Disabling reflections and textures

Since R2009 we removed  the possibility to turn off reflections and textures.
Before R2009  there was a check box in the application option settings to do this.
The checkbox was called "Show Reflections and Textures".

For performance reasons you might still be interested to temporarily turn off reflections and textures.
So how would you accomplish this in the later releases?
Here are two methods that can be used.

Method 1 ( if you feel confident editing the registry)

The method consists in turning off the registry keys  “EnvironmentCubeTexturePath” and “SliceCapTexturePath”.
Note that doing so does not adversely affect the display of zebras or threads or the viewcube.

Here is the detailed procedure.

·         Close Inventor

·         Export one of the color scheme registry keys. For instance key 1 (which corresponds to Millenium), [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Autodesk\Inventor\RegistryVersion13.0\System\Preferences\ColorSchemes\Schemes\1]

·         Edit the exported .reg  file and change the color scheme key name to a new name , for instance “No texture”.
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Autodesk\Inventor\RegistryVersion13.0\System\Preferences\ColorSchemes\Schemes\No texture]

·         Import this .reg file in the registry

·         Set the following existing  string value to a blank string
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Autodesk\Inventor\RegistryVersion13.0\System\Preferences\ColorSchemes\Schemes\No texture]
"EnvironmentCubeTexturePath” = “”

·         Create the following new string with a dash as the string value:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Autodesk\Inventor\RegistryVersion13.0\System\Preferences\ColorSchemes\Schemes\No texture]
"SliceCapTexturePath"="-"

·         Start Inventor and use the “No texture” color scheme as your active color scheme (in the Colors tab of the Application options)

Method 2 ( if you don't feel so confident in editing the registry)

Create an empty text file but give it extension ".dds" instead of ".txt".
Name the file for instance “dull.dds” and feed it into the "Reflection Environment" entry in the Colors tab of the Application options.

This method will also eliminate reflections and might be simpler to perform than Method1.

Comments

[Josh Hunt]

Well thanks for the tip but why would you remove a feature? Especially something that is very important to large assembly management.

[Bob Holland]

Josh,
I am not saying that it is a good thing to do. I simply wrote the article because there has been demand to get the same possibility as in the older releaseses. The functionality to turn off textures and reflections was in the product before so there must have been a good reason for it. One reason I can think of is that for large assemblies with a lot of shiny materials you can get somewhat better performance to the detriment of losing distinction between certain parts.Does that make sense?