[juan]

I have changed this post to a sticky to show it always on top. I have locked the old post but I will not delete it for a days to allow you read all.
Please try to post only bugs and SwMaxwell issues here.

Best Regards,

Juan

[juan]

Juan, First - thanks for the new plug!

Now some feedback based on only a little useage - sorry.. long one.

1.
SWmaxPM (property manager) does not remember most settings. Soon as I close the PM it forgets the camera correction entered, to render alpha channel, sky dome is on, and any other setting made. This is a really big pain! So I have to write down a check list of settings to reenter them each time I close and open the PM. Can't it remember these settings?

2.
It would be much better if you clear the selection filter after closing the PM. Right now when you leave the PM the surface and object filter remain selected, so one must manually revert to the previous state.

3.
Also for selection filters, I think the default filter when entering SWmaxPM materials should be object. I think the less frequent selection will be by surface. Saves a step.

4.
if I create a camera in SW, and it say that it is 34mm lense, or some other focal length, why is it that SWmaxPM shows 50mm. Does it not pull any of this info directly from SW?

5.
Camera correction is not clear to me. Must this be entered? If I understand the manual, this does not.... However, I was entering the number for example, 141mm (0.141m) and the focus seemed OK. For example, why can't it pull the camera correction info from SW? or is this actually redundant because max ius actually pulling this number from the camera position box (0.23 as per your manual example). However, it seems the images is more correct if I enter this number. Again, SWmaxPm should remember this number.

6.
Can maxwell detect the default units SW is set for? I beleive it is more typical for SW users to work in MM for engineering and product design. Or can there be an optionional check box? Or is it already autodetecting the "1" is already correct?.

7.
I had a number of crashes when I first started using this plug. It seemed to be that if I clicked inside the white materials list box, and there was no material there, it would crash. At first I think it may have also been related to my forgetting to put my license file into the max folder (I was testing first with Rhino on another machine, and only just installed SW2006 & maxwell on this machine). However, i do think there was some flakyness with materials.

8.
Regarding scene scale. If I am working in SW in mm, why is it that SWmax works fine at scale "1"? If I understand correctly, I should have to set it to .001, when my SW working default is MM, right? But if I do that, I get black.... If I set to .01 I get something, but again too dark. (using only the skydome right now). Again, 1 seems fine.

9.
If I select polycarbonate Dielectric, and change the ABBE setting, it does not remain "polycarbonate". If i reselect the item I applied it to, the name shows borasilicate.... Only if I leave the ABBE alone does it remain named polycarbonate.

10
Is there no "custom" dielectric as there is in Rhino?

11.
I noticed this in Rhino too - does Maxwell have a problem when two objects are coincident to each other? I noticed that if I have two transparent parts touching each other, they tend to go black where they contact (which is a normal mate condition in SW and other CAD packages). I do not beleve this has to do with the number of bounces... but may be conicidend faces?

12.
Am I correct that the material application interface will be totally different when V1 maxwell is out in October? Or is this the way we will apply materials?

Sorry, that was a lot - and maybe some are simply new user errors and unknowns - sorry if that is the case!

looking forward to more updates!

Cheers
Daniel
_________________
SolidWorks+Rhino+Maxwell
Dell P4 3.2 + 1gbRAM + Nvidia FX1000

[juan]

Hello Daniel,
dg wrote:

SWmaxPM (property manager) does not remember most settings.


A change in the last step before release has generated this bug. It will be fixed early in the next week

dg wrote:

It would be much better if you clear the selection filter after closing the PM.
Also for selection filters, I think the default filter when entering SWmaxPM materials should be object.


It will be fixed in the next release too.

dg wrote:

if I create a camera in SW, and it say that it is 34mm lense, or some other focal length, why is it that SWmaxPM shows 50mm. Does it not pull any of this info directly from SW?
Camera correction is not clear to me. Must this be entered? If I understand the manual, this does not.... However, I was entering the number for example, 141mm (0.141m) and the focus seemed OK. For example, why can't it pull the camera correction info from SW? or is this actually redundant because max ius actually pulling this number from the camera position box (0.23 as per your manual example). However, it seems the images is more correct if I enter this number. Again, SWmaxPm should remember this number.


SolidWorks camera is very new and there is a lack of camera methods. Actually it's not possible that SwMaxwell get the distance between camera
and target automatically. It must be filled by the user. In next releases of SolidWorks it will not be necessary. Of course the value will be saved too.

dg wrote:

Can maxwell detect the default units SW is set for? Or is it already autodetecting the "1" is already correct?Regarding scene scale. If I am working in SW in mm, why is it that SWmax works fine at scale "1"? If I understand correctly, I should have to set it to .001, when my SW working default is MM, right? But if I do that, I get black....

SwMaxwell will detect user units in the next release too. Also there will be a revision of scale issues.

dg wrote:

It seemed to be that if I clicked inside the white materials list box, and there was no material there, it would crash. If I select polycarbonate Dielectric, and change the ABBE setting, it does not remain "polycarbonate".

Also both bugs will be fixed. Thank you for the report.

The rest of your suggestions are about general use of Maxwell. It better if you post them in the general forum to let other people to know that. Of course the way to select materials in the standalone will be different to swMaxwell. Each plugin has to handle the resources that its platform provides. Thank you a lot for you suggestions. There was a deep change in the internal core of the plugin but obviously there could be a lot of small bugs in the user interface. The next week we will release a new version with most of this issues fixed.

Best regards,

[juan]

Thanks for the reply Juan. You obviously are right on top of the issues. I am also glad to hear SW will be making adjustments to make your life easier too.

Quote:
Of course the way to select materials in the standalone will be different to swMaxwell. Each plugin has to handle the resources that its platform provides.


Do I understand correctly that all the shading will be handled in swMax? If so, will there be support for "true" shader pre visualization inside swMax? And ultimately selection based on existing libraries, rather than the workaround to copy and rename the MXM files?

Quote:
Thank you a lot for you suggestions. There was a deep change in the internal core of the plugin but obviously there could be a lot of small bugs in the user interface. The next week we will release a new version with most of this issues fixed.


Glad to help - especially since I really want Maxwell to work seamlessly with SW which is the workhorse in my studio. I really appreciate the hard work you are clearly doing! Looking forward to the updates next week.
Cheers
Daniel
_________________
SolidWorks+Rhino+Maxwell
Dell P4 3.2 + 1gbRAM + Nvidia FX1000

[juan]

dg wrote:

Do I understand correctly that all the shading will be handled in swMax? If so, will there be support for "true" shader pre visualization inside swMax? And ultimately selection based on existing libraries, rather than the workaround to copy and rename the MXM files?


When Maxwell standalone is released (in october) you could go on handling shaders in SolidWorks or you could export a single mxs file just with geometric data and default materials and then apply shaders in Maxwell. The tools that Maxwell standalone will provide for shading will be more powerful than any plugin tool, and also you will have pre visualization... material libraries will come later. But anyway the plugins will go on beeing useful and the material editor of Solidworks will be better in next releases.

Cheers!

Juan
_________________
Next Limit Team

[juan]

just noticed that the menu for swMaxwell2006 shifts position depending on the mode of SW. In part mode it is swMaxwell, Window, Help. In Drawing and assembly mode it is Window, swMaxwell, Help I think I prefer swMaxwell, Window, Help since I have a habit of accessing the window menue in the same place...

cheers
Daniel

[juan]

Is it only me ? - but when closing SW20006 Pre-release 1 and I have Maxwell plugin turned on - the closing down of SW results in a crash and the new Customer Service Feedback form -- And who ever said that Americans don't get irony Razz

If before closing down Sw I remove Maxwell from the plugin list , SW closes down fine. I do this anyway or else Sw2005 does not work properly. But occasionally I forget. Keep your patience Juan - I don't envy you trying to get a consistant copy of SW. Wink

Jonathan

[juan]

Couple of things I have noticed after a few hours of playing with the latest plugin.

The camera seems to be off from sw to maxwell. What I see in my viewport is not what I am getting when it renders. It will be shifted a bit one way or the other. The other plugs like Rhino and C4D render what I see through my camera in the application viewport. I did try copying the position of the camera to the L dimension in the camera setting as the video shows. This seemed to help me get my image in focus, but the view is still off.

I seem to have to make my emitters much brighter than in the other plugins to get the results I want. This could just be user error on my part though. Do I need to adjust units anywhere? I see it is set to 1. If I am using inches is this correct?

The application of materials is a bit akward. Once I put a material on a body or face is there a way to click on it in the viewport, and know what material it has. If it doesn't maybe a way to do this would be when you click on a body or face the material in the list gets highlighted. It would be cool also if maxwell materials would update the color or transparency of an object from the solidworks color properties. For example if I but a green maxwell diffuse on a part it turns green in the viewport by having the sw color match it. Right now there is no visual cue what materials I have applied to an object. Also would it be possible for a maxwell material to show up in the new flyout display pane in the feature manager. This would be very handy.

Sorry if any of the recomendations or observations have already been mentioned, or are in the process of being updated. It seems to be coming along well. Keep up the good work.
_________________
Industrial Designer
www.kablooe.com
Dell 8300 P4 3.4ghz w/HT
1.5 gig ram
Rhino 3.0, Cinema 4D 8.5, Solidworks 2005

[juan]

Hi Eric,

Eric Lagman wrote:

The camera seems to be off from sw to maxwell. What I see in my viewport is not what I am getting when it renders. It will be shifted a bit one way or the other.


Yes, there are differences between Solidworks camera and SwMaxwell camera. I am working with it at now, I will update a version with more camera issues fixed as soon as possible.

Eric Lagman wrote:

I seem to have to make my emitters much brighter than in the other plugins to get the results I want. This could just be user error on my part though. Do I need to adjust units anywhere? I see it is set to 1. If I am using inches is this correct?.


Let me take a look, Theorycally there is no differencs, so I will compare it with other platforms. If you can provide a very simple example it will be very useful (i.e a emitter cube with 1m strips in swMaxwell and Rhino)

Eric Lagman wrote:

Once I put a material on a body or face is there a way to click on it in the viewport, and know what material it has. If it doesn't maybe a way to do this would be when you click on a body or face the material in the list gets highlighted.


Yes is is possible now. If you enable the check box "show the material automatically" when you press an entity in the viewport or in the feature tree the material applyed to this entity is highligthed in the list. If this feature does not work in your system please let me know.

Eric Lagman wrote:

It would be cool also if maxwell materials would update the color or transparency of an object from the solidworks color properties. For example if I but a green maxwell diffuse on a part it turns green in the viewport by having the sw color match it.

Eric, thats a great idea. I thought about it in the past but I was not sure if it was appropiate to change the appereance of the model, perhaps the user do not want I change his assemblies. But now I see that you could find it very useful. I will investigate the possibility of adding this feature very soon.

Eric Lagman wrote:

Also would it be possible for a maxwell material to show up in the new flyout display pane in the feature manager. This would be very handy.

I am not sure if I know exactly what you mean. Are you talking about the floating tabs in the right, like toolbox of 3Dcontent link?

Eric Lagman wrote:

Sorry if any of the recomendations or observations have already been mentioned, or are in the process of being updated. It seems to be coming along well.


All your comments are very useful. You know developing a connection between maxwell and a CAD platform is a long way. In fact the most CAD platforms just would not allow this connection. SolidWorks is as powerful that we will have a great integration soon. We will provide a plugin more powerful with each update, we have done important steps last month but there are a lot of improvements for the future. SolidWorks Corp is helping a lot to do this way easier.

Regards

Juan
_________________
Next Limit Team

[juan]

[/quote]Eric, thats a great idea. I thought about it in the past but I was not sure if it was appropiate to change the appereance of the model, perhaps the user do not want I change his assemblies. But now I see that you could find it very useful. I will investigate the possibility of adding this feature very soon.

Yes this might annoy some people. Maybe just the option somwhere to check a box and it does this. That way if they dont want maxwell materials to affect their model color they dont have to.

[/quote]I am not sure if I know exactly what you mean. Are you talking about the floating tabs in the right, like toolbox of 3Dcontent link?

See down and dirty photoshoped image. Icons copied from C4d plug Smile If the icons had a visual cue as to what the material was would be nice also. This is roughly shown in my image with white text. E=emitter Di=Diffuse etc. This might be very hard to code, but maybe solidworks team would help you out with this?

I will test the emitter power between the rhino plug and sw plug later on today or tomorrow.



_________________
Industrial Designer
www.kablooe.com
Dell 8300 P4 3.4ghz w/HT
1.5 gig ram
Rhino 3.0, Cinema 4D 8.5, Solidworks 2005

[juan]

Just installed sw2006 Sp0 and have mx plugin appearing and I can assign material etc - However when I render SW always crashes before the MX windows appear. It even crashes on a a virgin file where I just use the render button and efault MX materials. I had thought that this was just my sw2006 Beta copy not being the latest, but it happens with the SP0 copy.

I think it is time for a clean install of MX - how do I acheive this?

What is the correct procedure for uninstalling Maxwell aswell as the MX SW plugin and then re-installing them? This way I can at least be confidant that crashes etc are not due to past install blemishes.

TTFN



Jonathan

[juan]

strange, i also installed the latest release (august 1) and it's rendering fine..will test more
_________________
*hidden cats emitting 540 becquerel or more can easily be found with a geiger counter*

[juan]

Jonathan,

This is strange but sure we can find a solution.
May be this is a problem with the installation and conflicts with older versions, but in that case you would have problems in the loading/unloading process, not in the analisys of the scene. (but windows is misterious, there could be a lot of causes). Anyway if you have SWmaxwell2005 it has an uninstaller, but in swMaxwell it is not needed, check you have the last version, delete the older swmaxwell2006 and replace it with the new one (do not overwrite, first delete and then replace, ok? )

But as I say, I am not very sure this is your problem. First of all I need to know when SW crashes. Please check if the mxs file is written before the crash. isn't it? The last instruction in the scene analisys is a call to the mxcl command (which launches maxwell app) and I had to change this call in the last release of the plugin for some reasons. Just before this call, the mxs is written so if you have this file in the right path, we know where the program crashes. This call depends on several settings of your system and it would explain why we have not seen this in other computers.

If you have not the mxs file then the problem is a bit more complex. Get a big assembly, do not apply any maxwell material, and press the render button. You will see the percentage of the process in the status bar below. does the crash happen when the status show 0%, 100% or a middle value?

With this info I can send you different versions of the plugin with some functions disabled (i.e. without sky, without textures, ...) and we can check the origin of the problem. But I think that with the first steps we are going to get info enough to fix this issue very soon, sure today. Sorry for the inconveniences.

PS. I have compiled a new version of the plugin with some of the suggestions of Eric (Thanks Eric Smile ) Now there is a feature ( optional ! ) that updates the color, transparency and other visual parameters of the object when a maxwell material is applyed following the values of this maxwell material. It is very useful to know which materials have a maxwell material applyed. I could update it tomorrow but please save a copy of the old plugin because I will go out for a week and I could not give you support for some days. In this version also there are some minor bugs fixed.

Thanks for your suggestions, Very Happy

Juan
_________________
Next Limit Team

[juan]

Quote:
check you have the last version, delete the older swmaxwell2006 and replace it with the new one (do not overwrite, first delete and then replace, ok? )

So I am a bit slow. If I uncheck the Add-In and then re-load by opening the dll? When the dll is opened, is it moved somewhere from the original directory it was in?

Quote:
PS. I have compiled a new version of the plugin with some of the suggestions of Eric (Thanks Eric ) Now there is a feature ( optional ! ) that updates the color, transparency and other visual parameters of the object when a maxwell material is applyed following the values of this maxwell material. It is very useful to know which materials have a maxwell material applyed. I could update it tomorrow but please save a copy of the old plugin because I will go out for a week and I could not give you support for some days. In this version also there are some minor bugs fixed.

Sounds great! Also, I think that the checkbox to have it show which material is applied should be default on. The only reason not to select an object and see what material is active is if there is some performance hit.

Cheers
Daniel
_________________
SolidWorks+Rhino+Maxwell
Dell P4 3.2 + 1gbRAM + Nvidia FX1000

soory, I seem to have left some words/thoughts out...

If I uncheck the Add-In and then re-load by opening the dll is the old one not removed? Or is it that when we open the dll in SW, it moved to a SW directory from the original directory it was in? Just want to be sure I am doing the right thing...
_________________
SolidWorks+Rhino+Maxwell
Dell P4 3.2 + 1gbRAM + Nvidia FX1000

[juan]

Hi Daniel,

dg wrote:

If I uncheck the Add-In and then re-load by opening the dll is the old one not removed? Or is it that when we open the dll in SW, it moved to a SW directory from the original directory it was in? Just want to be sure I am doing the right thing...


The load/unload process do not move any file. To update the plugin to a new version I do not load it inside SolidWorks. If your old plugin is properly installed, just replace it with the new dll.( without SW running! ). The next time you run SW the new plugin will be loaded. I hope it answer your question. If you have more doubts just ask here.

Cheers,

Juan
_________________
Next Limit Team