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 the 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 styles, it is possible to change the materials/textures display setting using the VSMATERIALMODE system variable. This has three possible values, which are 0, 1, or 2, and they correspond to the following settings:
- The value 0 corresponds to no materials displayed.
- The value 1 will only display materials.
- The value 2 will display both materials and textures.
You can also switch between these three settings using the tool button found in the Materials panel on the Visualize tab in both the 3D Modeling and 3D Basics workspaces. The location of the tool button in the 3D Modeling workspace is shown in the following screenshot:
The following screenshot shows a dining table and some chairs with three glass cups and a small box on the table. The table has a wood material assigned to it, the chairs have a fabric material, the cups have glass materials, and the small box has a metallic material, as you can see in the bottom-left corner of the screenshot, where neither the materials nor the textures are displayed. There is no difference between the different objects, although they have different materials assigned to them. In the upper-right corner, the second option, Materials On/ Textures Off, is selected. Now, the properties of the material, such as the transparency of the glass cups, are displayed. In the bottom-right corner, both materials and textures are displayed, which gives a fully realistic view:
Now that we know the differences between different visual style settings and how materials are displayed in each one, let's now explore the different materials available in AutoCAD.