Looks and Finishing Tips

A look restyles the whole sheet in one step, so it costs little to try. Spend your time on the few settings that carry the sheet, then check it once before it goes out. Render Looks and Look Settings have every detail.

Choose the Look

• Use the Style Gallery. FILE ▸ Style Gallery writes the drawing in all seven looks to one labeled PNG and leaves the drawing as it was. It is much faster than cycling the picker.
• No fills showing? Check the look first. Every import starts in CAD Line, where materials and textures draw nothing.
• Tag materials first. A look can only restyle surfaces it understands. An untagged, untextured shape stays a flat fill in every look.
• Leave textures at None where you want the look to decide. An explicit texture is honored in every look.
• Choose the look before fine-tuning colors. Colors read differently over marker streaks than over flat fill.

Tune It Without Losing It

• Experiment freely. VIEW ▸ Look Settings previews on the canvas as you drag. OK is one undo step and Cancel puts everything back.
• Get back fast. Reset to Preset returns the look's settings only. Your layers, colors and materials are not touched.
• Compare looks. Each look keeps its own settings in the drawing, so switching back finds it as you left it.
• Use a little depth. A small amount of Depth shading on a Marker sheet gives buildings and canopies enough form to sit on the page.
• Back the grain off for a plan that will print small. Paper texture that looks right at full size can muddy a half-size print.
• Deepen edges by shape size. When a sheet has a small field and a large floodplain, Width by shape size fits one setting to both (2:07).
• Keep what you tuned. A recipe carries the look it was saved from, so save one when the sheet is right.

Shadows and Sun

The video shows these controls at 2:34.

• Turn the sun first. Set Sun direction so shadows fall away from the areas you want read and not across the labels.
• Shorten shadows at the right control. Sun altitude sets the shadows of things with a height, which trees, shrubs, furniture and vehicles have by default. Raise it for shorter ones. Shadow length sets the shadows of things with none.
• Give buildings a height. Type Height above ground on the layer's Shadow tab, and a 30 ft building and a 6 ft fence throw shadows in proportion. An open line with a height stands up as a wall.
• Show a real date and time. Place the sun by date and time sets the sun from the site, the day and the hour. A drawing exported with a coordinate system fills in its own latitude and longitude.
• Treat one object differently. A shadow set on a style wins over the look's sun, so you can leave the sun on.

Keep the Sheet Readable

• Leave the title block out of the look. Right-click its layer and choose Render as plain CAD. Do the same for a legend or a notes block.
• Pin one label's font. Select it and check Keep this font in every look on the Text or Leader tab.
• Lift text off a busy fill. Give it a halo or a mask.

Before It Goes Out

1. Zoom to extents and look at the whole sheet. A hatch that fills in solid or a label swallowed by a fill hides at 400% and is obvious at full view.
2. Check the north arrow and scale bar against the sheet.
3. Save. An export does not save the .asp.
4. Export the format that suits where it is going, using the table below (3:24).
5. Read the message when it finishes. It says how many viewports measure in the PDF, and names any that do not, with the reason.

Going to	Format	Resolution
A plot, a submittal or a client	PDF	300 DPI
A presentation board or a report	PNG	300 DPI
Email, the web or a slide deck	JPEG	150 DPI

• For a print shop, clear PDF layers if its program does not handle them. The sheet looks the same.
• Keep one CAD Line export for the record set, and use the rendered look for the presentation set. Both come from the same project.
• Old PDF still open? Studio holds the finished file. Close the viewer and choose OK, and the sheet is not drawn again.