SolidWorks Render Contest – 74

This month’s contest has ended. Click here to check the entries and vote for your favorite one.

Kindly check this site on 1st June, 2012 for next month’s contest. Thanks

The model for SolidWorks Rendering Contest – 74 for the month of May, 2012 was Robodont 

(Fateh MERRAD has done this rendering but  sorry that is just for this picture.)

Scott Bruins  has shared this cool model on GrabCAD

The model can be downloaded from the download section of the site or from GrabCAD

And once you’re ready with your image, please use email to submit it.  Last date to submit your entries is 26th May, 2012 (11:59 PM IST)

Make sure you’re following the rules to take part in the contest.

Control your SolidWorks Designs with Auto-Configure

Auto-Configure  is a tool that allows you to have a better control on your SolidWorks data/files along with easy integration of CAD data with MS Excel.  It lets you maintain save model parameters of all components of an assembly in one Excel file thereby allowing user to drive easily drive dimensions of components from top assembly or vice versa. Additionally, it allows you to control configurations through this external Excel file.

One doesn’t need knowledge of programming language or special Excel formulas or scripts to use this tool. The product comes as an Add-In to SolidWorks with an easy to understand user interface.

Once you get you files in SolidWorks Auto-Configure, the rest is quite easy. Just make required changes and export the information to an Excel file on a click of button. Edit the Excel file as required and then take control of the design with Auto-Configure.

Interesting feature of Auto-Configure are

• Allows easy integration and control of CAD data with MS Excel
• Supports bi-directional flow of data from CAD to Excel and vice versa
• A new dimension in product Configuration, standardization and automation
• Automate repetitive tasks quickly to generate accurate models
• Tools to quickly update model parameters
• Options to auto-format model drawings
• Powerful interface to standardize design
• Excel interface to interact and store design rules for future use
• Quick and accurate models

The product summarizes of two parts:  Standardizer and Configurator

 

Standardizer

• Tabulated list of model parameters (modify name & value)
• Add / Modify / Delete custom properties
• Suppress / Un-suppress features and components
• Change color of features and components
• Format drawing views automatically
• Format annotation (text, layer, color, font and size)
• Save and restore annotation position
• Create and apply annotation group (group annotations on its type)
• Update drawing sheet name and view name
• Update drawing sheet scale and view scale
• Powerful UI
• Reports sources of errors

Configurator

• Standard Excel Interface
• Use Excel formulae to compute parameter values
• No setup time
• Ease of data storage in Excel format
• Quick generation of multiple configurations
• Define generated file name and location in Excel
• Export generated results in additional file formats including STL, IGES, BMP, JPEG, TIFF & PDF
• Control configurations to keep in generated models
• Completely extensible and robust
• Simple and friendly interface
• Built-in reporting mechanism
• Color coding for quick understanding
• Can be directly integrated with SAP/PDM systems

Some of example are being demonstrated by follwoing videos which shows how easy it is to control your design in your own way. 

Auto-Configure software can be downloaded by clicking on the “Download” button below.

Vote for SolidWorks Render Contest – 73

Here are the images submitted for SolidWorks Render Contest – 73. Click on the images to get a better visualization before casting your VOTE. Please vote once for the image of your choice.

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

Image 4

Image 5

Image 6

Image 7

Thanks for VOTING.

No Trespassing without Windows™ 7

As stated before, SolidWorks 2012 software (including CAD, Simulation, Sustainability, and Enterprise PDM) is the last release that will run on Windows XP. SolidWorks 2013 will NOT INSTALL on computers using Windows XP.

This action is being taken as a follow up to Microsoft’s retirement of the Windows® XP operating system in April of 2009.

SolidWorks recommends moving to Windows 7 as the preferred operating system for the next releases of SolidWorks software. At this time the ideal approach is to upgrade your computer hardware to 64bit technology and use the Windows 7 64-bit Operating System.

For additional information please refer to the SolidWorks System Requirements page

Enterprise PDM 2012 SP3 is available for download

Enterprise PDM 2012 SP3 is available for download

This service pack is now available to Subscription Service customers. To download, click here or log into the SolidWorks Customer Portal at https://customerportal.solidworks.com and click Download Software and Updates to access the update.

For a list of SPR’s fixed, click here

P.S: Login required for access. Full access requires an active Subscription Service contract.

Time to Study and Learn with SolidWorks

I’ve been quite a busy these days after I’ve returned from SolidWorks World 2012 in San Diego. I’ve been working on many things and don’t get much time to write. And to add to this I’ll be busy for next few weeks. This would not be only because of my ongoing projects but also something different, I’m getting back to my school days.

I’m not going to join any school though but will be doing a self learning. I’ll be doing my favorite stuffs in SolidWorks which are Rendering, Animation and API. I’ll be studying and learning via following books in next couple of weeks.

Photorealistic Rendering Using SolidWorks and PhotoView 360

(Courtesy of Rob Rodriguez)

Creating Animations with SolidWorks Step-by-Step

(Courtesy of SolidWorks)

SolidWorks API – Programming & Automation

(Courtesy of Luke Malpass)

SolidWorks API – Advanced Product Development

(Courtesy of Luke Malpass)

I’ll be posting my learning experience with these books soon.

Export OBJ out of SolidWorks for free!!

I don’t work much with file export into various format but getting across a free OBJ export tool from Neil Larsen and macro-maker Karpena, I thought it might be good thing to spread across the SolidWorks community.

Neil Larsen has shared a free macro, suitable for SW2005 and up, to export your models in Alias|Wavefront .obj format complete with .mtl and textures. The macro works with parts and assemblies and configurations. It has been made to enable SolidWorks models to be rendered in cg applications such as Blender and Octane Render. As of the time of this post Blender 2.62 and Octane beta2.57 are current.

The macro can be can downloaded from here. It comes to you courtesy of karpena, who wrote the basis of the macro, and yours truly who extended it and gave it a UI. The zip contains the necessary files and instructions. Please be sure to read the README about the ins and outs of installing/using the macro. This macro won’t as a rule be supported but if there are teething issues with this release please report them here.

Neil does request everyone who so ever uses this macro,“All we ask, aside from not to sell it, is that you make sure any variants in the wild have some distinction in the name so that its clear which macro is for which apps and not confuse revisions. Its sort of in keeping with the spirit of open source because both Roman (karpena) and I make use of Blender.”

INSTALLATION:

The SW macro can go anywhere but conveniently where you keep your other SW macros. You will need to use the provided toolbar button to launch the macro from SW. See the SW Help>Macros>Customize buttons to find out how to set this up. See also the included picture of the custom button showing to select the modSWtoOBJ.InitialUI as the ‘Method’ to start.

NOTE: The macro will not run from the menu Tools/Macro/Run> or from the toolbar Macro>Run.

The macro included was authored in SW2009. Different SW versions will require you to open the macro in the SW MS VBA window, reselect the Reference Libraries appropriate to that version, andthen save the macro. See the included ‘References’ picture of SW2009. Opening in another version may show the References as being ‘MISSING’. Look down the list and find equivalent entries but for the year of your SW install. Sometimes SW will find these references itself. The Blender helper script is required to load the finished .obj into Blender automatically.

It should work with Blender 2.5 and up. Make sure it goes in the same folder as the Blender.exe . The path to Blender is assumed to be C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\blender.exe

The path to Octane is assumed to be C:\Program Files\Refractive Software\OctaneRender\Octane.exe

You can change these paths if necessary in the vba module code by going to lines 627 & 632 respectively.

Here is one example of OBJ export (you can find them in the zip file too).

Happy rendering!