3D Engines are built-in configurations which control the generation of the 3D model in ARCHICAD. By default, two engines are offered:
•Vectorial 3D Engine
•OpenGL 3D Engine
To choose an engine, do one of the following:
•View > 3D View Options > 3D Window Settings and use the 3D Modeling Engine pop-up
•Click a command at the bottom of the View > 3D View Options menu.
1.Vectorial 3D engine
The vectorial engine shows vectorial patterns (from Surfaces) and can be printed at any scale. It produces a simple and clean non-photorealistic 3D view, without texture images. Because the 3D view is vector based, copy/paste or print to PDF will result in 2D primitives such as lines and arcs. However, it usually results in slower navigation of the model on most machines.
2.OpenGL engine
The OpenGL engine shows texture images (from Surfaces) and takes advantage of a high-performance OpenGL graphics cards. Some effects, such as vectorial 3D hatching and saving the contents of the 3D window as a vectorial 2D drawing, are not available with OpenGL. Additional options for OpenGL can be accessed by clicking the Advanced Options button from 3D Window Settings.
For more information, see Open GL Options.
The engine is optimized for fast, smooth navigation and useful in a live presentation environment. It is significantly faster to navigate on most machines, but copy/paste or export will result in bitmap images.