Applying and viewing materials

After creating the 3D model, the final step to polish your model and bring it to life is to assign materials to each part. In this section, the application and settings of the different materials in AutoCAD and the creation of new materials and material libraries will be discussed in detail.

Setting the visual style to display materials

The first step to start working with materials is to adjust the visual style settings to properly display materials. As discussed in Chapter 8, Customization Tools, AutoCAD offers different visual styles, which vary the degree of detail and impact on a machine’s performance. Some of these will not display materials or textures, such as 2D Wireframe and Conceptual. Some will only display the material properties (reflectiveness and transparency), such as the visual style called Shaded, and the Realistic visual style will display both the material properties and the textures.

In addition to the existing visual...