The HRS Blog – SolidWorks and CAMWorks

Since I’ve been able to get my hands on 3DVIA Composer, I’ve noticed two changes in my life. The first change happens when I purchase any product that requires assembly. More often than not, the accompanying documentation is difficult to understand, and illustrations can be utterly misleading. Knowing the quality documentation that 3DVIA Composer can produce has completely spoiled me, and now when I’m presented with anything less I find myself cursing in frustration. This was never more evident than in the past holiday season… but that’s another story.

The other change in my life is that using 3DVIA Composer encouraged me to look at problems in a different light by introducing me to different tools. As you probably know, 3DVIA Composer has different end goals, and for that reason, different toolsets to accomplish those goals. One such tool I encountered in 3DVIA Composer is known as “magnetic lines”.

Magnetic lines are a dream! This tool makes aligning balloons a breeze, and I immediately began to ponder when this functionality would be brought into SolidWorks. Sitting around waiting for SolidWorks’ development team to read my mind rarely works, so I voted on an enhancement request. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one that wanted this because magnetic lines are now available starting in SolidWorks 2012.

With the magnetic lines functionality, you now have a flexible and convenient way to align balloons. Don’t take it from me though – there’s a quick way to become familiar with this new functionality. In the SolidWorks “What’s New” tutorial set, you’ll find 4 short tutorials that pertain to magnetic lines. To get to these tutorials in SolidWorks, go to the Help menu > SolidWorks tutorials, then in the tutorial window, select “What’s New Examples”:

I think you’ll find that these examples are very intuitive, so there is not much for me to add.  It should be noted that when auto ballooning you will find the option to automatically insert magnetic lines.

The one thing that might prove to be somewhat difficult is uncrossing leaders after adjusting the location of a magnetic line. This next drawing is a mess!

The best way to clear up an issue like the one above is to approach the problem on two fronts. First, ensure that when using the auto balloon method, the layout selected is as close to where the magnetic line will be placed. In this case, a ‘Top’ or ‘Left’ layout would probably work best. After that, while still in the auto balloon property manager, sequence the items to your liking. Once that is completed you may still need some small adjustments or some manual item renumbering, but in the end your balloons can look as amazing as this:

Magnetic lines are just one of the added enhancements in SolidWorks 2012 that make life a little bit easier.

Hawk Ridge Systems was named the #1 SolidWorks Reseller Worldwide at SolidWorks World 2012.

Sure this looks like a really cool car racing though a city but I’m guessing most of you are all thinking the same thing, “I would never need to animate a car chase.” Please keep in mind that 3DVIA Composer is not limited to any kind of market. With the power of 3DVIA Composer you can leverage your CAD data and create a magnitude of publications and interactive animations that jump completely out of the box. In turn your publications will stand out from the rest, not only saving you valuable time but ultimately landing you more business.

This video was created to cover several key topics within 3DVIA Composer:

1: Fly through and Smooth Camera Paths – Around corners you have several choices how the camera reacts; you can have it slow down, speed up, rigid or smooth translations.

2: Environmental Shadowing – Notice how the shadows of the buildings stay put even as the camera moves throughout the cityscape.

3: Ambient Occlusion. Take a look around the model edges of the car and the cityscape you will notice curvature and edge shadowing adding to the lifelike and dramatic effect of the video.

4: Camera Focal Point – Throughout the video the camera focuses on the back end of the car. As the car gets closer to the buildings they come into focus and as it gets further away the focus follows.

5: Texture Import – Models that have texture appearances set in SolidWorks can be brought into 3DVIA Composer without having to re-apply the appearances.

6: Assembling Within 3DVIA Composer. This animation clearly shows how valuable it is to be able to assemble models and images from multiple files and multiple platforms. It would be nearly impossible to create this entire assembly using a C.A.D. application. With 3DVIA Composer it’s possible and the performance and rendering speed is second to none.

7: SolidWorks 3DVIA Composer Fly-Through Animation: The WOW Factor. Let’s face it, the world has changed. Screenshots and video recording will no longer cut it in today’s market. Customers want that WOW factor, something that grabs their attention and doesn’t let go. Imagine being able to depict your product in a beautifully rendered high definition animation. You could show your product functioning along with assembly instructions all crafted in an eye-popping professional package. Best of all everything created in 3DVIA Composer can be published and viewed 100% interactively by simply utilizing the free 3DVIA Composer Player. This means your employees or customers can have the ability to stop, rotate, replay, zoom, explode, measure and many other options that you choose to allow for all your publications.

For per-pixel rendering, Depth of Field, Anti Aliasing and Ambient Occlusion you have complete control over the behavior when toggled on and off in the properties.

Our recommended settings are to “Use Document Settings” and set to “On Idle”.
To do this go to “File > Preferences > Viewport” and set everything under High quality rendering to “Use Document Settings” and “On Idle”.

When all of these are set to “Use Document Settings” you can control it “On-Off” from the environment properties. Click in the viewport without any models selected and the new options will appear in the properties pane. When these settings are set “Enabled” within the Application Preferences it will be on all the time regardless what’s in the properties, and “Disabled” will do the opposite. Have them all set to “On Idle” that way it will process once you stop editing or rotating the model instead of your system trying to render it out in real-time.

“Use Document Settings” and “On Idle”, toggle these enhancements on and off in the environment properties for best results.