AUTODESK ALIAS 2010 PRODUCTLINE
WORKING WITH AUTODESK ALIAS 2010 AND SECTION 508
Section 508 requires that federal agencies' electronic and information technology is accessible to people with disabilities. The Center for Information Technology Accommodation (CITA), in the U.S. General Services Administration's Office of Government-wide Policy, has been charged with the task of educating federal employees and building the infrastructure necessary to support Section 508 implementation. With this white paper, Autodesk offers background information to help our customers understand the accessibility features of Autodesk Alias 2010 software, in the context of the Section 508 standards. This was done with the intent to enable agencies to be compliant with the Section 508 regulations. The document contains subsets of the Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Standards as published in 36 CFR Part 1194 and provides an analysis of Autodesk Alias 2010 as compared to these standards.
For the purposes of this paper, Alias refers to Autodesk Alias 2010 for 32-bit Windows XP and 64-bit Windows XP operating systems. Alias 2010 is the umbrella brand name for the following products:
Autodesk Alias Design 2010 Autodesk Automotive 2010 Autodesk Surface 2010
The first table of the Template provides a summary view of the section 508 Standards. The subsequent tables provide more detailed views of each subsection. There are three columns in each table. Column one of the Summary Table describes the subsections of subparts B and C of the Standards. The second column describes the supporting features of the product or refers you to the corresponding detailed table, "e.g., equivalent facilitation." The third column contains any additional remarks and explanations regarding the product. In the subsequent tables, the first column contains the lettered paragraphs of the subsections. The second column describes the supporting features of the product with regard to that paragraph. The third column contains any additional remarks and explanations regarding the product. This document is not intended to be a certification of compliance. This template is based upon version 1.2 (5/6/2004) supplied by the U.S. Government. More information on Section 508 can be found on the Governments website located at: http://www.section508.gov/
Working with Alias 2010 and Section 508
SUMMARY TABLE CRITERIA Section 1194.21 Software Applications and Operating Systems Section 1194.21 Web-based Internet Information and Applications Section 1194.23 Telecommunications Products Section 1194.24 Video and Multi-media Products Section 1194.25 Self-Contained, Closed Products Section 1194.26 Desktop and Portable Computers Section 1194.31 Functional Performance Criteria Section 1194.41 Information, Documentation and Support SUPPORTING FEATURES SUPPORTING FEATURES Completed
N/A N/A N/A N/A Completed Completed
Working with Autodesk Alias 2010 and Section 508

SECTION 1194.21 SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS AND OPERATING SYSTEMS CRITERIA (a) When software is designed to run on a system that has a keyboard, product functions shall be executable from a keyboard where the function itself or the result of performing a function can be discerned textually. (b) Applications shall not disrupt or disable activated features of other products that are identified as accessibility features, where those features are developed and documented according to industry standards. Applications also shall not disrupt or disable activated features of any operating system that are identified as accessibility features where the application programming interface for those accessibility features has been documented by the manufacturer of the operating system and is available to the product developer. (c) A well-defined on-screen indication of the current focus shall be provided that moves among interactive interface elements as the input focus changes. The focus shall be programmatically exposed so that Assistive Technology can track focus and focus changes. (d) Sufficient information about a user interface element including the identity, operation and state of the element shall be available to Assistive Technology. When an image represents a program element, the information conveyed by the image must also be available in text. (e) When bitmap images are used to identify controls, status indicators, or other programmatic elements, the meaning assigned to those images shall be consistent throughout an application's performance. SUPPORTING FEATURES Supported with exceptions. REMARKS AND EXPLANATIONS Keyboard navigation is provided for most Menu commands. Control Panel functionality is only accessible using mouse input. Alias does not generally disrupt or disable the accessibility features of the Windows operating system. Windows Narrator does not work for all controls in the Alias interface.
Supported with exceptions.
Focus is indicated by highlighting the Windows title bar. Viewport focus is indicated by a white outline. There is no programmatic means to change the focus. Alias provides information to the user via the Microsoft Active Accessibility Application. Not all UI controls are accessible via the Narrator tool. Bitmap images and actions associated with them are generally consistent. It is possible to create similar tool icons that represent different tool settings. This is controlled by the user and not part of the default interface. Aliass prompt line history allows for text input and minimal recording of tool usage. The contents of this window can be copied to an external text editor. Alias does not override contrast and color selections. The application performs acceptably under High Contrast settings. Also, the user has the ability to change color settings.
Supported with exceptions

(f) Textual information shall be provided through operating system functions for displaying text. The minimum information that shall be made available is text content, text input caret location, and text attributes. (g) Applications shall not override user selected contrast and color selections and other individual display attributes.

Supported.

Working with Alias 2010 and Section 508 (h) When animation is displayed, the information shall be displayable in at least one non-animated presentation mode at the option of the user. Supported with exceptions. Animation is created by the Alias application, and this has no equivalent means of viewing. There is no animation in the interface controls. Animated displays are included within the Alias Help System. The same information is documented with text and images. Color-coding is not generally used as the only means of conveying information and the SBD (Scene Block Diagram) window uses both color and shape to identify scene attributes and other status information. Alias provides a wide variety of color selections. The user has the ability to customize the application window. Alias does not use flashing or blinking text.
(i) Color-coding shall not be used as the only means of conveying information, indicating an action, prompting a response, or distinguishing a visual element.
(j) When a product permits a user to adjust color and contrast settings, a variety of color selections capable of producing a range of contrast levels shall be provided. (k) Software shall not use flashing or blinking text, objects, or other elements having a flash or blink frequency greater than 2 Hz and lower than 55 Hz. (l) When electronic forms are used, the form shall allow people using Assistive Technology to access the information, field elements, and functionality required for completion and submission of the form, including all directions and cues.
Microsoft Active Accessibility applications like the Narrator can be used to access particulars of the components of a form/dialog box.
SECTION 1194.31 FUNCTIONAL PERFORMANCE CRITERIA

CRITERIA

SUPPORTING FEATURES Supported with exceptions.

REMARKS AND EXPLANATIONS

(a) At least one mode of operation and information retrieval that does not require user vision shall be provided, or support for Assistive Technology used by people who are blind or visually impaired shall be provided.
Microsoft Active Accessibility applications like the Narrator can be used to access particulars of the components of a form/dialog box. Some interface controls such as 3d manipulators and 2d graphical widgets in some editors are not accessible via the Narrator. Keyboard navigation is provided for most Menu commands. Assistive Technology like the Magnifier can be used to provide enlarged print output.
(b) At least one mode of operation and information retrieval that does not require visual acuity greater than 20/70 shall be provided in audio and enlarged print output working together or independently, or support for Assistive Technology used by people who are visually impaired shall be provided. (c) At least one mode of operation and information retrieval that does not require user hearing shall be provided, or support for Assistive Technology used by people who are deaf or hard of hearing shall be provided.

Supported

Alias does not require user hearing in order to operate the software.
(d) Where audio information is important for the use of a product, at least one mode of operation and information retrieval shall be provided in an enhanced auditory fashion, or support for assistive hearing devices shall be provided. (e) At least one mode of operation and information retrieval that does not require user speech shall be provided, or support for Assistive Technology used by people with disabilities shall be provided. (f) At least one mode of operation and information retrieval that does not require fine motor control or simultaneous actions and that is operable with limited reach and strength shall be provided.
Alias does not require user speech in order to operate the software.
Keyboard navigation is provided for most menu commands in Alias. In addition, the software can be customized to enhance access to particular functions.
SECTION 1194.41 INFORMATION, DOCUMENTATION AND SUPPORT

SUPPORTING FEATURES

(a) Product support documentation provided to end-users shall be made available in alternate formats upon request, at no additional charge.
(b) End-users shall have access to a description of the accessibility and compatibility features of products in alternate formats or alternate methods upon request, at no additional charge. (c) Support services for products shall accommodate the communication needs of endusers with disabilities.
Support documentation is available, in electronic format only, on the Alias DVD and on the Autodesk website at no additional charge. This document is posted on the Autodesk website at http://www.autodesk.com. Search for Section 508. Support services options are available via webpage, e-mail, fax, or phone. Direct, in-person support is available through resellers.
Autodesk and Alias are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. Autodesk reserves the right to alter product offerings and specifications at any time without notice, and is not responsible for typographical or graphical errors that may appear in this document. 2009 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.

Autodesk Alias 2010 Historical Release Notes

March 2010

Limitations
Describes the limitations discovered in previous releases of Alias.
Alias Historical Release Notes

General limitations

Limitations related to user interface, plotting, graphics, plug-in, and documentation.

General

You cannot set your current project in the Save Wire dialog box (File > Save As). Solution: Select File > Open, and in the Open dialog box, set your current project. Click Cancel to close the file browser, then select File > Save As. In the Visualize panel, when you attempt to create a new shelf tab in the default Shader Library, the following message appears: Authentication or Permission Error Since the shader library is part of the system install, you may not have the permissions to create a new tab. To work around this issue, you can create a custom library in another location. If your graphics card doesn't have overlays (or overlays are disabled), and you are scrolling through the Deviation Table (Windows > Information > Deviation Table), then instead of seeing a red arrow
move along the edge on the model to indicate the deviation, a white arrow is drawn, and remains. This may cause an entire row of white arrows to appear. Workaround: Tumble or pan the model to cause the window to redraw. The arrows will disappear. Shader files in the Shader Library will not be displayed in the Visualization Panel, if the corresponding ".ICON" file is not present. Resident Shaders dragged to the library will write a ".ICON" file for that shader. When you create general preference directories, if they are not readable and writable, you are not notified. When creating general preference directories, ensure that the new directories are usable by Alias (readable and writable). Reference data (imported through File > Reference Manager) cannot be software rendered. Reference data (imported through File > Reference Manager) cannot be used with Animation > Turntable. Ambient occlusion data will be preserved when a wire file is translated to reference data (through File > Reference Manager), but it cannot be deleted from reference data, and it cannot be created on reference data. Toggle Camera now only toggles on or off only full frustrum. Specifying a Horizontal or Vertical Aspect Ratio Fit in the Camera Editor corrupts camera controls in the Perspective Window title bar. Workaround: use Ctrl +Alt (Windows) or Control + Command (Mac) key modifiers for camera navigation when Horizontal or Vertical Aspect Ratio Fit options are used. If you try moving an image plane or image layer in a camera that has had its position reversed (for example, from 0, 0, 100 to 0, 0, -100) the image plane will move in the opposite direction that you drag the mouse.
Alias Historical Release Notes 4
Type in the values that you want to move the image plane or image layer by, or restart Alias after reversing the camera position. Diagnostic shading attributes are not saved with bookmarks. Iso-angle attributes used in diagnostic shading (such as the position of lights, and so on) cannot be saved with bookmarks. UV values entered via the Promptline when building Gridded surfaces (Palette > Point Clouds > Surfaces > Gridded) is not working correctly. To resolve this problem, when entering UV values from promptline, enter additional values for each U and V parameter for example, for a 2x2 patch, enter 22x22. Imported Read-only write-protected files are not saved to the dataset, and the user is not notified. When a users load a write-restricted object (for example, a Baseline) from within Alias, they are notified with a pop-up that the file is Read-Only but once the pop-up is suppressed there is nothing to inform the users that the file they are working cannot be saved back to the dataset. If you have created a new project by extracting a zip file of the Alias project folders into your user_data folder, the files become Write Locked. Viewing the contents using the Alias browser is not permitted and you are unable to store anything in that project. Use the Windows browser to store data into the same project tree.
There are SBD window redraw problems when overlapping with Canvas window.
We have fixed some problems with Alias and language/keyboard layout settings. We cache the active keyboard at when Alias is launched and lock it in. We prevent switching inside/during an Alias session. The currently active layout, as specified on the language toolbar (normally the default language and layout specified by the user), is used. If it is Japanese or another language, and the keyboard matches the language toolbar setting, that keyboard layout is the active one for the entire Alias session. To change the layout, quit Alias, change the default layout/language in the language toolbar, make that new default layout active and restart Alias. Alias will now use only that new language/layout for the duration of the Alias session. Hotkeys, such as alt-shift will not allow the keyboard-layout/language settings to be changed for the Alias session (and just the Alias session; other applications and the OS are unaffected).

Printing and plotting

In File > Print, Canvas and Window modes do not let you print to file from the Print window (itself accessible from pressing the Print Setup button in the Print Setup window). Workaround: For Print Canvas mode, use File > Export > Canvas Image/Mask Layer. For Print Window mode, use File > Export > Current Window. This creates an image file that you can then print in the usual way in Windows. Transparent regions (for example, transparent backgrounds) of sketch images created in Alias will
Alias Historical Release Notes 8
print black, although the print preview does not indicate this. For the sketch to print correctly, the canvas must be normal to the camera, and the file must be printed on a PostScript 3 printer. Try using the printCamera plug-in to print a canvas. Do not sketch while the File > Print preview window is open. Sketches will not update correctly or may become altered. When you have more than one perspective view in the Print Preview window, the overall display may be incorrect.

Plug-ins

In the directory $ALIAS_LOCATION/ODS/, there are a number of pre-compiled plug-ins and source code examples. These plug-ins and source code examples are provided to you on an AS-IS basis. You are free to make use of these plug-ins and source code example; however Autodesk does not provide any support in connection with them. Autodesk makes no warranties, express, implied, or arising by custom or trade usage, and to the extent permitted by applicable law, specifically disclaims any implied warranties of title, noninfringement or of fitness for a particular purpose to the extent permitted by applicable law, (i) Autodesks liability in contract, tort or otherwise arising out of or in connection with the plug-ins or source code shall not exceed the purchase price paid by the customer for the plug-ins or source code examples, and (ii) in no event shall Autodesk be liable for any punitive damages or lost profits or other special, indirect, incidental, or consequential damages, including any damages resulting from loss of business arising out of or in connection with the performance of the plug-ins or source code examples, even if Autodesk has been advised of the possibility of such damages. The customer shall indemnify Autodesk and hold it harmless from and against any loss, claim or damage to any person arising out of the customers use of the plug-ins or source code examples. For more limitations on plug-ins, see OpenModel and OpenAlias limitations.

Modeling limitations

Limitations related to curve and surface creation and evaluation.
If the edit window is hidden behind the Alias window after selecting Object Edit > Edit Comment, bring it to the front using Command + Tab or clicking on the TextEdit application icon in the dock. After entering the text, the TextEdit application must be closed using Command-Q, or from the TextEdit application menu at the top of the screen. Just closing the TextEdit window will not properly close the TextEdit application and save the text, causing Alias to wait indefinitely. Align does not handle rational geometry as input. Using rational geometry may result in undefined shape In some situations, curves and surfaces that have been edited using the Symmetry Modeling tool may exhibit abnormal cross sections and associated curvature combs. Workaround: Zero transform the geometry to fix the problem.
Alias Historical Release Notes 13
When doing curvature continuity checking, the word "Flat" appears rampant throughout the model. "Flat" means one surface is flat along the edge (curvature is zero, radius of curvature infinity), while the other surface edge is not flat. It is treated as a maximum deviation and often appears many times along the edge (depending on the curvature deviation measured at each sample point). Workaround: When curvature checking using the Evaluate > Check Model tool (that is Curvature - G2 is on), consider reducing the Report Parameters >Curvature Maximum value. The value of 1.0 corresponds to seeing "Flat" as failures. If "Flat" is not a curvature problem to be identified, set the Curvature Maximum to a value such as 0.9 or 0.7. Only curvature deviations greater than Continuity Curvature (from Preferences > Construction Options) and smaller or equal to Curvature Maximum are reported as failures and show up in red. Geometry containing instances will not mirror correctly about a layer's symmetric plane. Only objects with the same transformations as the first instance will be placed correctly. Workaround: Duplicate all geometry when using symmetric layers. Duplicating a canvas doesn't duplicate all canvas information. When you select a canvas and duplicate it, a new infinite plane is created which does not contain all of the canvas plane information (layer stack, name, and so on) Workaround: Use copy and paste (rather than duplicate) to get the complete canvas information. Section lines and curvature combs remain after exiting Dynamic Section tool. If you enable Persistent sections in the Dynamic Section tool (Evaluate > Dynamic Section), the sections remain visible even after you exit the tool. Workaround: Select all the surfaces that have the persistent sections, go into the Dynamic sections tool again, and then pick nothing.

If you have an extrude history command built from a face (created prior to StudioTools 13) the caps will be lost if you update the history. The new interior flow control parameter is left empty when Alias version 12 files are loaded into Alias version 13 or later. Any free-form blend and surface fillet (Surfaces > Multi-Surface blend > Freeform or Profile blend) will have nothing specified for this parameter. Surfaces > Surface Fillet may not be able to create a fillet with a surface that has two intersecting points.
If there are two surfaces intersecting one another at more than one point, detach one of the surfaces so they only have one common intersection. If a blend curve is attached to a surface that is the result of a curve network, updating that curve network may delete the history on the blend curve. ObjectDisplay > Diagnostic Shading> Surface Evaluation > Draft Angle may not display the correct angle. Choose Transform > Zero Transforms for the surface you are evaluating to update the draft angle display. You may not be able to create a variable radius fillet between surfaces that have a variable gap between them. If the surfaces are trimmed, untrim them, create the fillet, then trim them. Pivot points and local axes of surfaces created within Construction Plane mode do not reflect the proper
environment - they are created relative to the Worldspace coordinate system. Change the position of the pivot points manually and reset the local axes to reflect the proper working environment. When you turn on Explicit Control for the Draft tool, Degree and Spans are not automatically set to the values used when Explicit Control is off, which may produce poor results. Manually set the Degree and Spans values to produce the desired result. If you untrim a trim-divided surface back to before the trim-divide operation, only one of the divided pieces will have its prior construction history. All other pieces wont have any construction history. If you try to duplicate a curve-on-surface with an extremely large number of spans (for example, greater than a thousand spans) using the Curve Edit > Create > Duplicate Curve tool, Alias may run out of memory trying to achieve a good fit. When dealing with huge numbers of spans on curveson-surfaces being duplicated, separate the curve-onsurface into manageable chunks before performing the duplicate operation. Surfaces > Swept Surfaces > Extrude (TUBE option) has problems with multiple CVs on the path curve. When you are using TUBE mode in Extrude, avoid path curves with multiple CVs on them, as the resulting extruded surface may have undesired twists near the multiple CVs in the path.

Meshes

When creating fillets with the Mesh > Mesh Edge Reconstruct tool, the type of fillet built is the same as built by the Surfaces > Surface Fillet tool with Flow Control set to Extend for both Start and End. If the fillet surface is not acceptable and you need more control over the fillet options, toggle Create Fillet off in Mesh Edge Reconstruct and build the fillet using the Surface Fillet tool instead.
Alias Historical Release Notes 19
If you have any difficulty subsetting some areas of a mesh (Mesh > Mesh Partitioning > Mesh Subset), try setting Triangle selection to Include hidden. Meshes which are made transparent or partly transparent will not be drawn correctly if they appear in front of an image or painted canvas. You may not be able to cut a mesh (using Mesh > Mesh Partitioning > Mesh Cut) if it was produced from a tessellation (particularly if Fast tessellation was used). Try using the Accurate tessellation method instead if you plan to cut the mesh.

Sketching limitations

Limitations related to brushes, shapes, masks, image planes, and canvas layers.
Shape and Texture stamps have no effect with Dodge or Burn Brush Modes. There is no workaround. Painting on a newly created layer, which sits on top of another layer that uses multiply blending mode, is sometimes slow. Switch to another layer below the newly created layer, then switch back to the newly created layer. Transformations on a text layer cannot be undone. The text tool (Paint > Text Image) does not support multi-byte languages such as Japanese, Korean, or Chinese.

Shapes

Shapes may not work on symmetry geometry.

Rendering limitations

Limitations related to hardware shade, diagnostic shading, lighting, shading, texturing, and rendering. For additional rendering troubleshooting information, see the Troubleshoot section of the Rendering online documentation.
Ground Plane Reflections in Hardware Shade display a band at the bottom of the display. Workaround: Disable the Status Bar in General Preferences and maximize the perspective window, or disable the Status Bar and move the perspective window to the bottom left corner of the display.
Arrows inside Multi-lister color swatches are blue instead of white on Mac OS. Setting the Number of Processors to a number greater than the total number of CPU's or Cores will fail to render. Workaround: Set the processors to a number that is less or equal to the available number of CPU's or set to All.
Alias Historical Release Notes 22
When rendering with stages, the stages background source setting is not respected by software rendering for IBL. (The background is respected for hardware shading.) Workaround: Only map the desired IBL map. Delete any other IBL maps from the other files.
QTVR is currently not supported on the 64-bit versions of Alias. The following message appears when you try to use QTVR on a 64-bit version of Alias: Warning: QTVR is currently not supported for Windows 64-bit applications. Animated textures that are referenced as a series of images are not stored in the wirefile if the Embedded flag is enabled in the File > Save As options.

Hardware Shade and Diagnostic Shading
Triplanar projection does not support the Wrap feature. If Wrap is applied, the projection doesnt display as expected. Depending on the video card you have installed, the Line Smooth slider may have no effect on the actual thickness of the line. Some cards do not support this feature. When forcing Anti-Aliasing in the Driver Control panel, marking menu performance is slow. Disable the graphics card-based Anti-Aliasing and use the software-based Anti-Aliasing from within Alias. Diagnostic shading is lost for deformed objects with lattice rig, transformer rig. When using the lattice rig and transformer rig tools ( Object Edit > Dynamic Shape Modeling > Transformer Rig, Object Edit > Dynamic Shape Modeling > Lattice Rig), any objects you request to be deformed will lose their diagnostic shading. The software creates new surfaces for these objects. Whenever a tool creates new surfaces, these surfaces do not display diagnostic shading Workaround: Click on diagnostic shading in the Control Panel to reapply it to the objects.
The ObjectDisplay > Diagnostic Shading window appears empty when the Control Panel is displayed (or displayed and then turned off). Display (or display and then hide) the modeling control panel. For example, choose Windows > Control Panel, then click the Paint button at the top of the Paint Control Panel and choose Modeling. Then choose Windows > Control Panel to hide the modeling control panel. Transparent objects do not cast or receive self shadows. Hardware rendering can display the Environment Shader background texture only if a 2D texture is used. Solid texture environment textures will appear in the background only in software renderings. Self Shadows and Ground Plane Shadows do not currently support displacement maps. Objects with displacement maps will cast shadows based on the original geometry as if no displacement maps were enabled. Layered shaders that contain a layer that has a transparency map will not display correctly with self shadows on. When Optimize during Tumble is enabled for Self Shadows (in Hardware Shade settings), any mouse or keyboard input will interrupt the current shadow calculation or shadow rendering. When self shadow rendering is interrupted, parts of the half rendered scene will be momentarily displayed and will appear with most objects unlit and in shadow. Shading maps are interpreted differently when used with self shadows enabled. Shading maps will have to be adjusted separately to get the desired appearance when self shadows are enabled. Duplicate objects that occupy the same location in space will appear brighter when self shadows are on. With Shading method set to Per vertex, when Self Shadows and Show Background are enabled,

Alias Historical Release Notes 24
blending may be incorrect for some scenes and reflections can appear stronger with self shadows enabled. Switching the Shading method to Per pixel removes this limitation. For self shadows, when the camera goes into shadow, the shadow that you are in will no longer be rendered and will disappear. Setting Minimum Edge Length values in Diagnostic Shade or Hardware Shade can consume large amounts of memory. Software crashes can be associated with setting too small a value.
UV maps that are applied to mesh data will become corrupt if any of the mesh modification tools are used on the mesh. There is no workaround. When you use Diagnostic Shade or Hardware Shade on planar surfaces, artifacts may appear. Set Tessellator to Accurate.

Multi-lister

Acube map is retrieved as an image map, when only the cube map (not the shader itself) is selected and saved out. Save out the entire shader. The cube map is preserved. The ? icon in the Multi-lister that indicates a missing file texture may still appear even after you have updated the file texture path and name.

Image planes

Canvas planes will not cast reflections onto objects if there is another (even blank) canvas plane in between the object and the camera. Image planes (but not canvas planes) do not correctly fit to view when dollying out in an Orthographic Perspective view.
Solution: Click on the Previous View button (black back arrow) in the View Panel to restore the correct image plane position.

Render and Direct Render

The command line batch renderers fail to render embedded file textures. If you want to export an SDL file for rendering at a later time or on another machine, you must extract the textures beforehand using File > Image References > Extract Image References so that any image file textures embedded in the wire file will be available to the renderer. A problem has been found when Alias opens a SDL file with Embed image references turned ON (where the texture used for the shader color is an embedded image file). The results of rendering the SDL (using the command line interface) shows the file reference image with a red question mark. If you want to export a SDL file for rendering at a later time or on another machine, you must choose File > Image References > Extract Image References before exporting. As a result, any image file textures embedded in the wire file will be available to the renderer. A problem as been found in the hardware render when using Ambient Occlusion (Render > Ambient Occlusion > Compute). It is not displayed on transparent surfaces while in Hardware Shade. The Ambient Occlusion effect is not visible on transparent objects although this will display in the software renderer. SDL files created from Animation > Tools > Autofly or Animation > Turntable do not contain geometry and will not render

Animating limitations

Limitations related to animation, inverse kinematics, constraints, and clusters.
The Action Window has no vertical grid labels on Mac OS. Constants used by parameter curves were changed in AliasStudio2009 without a change to the wire file code. As a result, animation of light parameters in files created before AliasStudio 2009 and retrieved in AliasStudio 2009 will be incorrect. Files created and retrieved in the same version will be fine. Files created in 2009 and retrieved in another version will also be incorrect. Files created before 2009 and retrieved in 2010 will be fine. There is no way to detect the problem so incorrect files will need to be manually repaired. When you use Ungroup with Copy Node option, the new nodes get instances of any animation curves that were on the original nodes. If you then edit the original curves, the new branch is affected as well. If the above is not what you want, you can create new copies by cutting and pasting the curves in the Action Window.
The grid does not update during a Time Slider scrub when there is a constrained camera Turn Optimization off in the Playback Options.
Linear tangents may not work correctly for a Parameter curve with large values When the slope of the curve segment between two successive keyframes is greater than 573 (that is, tan(89.9 degrees), linear tangents are not calculated correctly (Alias truncates the values to avoid numerical errors elsewhere.) Create the curve on a dummy node with a smaller range of values, and use an expression to scale the value of the curve. Playing back of visibility animation may put invisible objects on the pick list. If you pick an object with visibility animation at a frame where it is visible, play back, and then stop playback at a frame where the object is not visible, then the object remains on the pick list, and may be inadvertently transformed or deleted. Use Pick > Nothing to ensure there are no invisible objects picked. Viewframe and playback dont update a static expression. For example, if you set an objects Xtranslate channel to the constant expression 1 and Transform > Move it, it is not reset to 1 by viewframe. Set a keyframe for these values instead, or use an expression like 1 + frame * 0 instead of a constant expression 1. The rand() and gauss() functions do not work correctly in expressions if particle emission is occurring. Turn off particle emission, bake the rand() and gauss() expressions (using the Bake plug-in), and then turn particle emission back on. Image planes and associated animations are not retrieved correctly if referenced PIX files cannot be found.

Ensure that all referenced pix files associated with an image plane are in place when you save the wire file. If necessary, use a placeholder pix file when saving out the wirefile. If this is not done, the animation associated with the image plane may not be retrievable.

IK and Constraints

UV constraints ignore displacement maps on surfaces. You can warp the surface for a similar effect, and UV constraints do work with warped surfaces. Local axes behavior is not consistent if the local axes have not been explicitly set. If an object has never had its local axes explicitly set, Alias assumes that they are always at a (0,0,0) rotation in object space. So if you watched the local axes while you Zero-transformed the object, for example, the local axes would appear to be transformed as well. However, if you had set Local Axes, Alias does not modify them during Zero transforms. Certain operations explicitly create Local Axes. For example, skeletons always have Local Axes and Edit > Duplicate Object creates explicit local Axes. Visually, there is no way to tell if explicit Local Axes exist or if the defaults are being used. Therefore, certain tools appear to behave inconsistently with local axes. Set your local axes explicitly to the desired orientation. Edit > Duplicate > Object does not remap constraints within the copied hierarchy. If both the constraint target and destination are in the copied hierarchy, delete the constraint and re-apply it to the new objects in the new hierarchy. In the Animation > IK > Add IK Handle option box, Reset does not reset all the options to their default values.
Reset these options by hand: the default for Orientation is Local, and the default for SetRestPose is Off. An object with multiple aim constraints may not evaluate correctly. Aim constraint rotations are restricted to -180/+ 180 degrees; however these restrictions are not enforced consistently throughout the weighting process, so if individual constraints caused rotation values of opposite sign, errors may result. Use a single object as the aim constraint target where possible. If you really depend on the animation of two separate targets, then point constraining an object partway between the original targets and using this new object may provide an adequate approximation.

Textures do not export to.DWF format. If your model uses a texture with no color values, the default color for the texture will be exported.
Some files originating in Alias Versions 9.5 to 9.7 will crash when opened. Some files originating in Alias Versions 9.5 to 9.7 may be corrupted and crash when opened into this version of Alias.
Workaround: In a previous version of Alias, delete the null nodes (empty textures nodes, empty shaders, and so on), save the file, and try to import it again. If AutoCAD is editing a DWF file, Alias cannot open that file. Close the file in AutoCAD before opening it in Alias. Files from Alias 8.5 and Alias 9.5 for Windows containing Tubular Offset, Project Tangent, or Nsided commands may not be able to be re-evaluated. To allow re-evaluation, delete these commands using the History View window. Shell-stitching and unstitching a surface results in the loss of information such as construction history, original layer assignment, shaders, and name information. Make sure that you select the Keep Original Model before stitching. Display of high-degree surfaces can be distorted after Data Transfer input. With default display settings, surfaces of degrees higher than 14 appear distorted when input into Alias. To ensure proper display of these surfaces, use Object Edit > Patch Precision to increase the patch precision to at least 4.

Documentation

Some changes to the software may have resulted in inaccuracies in some tutorials. Please follow the instructions in the online help or PDF file instead of the printed copy. The URL to access Alias 2010 online documentation on the web is http://www.autodesk.com/alias2010 docs Slashes are sometimes used instead of backslashes in the documentation of Alias. Slashes (/) are used in UNIX for file paths, and were pervasive in the original documentation. While every attempt has been made to change slashes to the backslashes (\) used by Windows, there may be pictures or file examples that still use them.
OpenModel and OpenAlias limitations
Limitations related to OpenModel and OpenAlias. NOTE UNIX-style pathnames are typically used in this section. For Windows paths, use backslashes (\) instead of slashes (/), starting at the drive and directory where the Alias product is installed.

General information

The Alias APIs are documented in the online documentation. Select Help > Alias Help to open a Web browser to the main documentation page, or go directly to Alias Programmers Interfaces (API). Due to changes in the Alias API, you should recompile any plug-ins that were compiled for a previous release of Alias.
Some general limitations include: Alias and OpenModel have different U forms for a torus. As a result, a torus tessellated in Alias and in OpenModel will not have the same vertex count. Alias Pick Component type functionality is not available in the API. The Alias Plug-in preferences for setting the Verbose Messages flag and plug-in path may not work correctly on the Windows platform. The AlCurve::createPoint() method can produce geometry that does not draw correctly. Some general limitations from previous releases include: AlCluster::addMember() and AlClusterMember::removeMember() may return sSuccess even though the operation failed. The API does not have a way of directly untrimming a trimmed surface. It is possible to remove an AlMessage callback handler while in the body of the handler. This will result in a core dump when the handler returns. AlImagePlane::setFrameType() can core dump under certain situations. The cluster effect is backwards in the API. The most recent cluster added has the first effect. AlChannel::expressionString() can core dump if the expression string is greater than 1024 characters. The AlPlayFrame class calls into the animation subsystem of Alias within its constructor and destructor methods. If a plug-in declares an AlPlayFrame class as a global variable, then the constructor is run when the plug-in is loaded as a part of static constructor initialization. This can cause a core dump if the plug-in is auto-loaded, since the constructor tries to call into code that is not yet initialized at startup time.
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A DAG node could be invisible in another layer even though its visibility has not been set with the method AlDagNode::isDisplayModeSet(kDisplayMode Invisible) You cannot change the coordinate system of Alias through the API. You can not copy curves-on-surface through the API. You can not determine what lights are linked to a surface. OpenModel/OpenAlias cannot access light textures. The AlPickList class does not support edit points. You cannot read or write the source texture of a solid projection texture. The OpenModel libraries do not work properly within a multi-processing application. Core dumps will occur. The polygon history example plug-in polyHistExample.plugin will core dump if instances are used. For the old blind data interface, special programming is required for API code that will run on both Windows and UNIX platforms and share blind data. Byte ordering is reversed on the Windows platform when compared to IRIX. As a result, swapping macros are needed to orient blind data correctly. Individual types such as float, double, long and so on, need to be swapped. For more information, refer to the OpenModel documentation in the online Alias Programmers Interfaces (API) guide. NOTE This problem cannot be currently fixed within the API, because the API has no knowledge of the structures that API applications are using to store blind data. The AlPixFile class does not support GIF files. For the old blind data interface, using the C++ new and delete functions to create and destroy memory for blind data can lead to program errors. Alias and

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OpenModel use malloc() and free() for its blind data memory creation and destruction routines. Problems can occur if the blind data has been created with the new command. There are several cases where Alias or OpenModel need to remove or re-create blind data memory storage during normal operations. For example, if a delete all operation is done, all blind data is removed. Also, if blind data is saved in the wire file, when the file is read in, the blind data storage is re-created. When you are retrieving files, the universes blind data may get obscured because two blind data packets with the same user type have been attached to the universe. To see two data packets with the same user type, you must remove the first one, and the second one will then be visible. Try to avoid using multiple packets with the same IDs. The order in which these packets are returned by the blindData() methods is undefined. Alias and the API do not handle surface form the same way. After Alias builds a closed surface, the Information window will report that the surface is open. For efficiency, Alias does not keep track of the closed state of a surface. Use the API methods AlSurface::vForm() or uForm() to test the points of a surface to determine if it is closed or not. NURBS curves and surfaces are not parameterized from 0 to 1. You must retrieve the knot vector for any geometry and use the minimum and maximum knot values as the limits of parameterization for the geometry. The firstShader() methods currently return the last shader that was evaluated. Copying shaders from one object to another will reverse the shader list. (Write out the SDL to illustrate this behavior.) This behavior will lead to problems when layered shaders are used, because the order of the shaders will be incorrect.
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Cache the shader list and add the shaders to the new object starting at the tail of the list. (Please keep in mind that if we fix this bug in future releases, this solution will cause the list to be in the wrong order again.) The AlSettable::addToSet() method incorrectly returns status values for sObjectInAnotherSet and sObjectInExclusiveSet situations. Detect these two conditions by traversing the set lists in the universe before calling ::addToSet(). Plug-ins are provided on an AS-IS basis. In the directory $ALIAS_LOCATION/ODS/, there are a number of pre-compiled plug-ins and source code examples. These plug-ins and source code examples are provided to you on an AS-IS basis. You are free to make use of these plug-ins and source code examples; however Autodesk does not provide any support in connection with them. Autodesk makes no warranties, express, implied, or arising by custom or trade usage, and to the extent permitted by applicable law, specifically disclaims any implied warranties of title, noninfringement or of fitness for a particular purpose to the extent permitted by applicable law, (i) Autodesks liability in contract, tort or otherwise arising out of or in connection with the plugins or source code shall not exceed the purchase price paid by the customer for the plug-ins or source code examples, and (ii) in no event shall Autodesk be liable for any punitive damages or lost profits or other special, indirect, incidental, or consequential damages, including any damages resulting from loss of business arising out of or in connection with the performance of the plug-ins or source code examples, even if Autodesk has been advised of the possibility of such damages. The customer shall indemnify Autodesk and hold it harmless from and against any loss, claim or damage to any person arising out of the customers use of the plug-ins or source code examples. The plug-in scheme editor options are not restored correctly when Alias restarts. Restore the options after the plug-in is loaded.

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Plug-in DSOs are not unloaded when Alias exits As a result, static destructors are not called when Alias exits. The plugin_exit() function will still be called when Alias exits. Any saving of state required by a plug-in can be done in the plugin_exit() routine. Unload the plug-in manually through the Plug-in Manager window to call the static destructors. Unloading an active continuous plug-in through the Plug-in Manager can cause a core dump under certain situations. Do not allow the plug-in to be unloaded if it is active. You can set a global variable in the plug-in to track its active state. Set this variable to TRUE in the init() function and FALSE in the cleanup() function. Within plugin_exit(), if the plug-in is active, return a 1 so that the unloading of the plug-in will fail. This test should be done before the deleteObject() methods are called in plugin_exit(). When setting a plug-ins integer slider definition, you can set the range argument to any value in the integer range; however, the slider will only give values between -100 and 100. Values less than -100 or greater than 100 can still be entered in the associated text field, but the slider will only give values between -100 and 100. Use the undocumented argument slider_range to change the min/max slider range values from their defaults. For example, to define an integer slider with a range of -200 to 1000, use the following Scheme statement: (list slider_range -200 1000) (list range -200 1000) The AlAreEqual(const AlObject* o1, const AlObject* o2) method for detecting if two objects in Alias are equal has a significant FALSE condition. If both pointers, o1 and o2, are equal and NULL, FALSE is returned. Test o1 and o2 before calling this function.
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AlContinuousFunction::setPrompt() does not display the prompt right away. Use AlPrintf(kPrompt,.) to output the prompt string (without formatting) in the init callback of the continuous function. To exclude formatting, end the prompt string before the first % symbol.