[purCAB]

JD et al --

From my brief encounter with V2, it looks most promising. A render that was taking hours (and never really looked right) is very usable after just 30 minutes (Intel 2.66 Core 2 Duo --- Vista 64). Felicidades a todo.

I have come across one issue that I wanted to report. As I have not yet read through all of the new features and manuals, I hope that this isn't one of those embarrassing moments. There seems to be a significant shift between the view in SolidWorks and the view in Maxwell. I also tried this using an SW camera with essentially the same result. In my case, I have the object centered within the SW window (positioned either via the mouse or via SW camera settings). However when I click on Render Scene, the object is pushed way to the right when it opens in Maxwell. So much so that it's clipped. I haven't yet tried going into Studio first to see if the same issue exists there as well. Obviously in Studio one could reposition even if it's off.

EDIT: Using Camera Shift [Camera->Film Back->Shift(x/y)] requires setting x to +8% in order to have the object centered in the render.

Saludos,

Ken

[JDHill]

Hi Ken,

I can think of a couple of possibilities:

1. shift lens is being used in the Maxwell camera properties
2. SW is reporting bogus viewport information

The first one should be easy to spot. The second one would be more related to whether or not the feature manager is collapsed or not. When extended, it sort of 'hovers' over your work area - the area underneath it is still part of what SW considers the viewport. That wouldn't tend to explain part of the model which is visible in the viewport not being visible in the render though, so I'd tend to take a look at the Maxwell camera shift and film size parameters. You can always toggle on the camera HUD to see where the Maxwell camera's frame will be (there needs to be an actual SW camera active in the viewport to do that though).

Probably the quickest way to get it sorted is to:

1. go to Scene Manager > Camera
2. select the desired viewport
3. in the Camera page, set the resolution mode to 'Viewport'

That will clear any camera shift parameters and cause the plugin to pick up the actual viewport dimensions again.

Let me know what you find.

JD

[JDHill]

Ah, I see you checked out the camera shift. If it's 8% or so, I'd really tend to say that it's due to the way that the feature manager hovers over the viewport. It seems like it ought to make the viewport smaller, as happens on the right when you pin the task pane, but it doesn't work that way.

[yolk]

that is correct JD..the feature manager is floating atop the camera window. the right task pane pushes the view correctly

[purCAB]

JD / yolk --

Yes it looks as if you are correct. I presume that this is an SW limitation and something that cannot be "fixed".

It seems to me that this is both a problem on the left and on the right (although not politically), as one can expand the right task pane so that it covers the edge of the Camera view and this creates the same problem as with the feature manager on the left. I suppose that this doesn't happen for those with a two monitor setup.

JD, is there a way to have the HUD give an indication that there is more to the scene by presenting some sort of indicator when the scene is being "covered" by any of the task panes? A different colored line (different than the HUD color) that is displayed on the edge of the task pane, or a set of arrows pointing in the direction of the covered portion of the scene for example?

[JDHill]

Yes, as far as I know, there is no way for me to know the width of the feature manager. Even if there were, the issue is a bit stickier than it would seem, because the only way to remedy it would be to (a) find out how wide the feature manager was, and (b) use the camera's shift lens to compensate. That is the case, because SW is not actually altering the camera's physical location when you expand or collapse the task pane.

It is rarely an issue for me here though, because I almost never leave the Maxwell camera in its automatic 'viewport' mode; that is, I set the resolution explicitly so that it is not linked to the size of the viewport. It used to be difficult to work that way before the camera HUD - with no visual indication of what would be rendered, it was difficult to manually change the output resolution and to predict what you'd get in the output image. So, I almost always use an explicit output resolution, or film size, and have the camera HUD active now.

In a more direct answer to your second question, the HUD does show this to some degree, but not explicitly - if you look at the camera info printed at the bottom of the viewport (film, offset, rez, etc.), you will notice it is always centered on the actual viewport. So that is at least an implicit indication that part of your viewport is getting covered by the task pane. Obviously, there is some way of determining the width of the task pane, because SW itself shifts its axis icon and other viewport icons to compensate, but I assume this is being done with knowledge that is not exposed via the API - I don't rule out the possibility that this might be exposed somewhere, but I am not aware of any method for obtaining that information at the present time.

[purCAB]

JD --

Yes, I think I can use the HUD settings at least as an indicator/reminder.

Thanks