Words do not even describe how exciting "Live Link" is! Works like a champ for me in SolidWorks 2013. AWESOME! Also, don't forget you can export from the bip as an obj and drop that into HDR Light Studio Pro as well and link it up for lighting.
Bill G
Agreed!
Also works wonders for exporting a "low-poly" model from SW to KeyShot to start applying materials and to keep the bip compact and DRAFTy. Then you go refining/changing your model in SW and when it's ready, you can push over (read as "update") a high-poly model to KeyShot for final rendering. It's almost a miracle! :D
Dries
OMG!!! Dries, I just tested your suggestion with a 14 million poly SW model. There's a ton of fillets that drives the poly count. I dropped the "Image Quality" (in SW Options) from just on the edge of red, or highest resolution, way down. Model looked awful but perfectly usable for prelims. Result was about 600,000 polys, imported like a rocket in maybe under 2 seconds (8 cpu's) and I was off and running. Then I went back to SW and upped to high res, clicked Update, and there it was! Took some rebuild time, but this really changes the game when you are rushing, updating and changing on the fly and sending screenshots to the client while on the phone.
Kudos to the KeyShot 4 Team for this game changer!
Bill G
Thanks Bill and Dries. Live linking was quite an effort to implement and we are happy to see it is well received :)
Am I right to suppose live link for Inventor is on the list ? ;D
Awesome - thank you for the positive feedback. It only took me 5 years of nagging ... but we finally pulled it of. Our dev team did awesome. Better late than never.
@PhilippeV8 - first we need a plugin ... but then live linking is a given.