Non-Photometric Lights Message (Working With Insertion Scale or Placing a Block)
Updated on: April 18, 2022
Issue
You received one or both of the following messages:
Lighting – Insert Units
When the insertion scale is set to Unitless, photometric lights might not render as expected. What do you want to do?
Lighting – Non-photometric lights
Non-photometric lights are not supported by the current render engine.
All lights are displayed as photometric lights.
You may have received this message after:
- Clicking Continue within the dialog box shown to the left, or
-
Attempting to place any type of block, including:
- Plants
- Site amenities, Reference Notes, or other site graphics
- Irrigation components
Cause
The first message shown above would have appeared after you changed the drawing Insertion Scale units to Unitless. Beginning with AutoCAD 2016, all lights in CAD-based software are rendered as photometric lights. Setting the Insertion Scale to Unitless causes non-photometric lighting to be used in rendering.
For more detailed information on the new photometric lighting feature and the system variable that fires this message, please see the official Autodesk article on this issue.
The second message shown above might appear when you try to insert a block into a drawing. When you place a Land F/X block, the units automatically toggle to Unitless, which in turn fires this message.
Solution
If you plan to use rendering in your drawing, you can prevent this issue by avoiding setting the Insertion Scale to Unitless.
If you don't plan to use rendering, you can ignore this warning.
To close the second error message, check the box next to Do not show this message again.
