[deboy]

Firstly i must say that the 2008 plugin is so much better than the initial one. I can actually render stuff directly from solidworks now! Thanks to all the hardwork of the people involved.

I do have some questions though!

-Is it possible to apply materials to an object in an assembly without the material being applied to all instances of that part in the assembly?

-Is there a similar command to autofocus in solidworks. or how do you set the focus without using studio?

-if the photoworks plugin can manipulate textures why cant the maxwell programmers have access to those same controls?

-If a feature for moving textures was really not available in solid works i would be very happy with a randomise feature. This would randomly change the offset of the texture when applied to different parts. This would avoid bad tiling accross parts. A tickbox would do!!

cheers

[JDHill]

Hi deboy,

Thanks for the feedback. As to your questions:

1. yes, that's possible - you have to select the object at the component level, rather than at the body level. In an assembly, each copy of a given part is treated as an instance of the original file, so attributes attached to bodies, faces, and features are not applied in the assembly, but in the source part. It is not technically required to do this, but it is the way that the SolidWorks colors/textures are applied, so the plugin needs to follow along in order to try to keep the viewport looking similar to the render.

2. no, not really. You should right-click > Camera Properties, then you can select the target location. The Maxwell Camera gets its' physical characteristics (i.e. location, target, etc.) from the corresponding SolidWorks camera.

3. unfortunately, those texture controls are not actually a part of SolidWorks, but of PhotoWorks, and PhotoWorks draws the viewport itself when you use them. For the Maxwell plugin, the only access it has to showing textures is by the same controls (i.e. scale, rotate) you have as a user in the regular SolidWorks texture interface. In SW2008+, this situation may change because of RealView, but I am still looking into this, and have not yet stopped supporting SW2007.

4. this is an interesting idea. I currently have no way to show you the effect of the Maxwell texture Offset parameter, but still it should be possible to do something like you say. I'll have to think about how it would be controlled, i.e. using a dialog box at export, plugin user-prefs, etc. - let me know if you have any preference for how it would actually work.

Cheers,

JD

[deboy]

Good reply JD. Great being able to speak to the person writing the plugin!

4, I would like a checkbox that could be placed anywhere. Materials side tab, maxwell settings, material editor in SW....

When checked the material would be applied to an entity with a random offset applied. If left unchecked the materials would apply normally. The feature would only have an effect on application of a material to an entity. i.e other parts with the same material on will not change. The SW viewport would show the texture applied in its random but un-editable position. I would call it,

'random material initial position' Yes/No
(would only affect x-y position, not rotation)

I thought the maxwell material offsett applied the changes globally. and it is way too slow to offset individually for every object.

My example of where this would be usefull is on a wooden tabletop. each plank needs a different offset, to make it look real. I hate to have to go to studio to change the mapping for a simple texture.

Cheers

[JDHill]

Thanks for the ideas. You're right that the Maxwell texture offset applies globally - but since the plugin is already reading rotation UVs from SolidWorks on a per-object basis, it should also be possible to mess around with some sizing at the same time. But, I haven't tried doing that at all yet, it might get a little tricky. I don't think, however, that I would be trying to show this in the viewport - it would be a render-time-only feature. I don't know of any way, currently, to do something like showing a 'read-only' texture offset in the viewport, especially since I really can't show any offset at all.

So, to some degree anyway, I think it's a possible thing, but really, I also think that it would probably be more appropriate if you copied this wish to the general Maxwell wish-list - a randomize offset feature built into the Maxwell texture itself, so that it could be done once, and then be available to all plugins.

Cheers,

JD