No object is required to have a shading component. But you can add a shading component to apply a unique or unusual effect to an object.
Shading describes how the interior of an object will appear. When you want to fill a rectangle, ellipse, polygon, or curve with a color, you use a flat-color shading component. You can also combine two shading colors to create unusual linear, cylindrical, or radial gradient effects. Or, you can assign an image to fill an object, in either a stretched, scaled, or tiled effect, and you can select a color to be rendered transparent, an effect known as a “texture mapping.” For more information, see Color Dialog Box.
You can also apply transparency to image objects, allowing any objects or the background to show through partially.
Shading components save you time in two ways. Once you have created a shading component that you like, you can share it among a limitless number of objects. This saves you the trouble of recreating shading effects for individual objects. Then, if you ever want to change the shading for those objects that share it, all you have to do is edit the shading component. The changes will apply to all objects that share the edited shading component.
Use the Shading Editor dialog box to edit shading components for objects. For more information, see Shading Editor Dialog Box.