[superbad]

Any chance of a basic walk through tutorial for the new plugin? I have only ever used the SW plugin to export to Studio, because I need exact control over the textures.

1. Can we control the textures better in SW now?
2. If not, is there a reason to use the plugin more than I have previously?

I've been playing with it, and I pretty much get it. But I have a material applied to a body, and I have no idea what the textures are doing- they are not visible in the viewport.

[JDHill]

I started on a tutorial...sticky at the top of the forum. To see textures, toggle on the 'Enable Viewport Materials' button in the Database Manager's toolbar. And...no, there is really nothing I can do using the 2007 API to enable more control over texturing than the native SW texture offers. We'll see what can be done in the next version when I stop targeting 2007 and start using the 2008 API.

[superbad]

Great. I was doing that, but nothing displayed in the viewport until I went into the material editor and double clicked the texture.

Last time I played with the 2008 beta the texturing was the same, but maybe there's something hidden in the API you can use.

[JDHill]

I was totally focused on the 2007 API for this release, but I did peek and it looks like there's nothing hidden at all...really there is an entirely new materials API for 2008...here's the main heading from the docs:

In SolidWorks 2008 and later, materials are called appearances. RealView Graphics must be enabled to see any applied appearances.

[w i l l]

Oh dear - not many have graphics cards that cope with Real View. Interesting though.

[superbad]

I was totally focused on the 2007 API for this release, but I did peek and it looks like there's nothing hidden at all...really there is an entirely new materials API for 2008...here's the main heading from the docs:

Yeah, I forgot about that. Last time I played with it, it was no more usable than the current texturing system.