Communicating Your Design - Autodesk Inventor 2010: No Experience Required - page 463

Using these tools, you can spend many hours experimenting with different
lighting scenes, cameras, and so forth, but it's also possible to make attractive
images in just a few seconds with only a couple of mouse clicks. In this section,
we'll explore the basics of Inventor Studio, but we'll leave many great options for
you and your imagination to explore.
Getting Started
Inventor Studio isn't just another tool that is used in the assembly or part fi le;
it's actually a separate environment that runs in parallel with the part or assem-
bly fi le.
To change your working environment to Inventor Studio, switch the Ribbon
to the Environments tab, and select Inventor Studio from the Begin panel.
Entering the new environment doesn't just change the active Ribbon tab as
you're now accustomed to; it also changes the Browser, similar to another envi-
ronment — weldments. Having this environment inside the part and assembly
fi les keeps it in line with any changes made to the model data. When you set up
rendering conditions, any changes to the model are refl ected in the rendering
environment without the need to modify settings that you made previously.
Starting the Render Image tool opens the Render Image dialog box, which
contains three tabs: General, Output, and Style. Along with the dialog box, a red
rectangle appears in the Design window that shows the frame of the rendering
that will be created.
The General Tab
You've probably noticed that in Inventor's tool dialog boxes, the basic and most
important settings are typically on the fi rst tab; the same holds true with Render
Image dialog's General tab (Figure 9.28). This is where you tell Inventor Studio
how to view, light, and surround the model as well as where you set the type of
rendering and the resolution for the image:
Width and Height You can enter values for the width and height of the rendered
image individually, or you can select common screen resolutions from the pop-
up menu that appears after you click the Select Output Size icon to the right.
The Lock Aspect Ratio check box allows you to enter either the width or
height and have Inventor automatically calculate the other value to maintain
the 4:3 ratio.