How to use "Shading" with Catia and Exceed?

How to use "Shading" with Catia and Exceed?

LAST MODIFIED DATE: September 12, 2007

VERSION: This applies to Exceed All versions

PROBLEM:

Shading in some versions of CATIA 4.x does not work when displayed through Exceed.
This is because Exceed does not support the PHIGS extension.

There are different versions of CATIA that use different rendering methods.
Some CATIA v4.x versions were developed with PHIGS rendering and do not support GLX extensions.

Exceed 3D does NOT support PHIGS rendering and there are no plans for Exceed 3D to support PHIGS, because PHIGS is not considered an industry standard. Many of the applications that were originally developed with PHIGS are now being ported to OpenGL.

If your version of CATIA uses PHIGS rendering, you can modify your CATIA profile to exclude PHIGS from rendering 3D shading model.

For example CATIA v4.2.4 Release 3, on AIX v5.1 and CATIA v4 release 2.4 refresh 0.1, on AIX 5.2 uses PHIGS extensions.

SOLUTION:

To resolve this issue, you may try the following:

On the AIX box where CATIA is installed, open CATIA's profile file:
/catmodel/catadmin/etc/PROFILE.dat.

You will find a section that looks like the following:

*---------------
* FOR CATIA
AFMMNICK TOCONNID=*,
TOWSTYPE=XSOFT,
PROCOPT=((STRDEVS,16),(LOCDEVS,2),(VWTBLSZ,64),(ECHOMETH,2),
(XWINDASP,1,1),(XNAME,CATIA),(MODFYOCT),(LSTES,32))
*---------------

In the above section, replace (XWINDASP,1,1) with (XWINDASP,1,0)

NOTE:
** The first character on all non-comment lines in the profile file must be blank, otherwise CATIA won't be able to process it. **

This will instruct CATIA not to use the PHIGS extension but a different method to render 3D shading model. This will work with Exceed.

NOTE: This affects all users, even those who might run CATIA at the console.