[another_bryan]

Hey Guys, nice work on the new plug in.

I'm am trying to get myself familiar with using only the solidworks plug in to set up my scene and render my products. I am, however, running into one major shortcoming (versus Maxwell studio) and I cant imagine how its not a showstopper for everyone else..

When applying textures with a image map, like wood, how do you guys set it up to wrap around various shapes without having tools like "planer, cubic, cylinder and sphere? From what I can see (please correct me if this is an oversight) the only options we have are rotate (SW interface) and scale (plug in interface).

As it currently stands every material I use with a pattern tears on perpendicular faces aor stretches in a goofy manner on a curved face; and in the end it looks like crap. Home are you guys getting it done?

[JDHill]

Hi another_bryan,

Unfortunately you're correct - texturing in SolidWorks doesn't give much control over these things. It was only since the last update that we have been able to read and use the value given by SW's rotation slider. I would say that you can get most of your work done directly in the plugin, but you will want to open the MXS in Maxwell Studio to do more advanced texturing - it has mapping primitives like you mentioned, cubic, planar, etc.

Just curious, what version of SolidWorks are you working with?

JD

[another_bryan]

Hi JD

Im working in SWX 2008 SP 3.1. Aside from the lack of texturing tools and the relatively frequent "Solidworks could not obtain enough memory" crashes i get - the plug in is top notch. Oddly enough - I have 3 gig available (4 gig installed but on a 32 bit system) and this error shows up when I have only about 1.5 Gig in use; so i give little credit to the error flag being accurate.


However, the problem with my using Maxwell Studio these days is a very significant Focus-error I am experiecing. Normally I would do all of my work on Studio but this has caused me a great deal of pain so I am trying to find a 'plan B' and avoid moving to bunkspeed or some other less-powerful package.

http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/view ... hp?t=28050
[Maxwell Render Forum Index -> Maxwell Render -> Big Problems with Camera Focus...]

[JDHill]

That's a pretty strange problem, and one I haven't ever seen myself. If you:

- set up a scene in SW
- make sure you're using an actual SW camera (i.e. not trimetric/dimetric/etc)
- set up materials and texures as much as possible
- export MXS
- open in Studio
- hit render

At this point, do you retain the same focus you had set up in the SolidWorks camera? Can you switch Studio to the generic 'Perspective' view, navigate, adjust textures, switch back to your exported camera, and hit render? What I mean is, as long as you don't modify the camera in Studio, does it still render correctly?

I also use an EVGA 8800 GTS card...32bit OS (Vista Business, not XP), SolidWorks 2008 SP3.1, and I've not seen anything like you describe.

[another_bryan]

IL definitely give your process a shot - Ive got jury duty tomorrow (woohoo) so I wont be able to hit it until tomorrow night - stay tuned

[another_bryan]

That's a pretty strange problem, and one I haven't ever seen myself. If you:

- set up a scene in SW
- make sure you're using an actual SW camera (i.e. not trimetric/dimetric/etc)
- set up materials and texures as much as possible
- export MXS
- open in Studio
- hit render

At this point, do you retain the same focus you had set up in the SolidWorks camera? Can you switch Studio to the generic 'Perspective' view, navigate, adjust textures, switch back to your exported camera, and hit render? What I mean is, as long as you don't modify the camera in Studio, does it still render correctly?

I also use an EVGA 8800 GTS card...32bit OS (Vista Business, not XP), SolidWorks 2008 SP3.1, and I've not seen anything like you describe.

G'day,
I followed your instructions and...
The focus upon importing the scene to Studio is fine BUT the Focus Indicator shows deep red (as though Maxwell thinks its way off). In otherwords, it doesnt revert to 0.001 FD unless I tell it to autofocus or Focus-to...

The camers stays put as long as I dont mess with it. Actually it seems to stay at whatever I key in manually (new camers in studio seem to revert to auto focus but imported cameras act like manually focusing cameras - they seem to stay put)

To conclude the story, I ended up using a two view workspace and focusing using a perspective shot and a key-in-process on the FD value. It does the trick and allows me to keep moving forward. Im due for a fresh installation on the system, and I am hoping that the problem will resolve itself I reinstall the OS.

Would you say its premature to move to 64 Bit Vista yet?

[JDHill]

I'm glad you found a way to make things work - that problem is really a strange one. About 64bit Vista, I don't personally have experience with it, but I've been on 32bit for over a year and I like it much more than XP Pro.

JD

[Eric Lagman]

We are having the focus problem in studio also with a brand new box running xp64 and dual monitors. As soon as you turn one of the displays off with the nvidia control panel it works as it should. Hope that gets fixed soon.