D3PLOT 22.1

Properties: Controlling Colour, Drawing Style, Transparency, Lighting Attributes and Overlay of Entities

It is important to understand the distinction between "Properties" and "Settings" in D3PLOT:

Properties	Are attributes of a model, for example part colours.
Settings	Are attributes of the programme and menu interface, for example data component.

A fuller description of these differences is given in What is the difference between a Properties file and a Settings file? .

The PROPS box duplicates the colour setting capabilities of the COLOUR command above (which is kept for backwards compatibility), but provides many more capabilities for improving the visual properties of plots:

Explicit visibility (blanking and entity switch) control.
Mixed display modes (contoured/shaded/hidden/wireframe).
The ability to label items selectively.
Colour setting.
Transparency setting.
Lighting attributes (diffuse brightness and shininess).
Overlay colour and style (solid/free edge/omitted).

These properties may also be changed using Quick-Pick.All of these capabilities are available at <model>, <category (eg part)> and <individual item> level; which makes it possible to tune plots for presentation to any degree. Model properties can be saved and restored, and even applied to different models: see OPTIONS... SAVE and RELOAD: Saving and Restoring Properties. Due to the width of the menu, the option is provided to UNDOCK the menu. This moves it from being docked in the menu area to floating in the Graphics area. DOCK will reverse this process.

From D3PLOT 11.0 onwards, property "states" (unrelated to data states) can be saved using the Save P button in the view panel - see Saved properties.

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