"Technical Illustration" Style now too bright

[matt.cullen]

Hi all,

We've recently upgraded to Inventor 2018 from 2016, and I've noticed a change to the technical illustration style that makes it really difficult to use. In 2016, technical illustration provided a really helpful view with high contrast that made it clear where one part ends & another begins. Different parts are shaded with different grey tones. In 2018, the technical illustration looks washed out, all the parts are white and it's a lot harder to distinguish different parts. A simple comparison is below, but as you can appreciate this gets a lot more difficult with more complicated assemblies. As far as I can tell, lighting and other settings are the same. Does anyone know how to change this behaviour? Does it get better in 2019/20? I've searched the forums extensively but can't find anyone else complaining about this, which confuses me.

2018

^ This is how it looks in 2018

2016

^ The same assembly as seen in 2016

[JDMather]

Try different lighting environments.

[matt.cullen]

Hi JD,

Changing the lighting doesn't seem to affect technical illustration in any way (both adjusting brightness and changing the lighting preset). I don't think the problem has anything to do with the lighting, as I said in my post, I'm using identical settings in 2018 as I did in 2016. The issue is with how Inventor chooses to shade the parts.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! It could be related to the lighting style like JD mentioned here. Or, it is related to partially migrated appearance style. Could you share the files here or send them to me ([email protected])? I would like to take a look and see how to make them look the same.

Many thanks!

[matt.cullen]

Hi Johnson,

Thanks for your reply. I probably can't share the files as everything I'm working on is confidential, but the problem isn't specific to any particular files. It happens consistently with any files I open in 2018, and also for other people in the office that I've asked.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi Matt,

Try this real quick. Open one of the part and edit the active appearance. Change something and change it back. Does it look normal now? Another test to confirm my suspicion is to enable Realistic (Ray Tracing) Visual Style. Does it look the same as the regular Shaded View. I bet it looks drastically different.

In terms of data security, we deal with all kinds of security requirement. I can sign NDA if you want. We keep our client files as secure as our own files. Please feel free to share it with me on a cloud drive of your choice or via email if your protocol allows.

Many thanks!

[matt.cullen]

Hi Johnson,

Thanks for your continued help with this. I'll follow up via email shortly.

Best,

Matt