render settings - glass/clear plastic

The question was posed in a somewhat confused way, Sean. There's a color and appearance editor which is strictly to define surface colors, ambient colors, surface patterns, transparency. That's in 'View>Color and appearance'. There's also a lights menu to setup and save light sources, spots, intensity. That's under 'View>Model setup>Lights'. There's a room editor for setting up the background image, postitoning the floor, scaling the room to the part. That's also under Model setup. Maybe what you're referring to is the Render control module, which seems like an attempt to bring all this stuff together.

However, for transparency, you are back to the model itself and the Color and appearance interface. Any color can be made transparent through the Properties section. If this isn't expanded, click on the arrowhead. Then click on the tabbed page marked Advanced. The middle slider, marked Transparency, is the one to use to change a part's color from opaque to transparent. When you are at 100% transparency, the part disappears. Somewhere around 50 to 70 percent, you can see through and any inside surfaces. If you're cards/drivers are good enough, it will be a real colored glass effect, but, if not, the transparency will show as a dithering pattern.

Whole assemblies can be treated this way, with different colors and transparencies applied to individual components or even individual surfaces to create a 'window' into a part. The color can be removed by picking component/model/surface, however the appearance was applied and selecting Clear on the same panel with Select and Apply. Hopefully, your educational license came with some course materials, one of which is undoubtedly on rendering. It's complicated enough to warrant taking a course.

David Janes