To design with CATIA in the best conditions, it is important to adapt "CATIA" settings according to your needs. Indeed, your need will be different depending on your use of the software or the type of objects handled. Therefore, we recommend that you pay close attention to your “Visual settings” since they will have a strong impact to boost your performance.

The Accuracy Option

The first setting to modify is the accuracy. It controls the tessellation of surfaces.

“Tessellation" means that the surfaces of your geometry are built using triangles. A triangulation is computed to describe the neighborhood relation of all points.

• A low value means that a very fine mesh is used to render surfaces because the size of the triangles in the tessellation is very low. It increases the number of triangles computed on the object. However, the drawback is that geometry is redrawn more slowly when using the viewing tools.
• A high value increases the size of the triangles and thus, decreases the number of triangles computed on the object. This means that a very coarse mesh is used, but the advantage is that geometry is redrawn more quickly.

Example :

Accuracy Option allows to find a balance between rendering precision and performance.

In the case of the screw as it is a small part, accuracy have to be low, because we need details.

Prefered option is 3D accuracy set to 0.05. Because with the 3D accuracy set to 2, Tessellation is not optimum as circles look more like polygons.

In the case of the engine plane as it is a bigger assembly, we don’t need a high level of details.

Prefered option is 3D accuracy set to 2. We see no major differences between these 2 pictures, so with the 3D accuracy set to 0.05 the level of details is too high.

How to change 3D Accuracy ?

1 - From the Me menu select Preferences

2 - Navigate to Main Preferences > Display

3 - Change the value for 3D Accuracy

4 - Select Optimizing meshes for texturing.

Because visualization data are saved into your collaborative space, users working on same data should use the same visualization parameters. This will reduce tessellation computations when editing parts for instance.

To help you choose the right level of accuracy we predefined several Profiles based on the licenses available. You can refer to the documentation available here: https://help.3ds.com/2019x/english/dsdoc/preferencesmap/preferences-c-general-profile.htm?contextscope=cloud