BimScaler Blog – An essential part of the design process is CAD rendering, which helps designers, engineers, and architects visualise their ideas clearly and precisely. But even with its importance, CAD rendering is not without its problems. These challenges, which can range from software limitations to hardware limitations, can obstruct creativity and reduce productivity.
In this article, we look at the most common rendering issues in CAD applications and offer practical solutions to overcome them.
You can perform a basic check, starting with your hardware, project workflow, and CAD software settings, to resolve the CAD rendering issue. Here are the top 5 methods, as recommended by LinkedIn Pulse, for resolving CAD rendering issues in more detail.
1. Check your Hardware
Whenever a CAD rendering problem happens, the first thing that you need to check is your hardware. You need to make sure that your hardware meets the minimum requirements for your CAD software and rendering engine.
You should have a powerful processor, enough RAM, a dedicated graphics card, and sufficient storage space. If possible, upgrade your hardware components or use a cloud-based rendering service to access more resources.
If your hardware meets the CAD software requirements, the next step is to evaluate its performance. Are your CPU or GPU overheating? Are you already updating your graphics card? Here are some hardware performance checks you should perform whenever you face a CAD rendering problem.
- Check for overheating: Overheating can cause video card crashes, corrupt video displays, or stuttering. Ensure that your video card and motherboard are not overheating.
- Update your graphics card drivers: Updating your graphics card drivers can add new features, fix bugs, and improve performance.
- Disable or enable the graphics card driver: Disabling the graphics card driver and then enabling it can resolve issues.
- Uninstall and reinstall the graphics card drivers: Uninstalling and reinstalling the graphics card drivers can fix most video hardware errors.
- Check for hardware acceleration issues: Some applications may run less stably when using hardware acceleration. Disable hardware acceleration in the apps where you experience bugs or stability issues.
Before we discuss another solution to the CAD rendering problem, you might want to look into future CAD software trends. As technology advances, CAD software evolves with many innovations that help designers work more efficiently.
Read more about it in our previous post, Future Trends in CAD Software: 5 Innovations That Will Shape the Industry.
2. Optimise your Scene
After you are done with your hardware, the next thing we need to check is the workflow in your CAD software. Reducing the size and complexity of your CAD model, as well as the rendering parameters, will help you optimize your scene and resolve the CAD rendering problem.
In order to achieve this, you can use low-poly models for background objects, apply mesh decimation, instancing, and proxies, simplify the geometry, and remove superfluous details. Additionally, you can balance speed and accuracy by adjusting your rendering settings for resolution, quality, lighting, shadows, textures, and effects.
Here are several things you can do:
- Check the polycount: Turn on more statistics options in the Viewport and click “Configure Statistics” to check the polycount of your scene.
- Find heavy models: Use the “Select by Name” window (press “h”) and add the “Faces” column to the menu to locate heavy models in your scene.
- Collapse high-poly objects: Use modifiers like Turbosmooth to collapse high-poly objects and reduce the number of polygons.
- Use optimising modifiers: Apply modifiers like Optimize Modifier, MultiRes Modifier, Prooptimizer Modifier, or Batch ProOptimizer utility to simplify geometry and speed up rendering while maintaining image quality.
- Use instances: Instead of duplicating objects, create instances to reduce scene complexity and optimise rendering.
3. Use render Layers
After you are done with optimising your scene workflow, the next thing is try to tweak out the software. One thing you can do to improve your CAD rendering performance is to use render layers. In conclusion, thorough testing of the scene using different settings and configurations is crucial to identify and address any issues or inconsistencies in the rendering process. Monitoring system performance during rendering is essential to detect bottlenecks or errors that may impact the final result. Utilizing tools and commands to check various aspects of the system, as well as analyzing render logs and reports, can provide valuable insight into improving the rendering efficiency and quality of the project.
Render layers organise and separate different elements in your scene to allow for more efficient rendering. You can control which objects appear and disappear during the rendering process by placing them on different render layers. This can help reduce rendering time by allowing you to focus on specific elements at a time rather than the entire scene. Furthermore, using render layers can help with post-processing by allowing you to make changes to specific elements without affecting the rest of the scene.
Here are several render layer settings that you need to check to minimise the CAD rendering issue:
- Check the render layer settings: Ensure that the render layer settings are correctly configured in the Maya Render Settings.
- Specify the render layer setting: If you are not specifying the render layer setting from the Maya submitter, it should pull it from the Maya Render Settings itself.
- Submit the job: Submit the job using the “Submit Render Layers As Separate Jobs” option if you want to render all your layers separately.
- Uncheck “Use Batch Plugin”: If unchecking “Use Batch Plugin” does not change the rendering behavior, it may be an issue with just the batch plugin or how Maya is asked to run across the board.
- Check for missing layers: Ensure that all the required render layers are present in the scene and are correctly set up.
- Adjust the render layers: If necessary, adjust the settings of the render layers to ensure that they are correctly rendered in the final output.
- Test the scene: Render the scene using different settings and configurations to identify any issues or inconsistencies in the rendering of the render layers.
4. Update Your CAD Software
The number of tasks that CAD software can handle at once is frequently limited by design. If the software is out of date, it won’t attempt to use the hardware power that your hardware may have, even if it could handle more tasks.
The most powerful rendering solutions are typically available in the most recent versions of CAD software, including AutoCAD. Update or upgrade your software to ensure that all of your rendering hardware is in working order.
Keeping your CAD software up to date can maximize the efficiency of your rendering process and take advantage of the latest features and improvements. Additionally, regularly checking for software updates can help prevent compatibility issues with new hardware or operating systems.
5. Test and compare
While you are rendering your scene, you should monitor your system performance and identify any bottlenecks or errors that may affect the result.
You can use various tools and commands to check the CPU, GPU, RAM, disk, and network usage, as well as the render time, memory allocation, and error messages. You can also use render logs and reports to analyze the details and statistics of your rendering process.
Additionally, you can compare the quality and speed of different rendering engines or plugins to determine the most efficient option for your project. It is important to regularly save your work and backup your files to prevent any data loss during the rendering process.
That is all of the practical solutions you can use to resolve the CAD rendering issues. CAD software applications in industry may be another topic for you to investigate, particularly in the construction industry.
Read more in our recent article, CAD in Construction: Its Role, Applications, and Benefits.
Conclusion
In conclusion, thorough testing of the scene using different settings and configurations is crucial to identify and address any issues or inconsistencies in the rendering process. Monitoring system performance during rendering is essential to detecting bottlenecks or errors that may impact the final result.
With an effective CAD rendering scene, you can even progress to the BIM process for your construction project. Construction professionals can improve project efficiency by effectively utilising CAD rendering technology. Furthermore, incorporating BIM into the workflow can help project stakeholders collaborate and communicate more effectively.
So, are you ready to implement the BIM process for your construction project?
BIMscaler’s consulting and management services will provide you with end-to-end BIM usage for your project, starting with BIM/model management, content management, project start-up, project meetings, and end-user support, including as-built documentation creation.
As a leading Australian provider of BIM services, BIM Scaler assures you of a professional and effective BIM implementation for your building project.
