Shading with Edges Inconsistent

[cporter.207875]

Has anyone see this issue. I have two views with exactly the same settings. One view shows the shading exactly as I want it. However, in the other view the shading is so light that it looks as if it isn't shading at all. What could cause this? In the bad view, I turned on the sun settings and set the sun value to 0, just to see if it would change anything. It did make the shading a tad bit darker, but still not as dark as in the good view, and probably light enough not to print.

I've seen this on a couple of jobs by now. One is in 2009 and the other is in 2010. Actually, in the 09 project one view shows correctly and the other view is way too dark. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[bregnier]

You're not talking about a rendered view, just shading with edges, right? That view style as far as I can tell sets shading based upon the angle from the viewer - planes perpendicular to the view show up lightest, etc. It tends to bias towards the light in my experience, so some walls can show up "white" that are some other color. Are there patterns that are vital to the image? A simple rendering might make more sense if the color is vitally important. If you want it to look "softer" try setting the sun settings to 2 am and the exposure to 2.

[bregnier]

One more thing - try checking "use sun position for shaded display" in the Graphic Display Options dialog box and then mess around with the sun position and brightness... you should be able to get a good deal of control over the brightness there.

[cporter.207875]

One more thing - try checking "use sun position for shaded display" in the Graphic Display Options dialog box and then mess around with the sun position and brightness... you should be able to get a good deal of control over the brightness there.

If I check the box to "use sun position," I can get pretty uniform shading in all my views, but I have to turn on shadows and set the shadow value to 0 to make it work the way I need it. However, when I uncheck the "use sun position" box and turn off shadows, the brightness of the shading is unpredictable at best. All the views are floor plans with the same north/south orientation. So if I'm not using the sun position to control shading, what setting controls the brightness and angle of sun? Typically, I just set the material shading to the grayscale I want and it is universal for all views.

This isn't for rendering or anything of that nature. These are mechanical floor plans and we like our ducts and mech equipment to shade so that they "pop" on the architectural background. I know we could just use a solid fill surface pattern, but shading helps to differentiate round duct from rectangular duct. Anyway, most projects we have zero problems with the shading grayscale. Just a couple projects seem to bug out.