I see the following message when I try to use the BirdsEye view? "AutoCAD indicates this viewport may not be zoomable." A. As discussed in the preceding question, the driver is passing along information from AutoCAD. In R12, besides TILEMODE 1, the MSPACE/PSPACE setting, Orthographic vs. Perspective view, and Hidden line mode may affect this flag. If you are sure you should be able to zoom, you can override this in the driver CONFIGURE dialog as follows: CONFIGURE DRIVER OPTIONS BirdsEye when zoomable/Always allow BirdsEye Q. When I configure the "Display List Page Size", I don't see any difference between large and small page size values, why? A. Perhaps the drawing is very small. The only time you will see any significant difference is with a large drawing. The driver uses between 4 and 16 bytes of display list memory per vector. This ADI driver is able to process the display list so fast that unless you have more than about 20,000 vectors in your drawing, the page size setting has little visible effect. This control is mainly intended for extremely large drawings, where it is necessary to trade off response time versus the amount of detail in the Real-Time BirdsEye View. Through extensive testing, it has been determined that the default value of 4K (4096) bytes is the optimum value for response and redraw speed. HINTS: - You may wish to set it to a larger value to force more of the drawing to be updated at the sacrifice of smoothness of panning. - You may wish to set it to a smaller value if your drawing has small groups of entities all over the page, (i.e. lots of notes, dimensions, etc.). - You may precisely specify the page size with the @VENDOR@PAGESIZEnnn command, where "nnn" is the number of kilobytes per page. - If you wish to save this setting, issue the command WRITE_CONFIG. - Entering @VENDOR@PAGESIZE with no parameter will display the current @VENDOR@PAGESIZE setting. - If you use the 32-bit display list option, you may want to increase the page size to approx. 32K bytes. Q. When using the _BHATCH command and I select an interior point in a region, the regions outline disappears until I select a hatch pattern. A. This is a problem common to all display list drivers. AutoCAD instructs the driver to erase (draw in the background color) the outline while the _BHATCH dialog box is present. Non display-list drivers do not cause this problem. If you find this problem bothersome, please report it to your Autodesk representative. Q. How do I change the initial position of the Command Palette? A. The positions of both the Command Palette and the BirdsEye view are saved in the driver's configuration file. To change their locations, simply move and size the windows as desired then type "WRITE_CONFIG" to save the current settings. Q. What does the Escape key do in this driver? A. It works in the usual (AutoCAD) manner, it implements the "CANCEL" function in a Dialog box. Q. Where is the driver's configuration data stored? A. There is a binary data file stored in the same directory as the ADI driver. Its base file name is either the contents of the "USER" environment variable or the default name. It has a file name extension of ".cnf". Q. Why do certain operations like scripts and hide run slowly? A. Certain commands generate significant text output. If you notice lots of text scrolling on the text screen and even in the command prompt area, and would like to speed this up: Select "Single Screen Mode" in the "Driver Options" configuration menu. This eliminates the need for the text screen to be constantly updated. You may also reduce the number of prompt lines in the Configure menu, or better yet, disable the command prompt area all together in the AutoCAD Configuration menu. Q. Why do thin horizontal and vertical polylines disappear randomly? A. This is due to the way GL renders polygons (AutoCAD draws PLINES as filled polygons). When the rendered size of a polygon gets small, it may not cover enough of a screen pixel to be visible and thus is not drawn to avoid cluttering the screen. There are two methods you may use to fix this: Configure the driver to always outline polygons with the @VENDOR@OUTLINE command. e.g: @VENDOR@OUTLINE1 enables polygon outlines. Or, in AutoCAD, set the FILLMODE variable off will convert polygons to a vector outline which always are drawn. e.g: FILLMODE 0 Note: A _REGEN will be needed after changing FILLMODE. Q. What is AVE Render? (R12) A. AVE Render is a 32-bit rendering program that converts AutoCAD 3D line drawings with shaded surfaces into realistic pictures that show perspective, surface shading, and the effects of lighting. Q. What does this ADI driver provide for AVE Render? (R12) A. This ADI driver is a full combined ADI rendering/display driver. As such, it is capable of functioning as both the display screen for the AutoCAD user-interface, as well as the rendering screen for the final image output. This driver supports "Continuous Color" rendering with scan line read and write capability. "Continuous Color" rendering is available on both 8 and 24-bit hardware. In "Continuous Color" modes, the "Smooth Shading" option (i.e. Gouraud shading) is supported in hardware. Depending upon the image, this feature allows up to 30X speedup over the unassisted, software-based rendering process used in Quick Shade mode. Finally, this driver is capable of accepting and caching the 3D display list from AVE Render (selected with the 3DFACES command in AVE Render). In this mode, 3D polygons are sent to the driver, in batches, for hardware-assisted rendering. This process is typically 5-10 times faster than the 2D rendering process, and in addition, once the 3D data is captured, it can be re-displayed 10 times faster yet. Q. How many lights are available with this driver? (R12) A. This driver, being written to the GL API, has a total of eight direct light sources in addition to the ambient light source. The direct light sources may be infinite or spotlights and there is hardware support for all of AVE Render's lighting attenuation models. In addition to the standard AVE Render lighting support, this ADI driver also supports colored lights when 3DFACES is enabled. If 3DFACES is not enabled, AVE Render will only support white light color. Unfortunately, AVE Render does not send spot light information to the driver. NOTES: 1) The "Light Color" option is normally disabled in AVE Render. To enable light color selection, simply select the "RMan Prompting" button in the "Render Preferences" dialog box. 2) If you do work with RenderMan, this feature will allow you to preview your light colors and intensities from within AutoCAD. 3) There is one stipulation in using light attenuation with local lights. In the GL API, the lighting attenuation constants are bound to the global lighting model, not to each light source as in AVE Render. The ADI driver will bind the last attenuation factor/mode to the lighting model. Therefore, if you wish to use attenuation, be sure to use the same point light fall-off mode and scale factors for all the lights in the scene. It has been observed, that AVE Render sends down the light definitions in alphabetical order of the light names. 4) After modifying light parameters, it will be necessary to re-RENDER the scene, in order for the updated light parameters to be sent to the driver. 5) There is no hardware support for the "Inverse Square" point light fall-off option or for Spot lights. Q. How many materials are available with this driver? (R12) A. This driver, being written to the GL API, has a maximum limit of 65,535 materials. However, the driver has limited the number of materials to only 16,383. If you need more, please let us know so that the limit can be increased. All of AVE Render's material properties are supported in hardware. Q. How do I use AVE Render to best advantage with this driver? (R12) A. You should set the following AVE Render preferences: - Full Render (Quick render is actually slower) - Smooth Shading (for objects with curved surfaces) - Apply Finishes (Sends material properties to the driver) - Best Map/No Fold (Uses maximum number of colors) - RMan Prompting (Allows colored lights and spotlights) And then enable the 3DFACES option. In this manner, you are instructing AVE Render to do the following: - Send only polygons to the ADI driver. - Send faces with surface normals for proper lighting calculations. - Use the hardware-assisted lighting and material calculations. - Use all available colors. Since this driver runs in True-Color mode, you don't have to worry about color flashing. Additional hints: - When using the 3DFACES option, you do not have to worry about overlapping faces, as the hardware z-buffer will remove them from view quickly. - With the hardware z-buffer, the options to sort by intersection and obscuration are meaningless and have no effect. - If you have carefully drawn faces in AutoCAD such that the polygons are properly oriented (see the Render Reference Manual for more information), you can enable the "Discard Back Faces" option in the "Render Preferences: More Options" dialog box. This may increase the 3D drawing speed of your model. However, if this option is enabled and parts of your drawing do not render, turn it off. - Set the density of polygon meshes such that the maximum angle between faces is less that 45 degrees. For instance, in a cylinder (360 degrees in circumference) make sure there are more than 8 facets around the cylinder. Be advised that setting the mesh density too high will significantly slow down the rendering and display process. This attribute is usually controlled by the system variables SURFTAB1 and SURFTAB2. If using extruded 2D entities (like circles) this is controlled with the VIEWRES command. Q. Why doesn't all my drawing show up when I render it? (R12) A. AVE Render only renders polygonal drawing entities. If you would like to render linear entities, such as text, circles, etc, you may assign a thickness or extrusion dimension to them. Q. When I use the AutoCAD LIST command, my graphics screen freezes up, what is happening? A. LIST is one of several AutoCAD commands that require output to the text screen. Most likely, you are running in a single monitor configuration. As such, the display driver needs to "know about" your screen configuration. If you are running in a "single-screen" mode (i.e. you have the VGA-passthrough cable connected) you need to do one of the following: 1) In the DOS IV_CONF program, select "One Monitor", In AutoCAD, run "CONFIGURE", In "Driver Options" select "Default Screen Mode" - or - 2) In AutoCAD, run "CONFIGURE", In "Driver Options" select "Single Screen Mode". Then save the configuration by selecting "OK". HINT: If this happens and you're stuck, just hit the "F1" key and you will flip to the active screen. Q. When I installed my updated ADI display driver, why do I get "Invalid Configuration Data" messages from AutoCAD. A. When you install a new version of the display driver, AutoCAD will assume that the same configuration (ACAD.CFG) is to be used. If the updated driver detects a older version of the configuration data, it will inform AutoCAD, thus this message. To tell AutoCAD you wish to update this data, enter the Configuration Menu and select the "Video Display" option. When asked if you want a new driver, enter "Y", then hit "Enter" to select the default entry (which is actually the same one you had before). Now, when you save the configuration data, you will be saving the new copy, not the old. Q. When I change screen font, why does the driver go back to the old one? A. AutoCAD will only allow certain configuration values to be changed while in the "Drawing Editor". Screen font (actually character size), and number of prompt lines are values that AutoCAD will only recognize when the Drawing Editor is being initialized. The ADI driver will display a warning box notifying you of this situation. If this warning box appears, you should exit as soon as possible. To have the settings take affect, simply return to the AutoCAD "Main Menu" and then re-enter the "Drawing Editor". Q. Why do I sometimes get errors about not enough files? A. AutoCAD Installation and Performance guide recommends a minimum files value of 40 (i.e. FILES=40 in CONFIG.SYS). We have seen some machines where 50 is a better value. Remember, you need to reboot your computer for the new value to take effect. Q. When I use this ADI driver on my NTSC or PAL monitor, the screen menus are partially off screen or too much of the screen is blank, how do I fix that? A. In video mode, the driver sets the graphics card to underscan the image such that it will fit on the visible part of the screen when in a display-type mode. If the default value is not correct for your monitor, it will be necessary to override it with the ADI_UNDERSCAN environment variable. To do this, add the following line to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file: SET ADI_UNDERSCAN=nn where nn is a number in the range of 1 to 25. This value represents the percentage of the available screen width and height to leave blank on each edge of the monitor. For example, an NTSC user (640x480 resolution) with 10% underscan would have a useful display resolution of 640-(2*64) x 480-(2*48) or 512x384 NOTE: In rendering modes, the full video resolution is used so that the rendered image will fill the entire video frame. Q. When I use this ADI driver on my NTSC or PAL monitor, the screen colors are washed out or too bright, how do I fix that? A. In video mode, the driver sets the maximum color saturation to be used in display-type modes to prevent undue "ringing" of the video signal for highly saturated colors (like bright red). With a composite NTSC/PAL video signal, it is difficult for monitors and VCRs to represent sharp transitions between colors, resulting in ringing or shadows, especially around text. If your video equipment is of high quality, you may want to adjust the saturation value to more closely match the rendered colors (which are uncorrected). If the default value is not correct for your monitor, it will be necessary to override it with the ADI_SATURATION environment variable. To do this, add the following line to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file: SET ADI_SATURATION=nn where nn is a number in the range of 50 to 100. This value represents the maximum saturation percentage of any color on the display screen. For example, with 100% saturation, full-intensity red is red, while at 50% saturation, it is pink. Q. What is AutoShade, version 2? A. AutoShade is a 32-bit rendering program that converts AutoCAD 3D line drawings with shaded surfaces into realistic pictures that show perspective, surface shading, and the effects of lighting. Q. What does this ADI driver provide for AutoShade? A. This ADI driver is a full combined ADI rendering/display driver. As such, it is capable of functioning as both the display screen for the AutoShade user-interface, as well as the rendering screen for the final image output. This driver supports both "256 Color" and "Continuous Color" rendering with scan line read and write capability. "Continuous Color" rendering is available on both 8 and 24-bit hardware. In addition, when "Continuous Color" mode is selected, a second option of hardware alpha-blending (or 32 bits per pixel color) is offered. In this mode, in addition to 8 bits of red, green and blue color information, there is an additional 8 bits of alpha-channel information which is used in anti-aliasing calculations and in merging multiple rendered images. Be aware, that this option will reduce the number of pixels that may be passed from AutoShade at a time, and that it is somewhat slower than the standard "Continuous Color" mode. In "Continuous Color" modes, the "Smooth Shading" option (i.e. Gouraud shading) is supported in hardware. Depending upon the image, this feature allows up to 30X speedup over the unassisted, software-based rendering process. In addition, the "Contrast Stretching" feature of AutoShade is now supported by this driver. This allows the rendered image to use the full dynamic intensity range of the monitor. The optional z-buffer allows for fast flip-screen operation in a single screen (i.e. display and rendering) mode, as the z-buffer is used to store the previously rendered image while in display mode. Support for all video resolutions is provided. In addition, the NTSC and PAL modes support underscan video during display mode and overscan video for rendering mode. This feature allows for full-frame video recording of the rendered image. Q. What is AutoShade with RenderMan? A. RenderMan is an optional software product that runs inside of AutoShade, allowing photo-realistic image rendering of AutoCAD 3D drawing files. RenderMan allows texture and displacement mapping, anti-aliased polygons, as well as depth-cueing and fog atmospheric effects. Q. What does this ADI driver provide for RenderMan? A. This ADI driver is a full combined ADI rendering/display driver. As such, it is capable of functioning as both the display screen for the AutoShade user-interface, as well as the RenderMan screen for the final image output. This driver supports both "256 Color" and "Continuous Color" rendering with scan line read and write capability. "Continuous Color" rendering is available on both 8 and 24-bit hardware. The optional z-buffer allows for fast flip-screen operation in a single screen (i.e. display and rendering) mode, as the z-buffer is used to store the previously rendered image while in display mode. Support for all video resolutions is provided. In addition, the NTSC and PAL modes support overscan video for rendering mode. This feature allows for full-frame video recording of the rendered image. Q. How should I configure AutoShade for this ADI driver? A. This driver will work as both the AutoShade display driver for menus and wireframe display, as well as the rendering driver for shaded and RenderMan images. You may therefore choose either one of the above scenarios, or both. AutoShade is most useful when run as a dual- screen system. A typical configuration is to use the VGA card and monitor as the AutoShade display screen and this ADI driver as the rendering screen, either in high-resolution for output only, or with an NTSC or PAL video recorder for video-taping the rendered frame. This configuration will allow you to change AutoShade settings while still observing the rendered image on the other screen. If you are using a single-monitor setup with VGA pass-through, it is recommended that you still select the VGA for the display and this ADI driver for the rendering screen. If you do this, you will need to tell AutoShade that both displays share the same monitor, but that a _REDRAW is not required to "FLIP-SCREEN". You may also choose this ADI driver as both the display and rendering screen. In this mode you will need to answer "YES" when asked if a _REDRAW is needed for a "FLIP-SCREEN". You will notice a slight slowdown in AutoShade pull-down menu speed in this mode. It is normal, and is a result of having to save the rendered image in the z-buffer (if installed) or in system memory. The one setup you may NOT use is single- monitor with this ADI display driver and VGA (or other internal driver) for rendering. In this mode, AutoShade will not issue the appropriate commands to cause the VGA pass-through circuitry to operate properly. If you get into this situation, simply type "ALT-CRASH" to return to DOS and the reconfigure AutoShade (i.e. SHADE /R) and change to a different configuration. Q. What is "Continuous Color" rendering? A. This term is used by AutoShade/RenderMan to denote 24-bit color or true-color rendering. We chose to use this terminology as well. The graphics hardware is capable of performing both 256-color rendering as well as true-color rendering, on both 8 and 24-bit systems. It would be a little confusing to prompt for 24-bit color when a user had an 8-bit system. Q. How does hardware support for "Smooth Shading" help me? A. For a performance comparison of hardware-assisted smooth shading versus that of unassisted shading, the following comparisons were done with this ADI AutoShade driver using the AutoShade "FAST SHADE" function: File Triangles H/W Shading S/W Shading Increase (name) (number) (seconds) (seconds) (times) KITCHEN 1539 5 14 3x PUSHPINS 1062 6 141 24x SKATETRK 11474 37 1074 29x The above timings were performed at 1280x1024 resolution on a cached 386/387 33MHz computer. Note that the KITCHEN drawing has very few rounded surfaces, meaning that most of its triangle faces are rendered with flat shading. Q. Why doesn't the "Save Image" command save the entire image? A. AutoShade does not support Continuous Color scan line read-back at pixel widths greater than 1003 (or 750 with alpha-blending) pixels. Therefore, this driver will limit scan line read-backs to this limit. If you need to save images that are wider than this limit, either enable the "Record" function before rendering the image, or render to a file, or save the image in two strips, both less than 1003/750 pixels wide. A similar situation can exist with the "MERGE IMAGE" option the the Renderman menu. In the "MERGE IMAGE" mode, scan-lines of data are read back from the screen, internally blended with the rendered image, then written back to the screen. If the region "read-back" exceeds the buffer size, the driver will limit the data returned to AutoShade (to prevent the application for aborting), and you may notice some erroneous pixels on the screen. If this happens, disable the "MERGE IMAGE" function and re-render. Q. How should I set up my AutoShade SHADERFILE variable? A. Set the variable as follows: 1280x1024: SET SHADERFILE=1280,1024,1,1,256,255,256 1024x768: SET SHADERFILE=1024,768,1,1,256,255,256 PAL: SET SHADERFILE=768,576,1,1,256,255,256 NTSC: SET SHADERFILE=640,480,1,1,256,255,256 Q. Why isn't the full screen used in display mode? A. AutoShade has a requirement that the display-mode screen size be an exact multiple of the size of the graphics text font in use. If the font does not fit the screen exactly, the extra rows and columns are unused. Possible fixes are to select a combination of screen and font size to eliminate the unused space, use a black background color (you won't notice the unused pixels) or use another driver for the display screen (like the VGA driver). Q. What is 3D Studio? A. 3D Studio is a rendering and animation program that converts AutoCAD 3D line drawings with shaded surfaces into realistic pictures that show perspective, surface shading, the effects of lighting, in addition to keyframe animation of both object and viewer. 3D Studio allows the application of textures to surfaces. Q. What does this ADI driver provide for 3D Studio? A. This ADI driver is a full combined ADI rendering/display driver. As such, it is capable of functioning as both the display screen for the 3D Studio user-interface or as as the rendering screen for the final image output. This driver supports both 256 color and Continuous Color (24 bit color) rendering. Continuous color rendering is available on both 8 and 24-bit hardware. In addition, when "Continuous Color" mode is selected, a second option of hardware alpha-blending (or 32 bits per pixel) is offered. In this mode, in addition to 8 bits of red, green and blue color information, there is an additional 8 bits of alpha- channel information which is used in anti-aliasing calculations and in merging multiple rendered images. Support for all four video resolutions is provided. In addition, the NTSC and PAL modes support underscan video during display mode and overscan video for rendering mode. This feature allows for full-frame video recording of the rendered image. Q. How do I configure 3D Studio for this ADI driver? A. This driver will support Autodesk's 3D Studio in one of the following two modes: 1) Rendering display v1: (3ds.set: DEFAULT-DISPLAY = RCPADI) v2: (3ds.set: RENDER-DISPLAY = RCPADI) 2) Main display v1: (3ds.set: MAIN-DISPLAY = RCPADI) v2: (3ds.set: MAIN-DISPLAY = RCPADI) To set up 3D Studio to use this ADI driver, do the following: 1) In AUTOEXEC.BAT, set the RCPADI environment variable: SET RCPADI=d:\path\RCIVx.EXP "d:\path" is the directory you installed the ADI driver. "x" is "A" for AT bus, or "M" for MicroChannel bus. 2) For rendering-only support, change the 3DS.SET file to read: v1: (3ds.set: DEFAULT-DISPLAY = RCPADI) v2: (3ds.set: RENDER-DISPLAY = RCPADI) 3) For main display support, change the 3DS.SET file to read: v1: (3ds.set: MAIN-DISPLAY = RCPADI) v2: (3ds.set: MAIN-DISPLAY = RCPADI) 4) For materials display support, change the 3DS.SET file to read: MATERIAL-DISPLAY = VGA The materials display is designed to work most effectively with the VGA screen at a resolution of 320x200 with 256 colors. To quote from the 3ds.set file from version 2: "Note that using the RCPADI interface for the Materials Editor is basically pointless, and will only slow you down without actually using the extra real estate." NOTES: 1) Do NOT attempt to run this driver as both DEFAULT/RENDER-DISPLAY and MAIN-DISPLAY as it will NOT work. This is due to a known problem in 3D Studio. 2) If using a dual-screen setup, with RCPADI rendering, the rendering screen (and image) will be cleared when you return to the display/editing mode. This is due the way 3D Studio manages drivers. When you switch modes, the rendering driver is shut down, causing the screen to clear. Q. How should I answer the 3D Studio question about RCPADI on a separate monitor? A. If you are running with VGA pass-through, you should answer no, and if you have two monitors, answer yes. Q. If I set the wrong configuration, how do I correct it? A. 3D Studio has no "re-configure" option. Therefore, it is necessary that you remove its configuration file as follows: - From the top-level 3D Studio directory: del 3dadi.cfg - Then re-run 3D Studio. 7. TROUBLESHOOTING: Error and warning messages may occur in a number of different places depending on how the program was started and where the error occurred. The following list of error and warning messages is grouped by where the message is usually displayed. Following each message is a description of the message and and a solution, if appropriate. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I was running Autocad R12 when the power went out (or some other unexpected occurence). After rebooting, trying to start acad back up produced an error saying that it could not open the acad.mnx file because it was temporarily locked. I tried deleting this file and reinstalling it but I always get the same result (even after rebooting). I can't find anything to unlock this file. What gives? AutoCAD 'locks' files by the following method: file.xyz -> file.xyk file.xyk -> file.xyl The first thing to try, is use AutoCAD's File/Utilities/Unlock file menu option. The last line of defense is to: @IRIX-BGN rm -f *.??k For the more adventursome, try adding this 'alias' to your ~/.cshrc file: alias lean_up rm -f *.??k *.ac$ auto.sv$ *.err *.bak core This will clean up most of AutoCAD's temporary files. Be careful not to run either of these commands while other AutoCAD sessions are running. @IRIX-END DEL *.??k ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "AutoCAD indicates this viewport may not be zoomable." As discussed in the Frequently Asked Questions section, the driver is passing along information from AutoCAD. In R12, besides TILEMODE 1, the MSPACE/PSPACE setting, Orthographic vs. Perspective view, and Hidden line mode may affect this flag. If you are sure you should be able to zoom, you can override this in the driver CONFIGURE dialog as follows: CONFIGURE DRIVER OPTIONS BirdsEye when zoomable/Always allow BirdsEye ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Boom!!! Memory capacity exceeded (nnn requested) ..." "..." "ADS terminated" "C:RENDER" This is often caused when using the "Smooth Shading" option on drawings that are not capable of smooth shading. A fix is to disable the "Smooth Shading" option in the "Render/Preferences" dialog box. Since the drawing is not capable of smooth shading, the display will be the same either way. If the problem continues, contact your AutoCAD dealer or Autodesk for assistance. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Configuration file problems: After starting the application, you notice strange colors on the screen or other behavior from the display driver. This situation is often caused be a corrupted or older driver configuration file. A solution is to delete the existing file and then restarting the application. This will cause the display driver to write out a new configuration file with the default settings in it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Command Palette problems: If you get only a simple Command Palette, that is there is only one palette, most likely, the driver is unable to find the actual Command Palette resource text files. If this happens, the driver will present you with a simple Command Palette from its internal memory. The search strategy for the Command Palette file is similar to the way AutoCAD searches for its menu files, that is: 1. Look for the file in the current directory. 2. Search the driver's installation directory for the file. 3. If 1 and 2 fail, use the last file that was loaded. 4. If 1-3 fail, use the internal image. The internal Command Palette looks like this: -------------------------------------------------------- R-T Bird BirdsEye Clean DL *Config* ZoomVmax Zoom Win Zoom Ext Zoom Prv Pan Left Pan Up Pan Down PanRight *Layer* 2D Pline 3D Pline Text *Cancel* *Erase* *Move* *Vports* -------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "FATAL ERROR: Divide by zero" This is often caused by an invalid application configuration file. A fix is to reconfigure the application, for example: shade2 -r ; AutoShade 2.0 acad386 -r ; AutoCAD R12 Note that some applications offer no "reconfigure" option from the command line. Therefore, it is necessary to enter the configuration dialog and select new drivers or erase the existing application configuration file. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Phar Lap Err 74: Can't use REAL BREAK under this version of DPMI" This is caused when you try to run AutoCAD (the DOS version) while from a Windows DOS prompt. See Appendix C.5. following. ############################################################################ ############################################################################ APPENDICES ############################################################################ ############################################################################ ############################################################################ A. TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS: ADI Interface Level: 4.2 (also supports ADI 4.0 and 4.1 clients) ADI Functionality: Combined Display/Rendering (i.e. DEV_RC) Display Modes: Separate Single and Dual screen modes Display Resolution: Any hardware-supported resolution Number of colors: Display mode: 256 Render mode: True-Color (16.8 M) User-interface: True-Color, 16.8 M) Line drawing modes: Solid, XOR, highlight and dashed. Filled polygon modes: Hardware supported. Text display: Supports 7 and 8 bit character sets. Fast grid support: Yes. Scanline support: Yes, both read and write. Scanline data formats: 32 bit per pixel (8 bits Red-Green-Blue-Alpha) 24 bit per pixel (8 bits Red-Green-Blue) 8 bit per pixel (256 color index) Raster cursor: Yes, hardware supported. Advanced User Interface: Supported. - Uses off-screen memory, if available. Number of active viewports: 64 Maximum display list size: Unlimited. - To virtual memory extents. Display list coordinate size: Supports both 16- and 32-bit display lists Display list interface: Supports batch vectors and polygons Display list cleaning: Optional real-time cleaning mode Display List Management: Variable page-size architecture with polygon, line and point entities, with polyline compression up to 16,384 connected vertices Dragging support: Full-color dragging with unlimited data - To virtual memory extents. - Selectable: on or off. User-programmability: Unlimited number of Command Palettes Localization: All message and command files external and user-customizable BirdsEye View: Real Time and Full Color versions available User-selectable size and location 3D View Selection: Supports VPOINT and DVIEW options - Virtual trackball VPOINT interface - Camera position - Target position - View twist - Zoom or lens length - Viewing distance Number of light sources: 1 ambient light source 8 direct light sources of any type: - Distant light - Point light Number of materials: 16,383 Zbuffer depth: 24 bit resolution Rendering Display Modes: 13 consisting of: - Gouraud (smooth) shaded (1 and 2-sided) - Flat shaded (1 and 2-sided) - Hidden line - Wireframe - Lit lines - Depth-cue lines - Single line - Points - Lit points - Depth-cue points - Single point ############################################################################ B. CONFIGURABLE OPTIONS: The following driver options are configurable: - Default/Single/Dual screen modes. - Cursor, grid, and marker color. - Graphics area background color. - Text area background color. - Text color. - Border line color. - Alert box background color. - Alert box foreground color. - Alert box border color. - Menu bar background color. - Menu bar foreground color. - Menu bar border color. - Pop-up menu background color. - Pop-up menu foreground color. - Pop-up menu border color. - Dialogue box background color. - Dialogue box foreground color. - Dialogue box border color. - Dialogue box line drawing color color. - Display list Mode: Regular and Real Time Cleaning. - Display list dragging: on or off. - Button click and hold time (clock ticks). - Double Buffer mode for real-time pan, zoom and rotate. - Display list page size (1 Kb to 256 Kb). - Number of lines of command prompt text. - Number of characters of sidebar menu text. - Command Palette state after use (On, Iconified, Off). - Update frame rate (clock ticks). - Polygon outline mode (on/off). - Display list coordinate size (32-bit or 16-bit). - Graphics text font. ############################################################################ C. TECHNICAL INFORMATION: This section is intended to describe the capabilities of this display driver for the 3rd party software developer wishing to make use of the capabilities of it. This section assumes a high degree of knowledge of the ADI interface specification of the reader. This information only applies to AutoCAD R12 and the ADI 4.2 interface. C.1. ADS-ADI Link Introduction: The ADS->ADI link design was driven by the needs of AVE Render as an ADS application, but has been generalized where possible to accommodate other ADS applications. Work to date has been mostly on the combined rendering and display interface. The use of the ADS->ADI link requires a thorough understanding of both ADI driver development and ADS application development. This is not a task to take lightly! Don't think this is a simple way to implement a new user- interface widget, for example. Also, keep in mind that ADI drivers, especially old ones, vary in their behavior. One goal of the design is to have drivers behave as similarly as possible in processing packets, regardless of the product in control. Another goal is to provide drivers with enough information about the controlling product (or application) so that products or applications which fail to meet the first goal can still be correctly handled by drivers (as a special case). Another design goal is to minimize the overloading of packets; to make explicit requests for actions by the driver instead of implied requests (i.e., to reduce the state dependencies in packet handling). Only one application at a time is "in control" of a driver, though in the case of the display, applications may leave images behind on the screen after giving up control. Each time an ADS application takes over a driver, the episode is surrounded with "bookend" packets and core actions. The core actions are intended to force the driver into a known and more or less stable state (unless AutoCAD's state is too unstable to allow a takeover, in which case it will be refused). The bookend packets (PWHO) are intended to inform the driver as unambiguously as possible about the state of the controlling product. See the "Extended DEV_RC Specification" section, later in this document, for sample pseudo-code which makes a typical ADS->ADI interaction clearer. ADS->ADI Link Transport Layer: The link transport layer occurs in two cases: in one case, an ADS application takes over a driver loaded by AutoCAD; in the second case, the ADS application loads an ADI driver directly. At the moment, AVE Render is the only ADS application that can load ADI drivers directly. +----<-------+-----<-----------------------------+ | | adi packets | | +-->-------|---+->---------------------------\/ ^ | | \/ ^ +----------+ | | +-----------+--+ +--------------+ |adi packet| +------------+ | | | | | |--->| common |--->| | | | | | | |<---| buffer |<---| | | | | ADS APP |-->| AUTODESK | +----------+ | | | | | | | | | ADI DRIVER | | | |e.g., AVE |<--| PRODUCT | +----------+ | | | | | Render | | |<---|dispatcher|<---|(DEV_RC or | | | | | | | | service | | DEV_DS) | | | | | | |--->| module |--->| | | | +--------------+ +--------------+ |common mem| +------------+ | | ^ | +----------+ | | | | ^ \/ | | | \/ | | | | +--------------+ | | | | | |>------------------------+ | | +-<| | | | | | | | | ADI DRIVER |<---------------------------+ +--->| | dispatcher packets | (DEV_RH or | | DEV_RD) | | | +--------------+ FIGURE: Code flow for transport layers. ADS Application Talking to an AutoCAD-Loaded Driver: In the current Phar Lap implementation, the ADS application is responsible for constructing a properly formed ADI packet in the common memory buffer before calling the ads_dscfg() and ads_dsxqt() entry points. For AutoCAD 386, ADS applications can gain access to the same common memory buffer used by AutoCAD for communication with protected mode ADI drivers. ADS applications can fill the packet buffer with a packet and then call either ads_dscfg() or ads_dsxqt(). These are ADS requests which call into AutoCAD core where packet throttling takes place (to block illegal packet codes). AutoCAD core then calls the ADI driver's CFG or XQT entry point, eventually returning to the ADS application, leaving the reply packet (if any) in the common memory buffer. AutoCAD core still handles dispatcher services normally. ADS Application Loads an ADI Driver Directly: AVE Render loads a DEV_RH ADI 4.2 driver. This is done with the old environment variable (RHPADI) or magic file name (adirndhc.exp). In other words, AVE Render does not currently have access to AutoCAD's driver search code; it still uses the old methods of driver location and loading. The ADI driver makes its dispatcher requests normally, putting dispatcher packets into the dispatcher common memory buffer and calling AVE Render for service through adientry(). AVE Render leaves the dispatcher packet in the common memory buffer (it is common to ADI, ADS and AutoCAD) and makes an ADS request to AutoCAD for dispatcher service (ads_dispt()). AutoCAD satisfies the request and returns to AVE Render which then returns to the ADI driver. Overview of ADS->ADI Display Interaction: Since AutoCAD is not aware of the contents of the packets sent by an ADS application to an ADI display driver, these packets should not include "drawing" vectors. ADS applications should send only nondrawing vectors and polygons in via the ADS->ADI link. If an application wants to add "drawing" vectors or polygons to the AutoCAD drawing, this should be done through normal ADS requests (such as ads_entmake()). An ADS application is able to take over the currently configured ADI display driver (providing it is ADI 4.2), if no other application has control at the moment and if AutoCAD is not in an unstable state. The first step toward gaining control is to establish communication with an ads_adiinfo() request. This is allowed at any time. The application may then intermittently take control of the display and relinquish control. Each time the application takes over, it sends ads_adistart() and each time it relinquishes control it sends ads_adiend(). AutoCAD might refuse an ads_adistart() if another application has control of the display at the moment or if AutoCAD is in an unstable state. It is the application's responsibility to send packets to the display driver telling it to save and restore regions of the screen which may be damaged, palettes, etc. For further programming information, you should consult the ADI 4.2 ToolKit documentation and the remainder of this file for driver-specific information. C.2. Supported ADS-ADI packets After establishing the ADS-ADI link, your ADS application can issue commands to this ADI driver via AutoCAD's "packet throttle" function. The following is a list of packets that the "throttle" allows to be passed to the ADI driver: Following is a list of packets allowed at configuration-time: PWHO RDWHO RDLANG RPCHGCFG RPNEWCFG RPSHOWCFG Following is a list of packets allowed at execution-time (including all 3D packets): PWHO PINIT PBOXCLR PBOXPUSH PBOXPOP PCFGREC PCHAR PCLEAR PCLVP PDOT PDRAG PECHAR PFILL PQPLOT PREDRAW PSYNC PTEXT PVEC PBIGBLIT PDINFO PDCURS PCCURS PMARK PBMARK PCMARK PCBMARK PHLITE PDHLITE PCOORDLINE PMODELINE PMNUCURS PTPROMPT PWRSPLIT PGOGRAPH PGOTEXT PGOTEXTU PRPEN PRPEN_42 PPAL RDCMAP RDWHO RDCLEAR RDCMAPB RDCMAPE RDCPOLY RDCRANGE RDEND RDFNAME RD_FGRAB RD_INFO RDINIT RDPOLY RDRCMAP RDRSLINE RDSTART RDWSLINE RPCFGREC PVIEW PORTHO PPERSP POSEG PCSEG PDSEG PPOLY3 PNPOLY3 PCPOLY3 PVEC3 PLIGHT PDLIGHT PSETCOLOR PSETMATL PMODEL PDRAWSEG P3D PBPOLY3 Following is a list of packets that AutoCAD does NOT allow at execution-time. You should also note that the default is to NOT allow any packet that is not on the list of allowed packets. POPENVP POPENBVP PCLOSEVP PVIEWPORT PBVIEWPORT PLOPEN PKZOOM PKBZOOM PREVEC PROPENVP PLANG PMAXVP PNEWCFG PSHOWCFG PTABCFG PCOMMAND PSTRING PTERM RDETAIL RDTERM RPCHGCFG RPNEWCFG RPSHOWCFG The following is the state of the ADI driver when AutoCAD hands control over to the ADS application: (This is done for you by AutoCAD) - No dragging - No cursors on screen - No dialogues up - Nothing highlighted on the menu - Be sure we are on the graphic screen (e.g. gograph()) The following is the state of the ADI driver when the ADS application returns control to AutoCAD: (This must be done by the ADS application) - No dragging in progress. - No cursors on screen - No dialogues up - Nothing highlighted on the menu - Be sure we are on the graphic screen (e.g. gograph()) C.3. 3D Capabilities This display driver is fully capable of handling the ADI 4.2 PBATCHPOLY entry point for accepting 3D display data. All of the rendering ADI packets are supported for defining materials, lights, viewing and projection transformations, etc. This driver also supports the optional EDGEx flags during rendering. This feature is especially useful for hidden line display, where, for example, 4-sided polygons are split into two adjacent triangles sharing one edge. If this edge is marked as "invisible" only the original 4 sides will be displayed, but not the "artificial" diagonal line. C.4. Double-buffering If the display hardware supports a double-buffered RGB rendering mode and the user has selected a double-buffered configuration, an ADS application may control the display and update buffers programmatically, via the PVPAGE packet. The internal logic used is that if the selected ACTIVE_PAGE field is equal to the selected VISUAL_PAGE field, then both display buffers are enabled for update and display. If these fields are not equal, then the front and back buffers are swapped, such that the previous back buffer is now displayed and the previous front buffer is enabled for update. As GL does not keep track (or care) which buffer is where, all you need to do is make sure the active and visual pages are different to swap buffers. You should be sure to return the driver to the state of both buffers being enabled, that is ACTIVE_PAGE == VISUAL_PAGE. If the driver returns a STATUS == BAD, this is your indication that either the hardware or configuration does not support double-buffering. HINT: Be sure to call PVPAGE with non-equal pages before beginning the rendering process to put the driver into double-buffer mode. This will eliminate the initial screen clean and render. Thus, your code would look something like: ads_iinfo(); /* Get information about driver */ ads_adistart(); /* Starting bookend */ /* Your application can now send packets via ads_dsxqt */ PDINFO(); /* Query driver capabilities */ PVPAGE(0,1); /* Go into double-buffer mode */ while (active) { PCLEAR(); /* Clear the current viewport */ DrawSomeStuff(); PVPAGE(0,1); /* Swap buffers */ } PVPAGE(0,0); /* Return to single-buffer mode */ ads_adiend(); /* Ending bookend */ C.5. Operation under Microsoft Windows This driver is fully compatible with operation under Microsoft Windows. Nothing special has to be done in regards to this driver. However, a number of steps must be taken in order to allow AutoCAD/386 R12 to be run inside of the Windows environment. These include: Copy the file PHARLAP.386 from the AutoCAD R12 directory to the Windows SYSTEM directory, for example: COPY C:\ACAD\PHARLAP.386 C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM Edit the Windows SYSTEM.INI file to include this device driver: EDIT C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM.INI [386Enh] device=pharlap.386 Create a Program Information File (PIF) for AutoCAD/386 R12 with the PIF EDITOR (found in the MAIN Program Group) as follows: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ACAD.PIF ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Program Filename: ACAD.EXE Window Title: AutoCAD/386 R12 Optional Parameters: Start-up Directory: C:\ACAD ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Video Memory: ( ) Text ( ) Low Graphics (X) High Graphics ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Memory Requirements: KB Required: 128 KB Desired: 640 EMS Memory: KB Required: 0 KB Limit: -1 XMS Memory: KB Required: 0 KB Limit: -1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Display Usage: (X) Full Screen Execution: (X) Background ( ) Windowed (X) Exclusive ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ (X) Close Window on Exit ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ADVANCED OPTIONS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Multitasking Options: Background Priority: 50 Foreground Priority: 100 (X) Detect Idle Time ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Memory Options: ( ) EMS Memory Locked ( ) XMS Memory Locked (X) Uses High Memory Area ( ) Lock Application Memory ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Display Options: Monitor Ports: ( ) Text ( ) Low Graphics ( ) High Graphics (X) Emulate Text Mode ( ) Retain VideoMemory ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Other Options: (X) Allow Fast paste ( ) Allow Close When Active Reserve Shortcut Keys: ( ) Alt+Tab ( ) Alt+Esc ( ) Ctrl+Esc ( ) PrtSc ( ) Alt+PrtSc ( ) Alt+Space ( ) Alt+Enter Application Shortcut Key: None ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ After these steps are done, you are now ready to run AutoCAD from inside of Windows. This ADI driver will also work in conjunction with the Windows GDI driver for this board as well. If you are using another graphics board for Windows and you use a separate digitizer for AutoCAD (i.e. not the Windows mouse), you may want to try running AutoCAD's text screen windowed. To do this, check the "Display Usage: Windowed" option. You will need to keep the mouse pointer within the AutoCAD text window to use AutoCAD. If you are using the Windows mouse, this option will not give you full screen access with the mouse in AutoCAD. We find that selecting the "Background Execution" can produce unacceptably slow crosshair and cursor response on slower machines. Remember, do not try "Windowed" if you are using this boards Windows display driver for Windows. A note to users of any Logitech mice or trackballs: In CONFIG.SYS, be sure to use the MOUSE.SYS driver for the Logitech pointing device. In Windows, use the mouse detected in SETUP. In AutoCAD, select the "Microsoft Mouse" not the "Logitech Mouse". AutoCAD's Logitech mouse driver will put the mouse into a special mode that is incompatible with Windows. C.6. Operation with other GL applications. It is possible to execute other GL applications while inside of AutoCAD using this display driver, for example, IrisView. To do so, you must use the following steps: 1. Arrange to leave some extended memory free while in AutoCAD. A good way to do this is with the ACADMAXMEM variable. Set this variable to a number (in bytes) that is about 4MB less than your physical RAM amount. For example, assume you have a 16MB system, you would then use: SET ACADMAXMEM=12000000 2. Inside of AutoCAD, use the SHELL command preceded by a GLSHELL command as follows: GLSHELL SHELL IrisView The GLSHELL commands informs the driver to prepare for a second GL application to take over during the SHELL session. 3. Since IrisView uses a DXF file, you should perform a DXFOUT prior to the SHELL, that way, the current file will be available for viewing. A good use for IrisView is to view your drawing in 3D and as a quick way to make check prints, etc.