Visual Styles Not Working

[garberadam]

My visual styles in AutoCAD MEP 2008 do not work. If I select 3D Hidden it looks the same as 3D Wireframe. If I select Conceptual or Realistic it shades the object but all the lines are still visable behind it (kinda looks like stained glass!). Has anyone else had this problem?.... How do you fix it?... I already searched through the AUGI forums and all i found was vsfaceopacity should be set to -60.. which mine is.... Any help would be appreciated!.... Thanks

*Well i thought that I had it working, but I came in today and tried to view my model in realistic or conceptual, it is doing the same thing (stained glass) i don't understand what is going on!*

[bruno.vankogelenberg]

If I'm not mistaken, in "Perspective" mode a lot of commands can't be executed. I don't think there's the solution either. Problem is: I can't tell you how to solve it properly without Autocad which isn't installed on this system.

Mvg,

Bruno

[Julesagain]

Not sure if this translates to MEP but in regular AutoCAD (I have 2008) you can right click on the the visual styles from the palette menu (this won't work on the toolbar icon) and edit the Properties of that style. I'd recommend making copies of the Acad basic styles, and playing with the various parameters on your copies instead of the canned AutoCAD versions. Then if you get so far in the weeds with one it doesn't work anymore, just delete it.

The object/scene doesn't update once you're done editing that visual style and save, you have to reapply it to see your changes. But you can do a LOT of tweaking of those basic styles, from showing the isolines or facets through the material, to making them show dashed or very light, to not showing at all. Also experiement with changing the color of the object to change the way the styles display.

I'd have to say, if you aren't seeing what you want to see on screen, keep experimenting, because I haven't come up with one yet I couldn't produce if I did the right combination of steps. Now if I could just come up with a way to show different visual styles for various objects in the same viewport! I'd be set.

If you come up with one you like, copy it, rename it, save it. Then save your CUI and profile stuff so you won't lose it, and so you can export it to another computer if you need to.
Jules

edited:
I just saw your add-on statement and realized I misinterpreted. I had that same problem on one drawing, and it was the viewport setting. Is this happening in model space as well as the viewports? Then maybe it is a performance problem:

Adaptive degradation is a way to control performance of features as you use them.

With adaptive degradation on, if performance goes below the level you specify, effects are turned off or turned down in a certain order until performance returns to an acceptable level. Each visual style sets a degradation order appropriate for itself, based on a master order that you can adjust manually.

You set the performance level in frames per second in the Adaptive Degradation and Performance Tuning dialog box. You can also control the order in which features are turned off when performance slows. For example, if you’re working on your model with a visual style that has shadows and a background, you can move Shadows and Backgrounds to the top of the list so that they degrade first and preserve edge effects that you need while drafting.
(from the AutoCAD help)


I didn't have any luck with the VSOPACITY -60 +60 any of it either, but type in "visual styles, face settings" in the Help file and try the other system variables. I know that on one of my drawings, I had to click 'Conceptual' before I could click 'Realistic', or the whole model would just go black. Since I draw in black on a white background, obviously I had reset some face style value somewhere, and didn't know how to get back from it. There is a mention of "current" face style being saved in the drawing, but discarded as you exit, but I'm thinking it might persist sometimes, esp. if you're stumbling around and not sure of what you're doing (which definitely describes my situation).
So check out the help section, but also give the above style editing steps a try. If you are not applying any materials/textures to your objects, give that a try and see if it fixes any of the problems in the "current" view.
HTH and good luck.
Jules

[JONatMOT]

We are experiencing similar problams in AutoCAD 2008 with the stained glass effect. This is also coming out when we print the views. I have not managed to come up with a definative answer but it does seem to be related to the adaptive settings. We have loaded SP1 and still have the problem.

[dzatto]

We are experiencing similar problams in AutoCAD 2008 with the stained glass effect. This is also coming out when we print the views. I have not managed to come up with a definative answer but it does seem to be related to the adaptive settings. We have loaded SP1 and still have the problem.

I had a similar problem. Also, when I chose "realistic", it looked like x-ray was on. You could see through the walls!
The problem was my template was corrupt. I copy clipped the entire drawing into a new OOTB template and it solved the problem.
I don't know how it got corrupt, but apparenlty it happens sometimes.

[JONatMOT]

We have overcome our problem by changing the VSSILHEDGES system variable to 0 (off) for the conceptual style.