Connecting to Inventor’s Interface - Inventor 2013 and Inventor LT 2013 Essentials - page 23

Like the Shadows tool, Ground Reflections provides settings in a flyout menu
next to the icon. In the settings, you can control the level of reflection, how
much it is blurred, and how quickly that blur falls off. This dialog box also con-
trols the settings for the Ground Plane tool, which will be described next.
Using the Ground Plane
This option is really just a switch that controls whether a grid will be displayed on
the ground that the reflections and shadows are cast on. As mentioned, its settings
are shared with Ground Reflections but can be accessed from its own flyout menu.
Putting Visual Styles to Work
In this exercise, you will get a chance to explore a couple of the options just
reviewed:
1. Keep using or reopen the c01-01.ipt file used in previous exercises.
2. Switch your Ribbon to the View tab.
3. In the Appearance panel, click the icon for Shadows, and observe the
change to the screen.
4. Right below the Shadows tool, click the Ground Reflections icon.
5. Next locate the Ground Plane tool, and turn it on.
You will now use some of the tools that were discussed earlier.
6. Use the Visual Style drop-down menu to set your style to Realistic.
7. Now change your Visual Style setting to Watercolor. Note that the
reflections and ground shadows disappear but ambient shadows are
still generated.
8. Set Visual Style to Shaded when you're done admiring the Watercolor
style, and keep this file open.
With a nice basic view, let's make a couple of simple changes to see what the
effects are before looking at a few more visualization options:
1. Open the Shadows settings dialog box by using the flyout menu next
to the Shadows icon.
If possible, reposition the dialog box to see the screen as you make
the following changes (because the screen will update while you are
making them).