KEYSHOT FOR GEOMAGIC (ALIBRE DESIGN) vs KEYSHOT HD

[beefy]

Geomagic Design (formerly Alibre Design) comes with Keyshot for Geomagic Basic (Geomagic Design Elements) or the better Keyshot for Geomagic (Geomagic Design).

Does anyone know what the difference is (if any) between Keyshot for Geomagic and Keyshot HD.

I only have Keyshot for Geomagic Basic but for a price I can upgrade to Keyshot For Geomagic, so was wondering if it lacks anything that Keyshot HD will have.

Cheers,

Keith.

[guest84672]

You get:
- Realtime render window up to 2.1MP
- Final render output up to 4.1MP
- Render button - offline, background rendering
- Ability to add Animation and / or KeyShotVR
- Ability to add Network Rendering

[beefy]

Thanks very much Thomas,

but I'm not sure if you are referring to Keyshot HD or Keyshot for Geomagic.

Got a reply from support and they told me the only difference between Keyshot for Geomagic and Keyshot HD was that Keyshot for Geomagic only imported BIP and KSP files, i.e if I don't have my Geomagic software which exports BIP files then I can't use my version of Keyshot.

So it sounded like both programs were identical barring the import limitation ?? Not correct ??

Cheers,

Keith.

[guest84672]

The standalone version KeyShot HD adds the importers, correct. KeyShot for Geomagic or KeyShot HD for Geomagic will only import geometry through Alibre / Geomagic Design.

[beefy]

Wonderful,

thanks again Thomas,

Keith.

[digisnapmark]

We started out using the 'free' Alibre Keyshot version, and very quickly ran into limitations. It was enough to show us the potential, got the $200 upgrade... ante'd up for then Animation... then VR.

We've been able to get 90% of the way to our goals pretty quickly, but then run into performance issues, noisy looking outputs, inability to update models, etc. We've spend a ridiculous number of hours fighting bugs, crashes, unexplained features, etc. Support has been reasonably good, but unable to resolve or explain the vast majority of problems we've run into. It's been more of a workaround process for us.

They gave us temporary ability to use Keyshot Pro, rather than the Alibre Upgrade option, and that resolved the ability to update models, anyway, so it looks like we are going to have to pony up more money to get this thing working 'better'.

I'm delighted with the ability to do a lot of the product visualization work in-house, but OMG, what a buggy and expensive piece of software. The Alibre version looks like it is more of a stumbling block, rather than an upgrade.

[guest84672]

Please explain what the bugs are. The inability to update is not a bug, but rather due to the fact that the Alibre folks are not using our latest API which includes the "LiveLinking" capability. But I would like to know more about the issues that you are experiencing.

[digisnapmark]

We've been emailing Bruno almost daily for many weeks, perhaps he would share our list of frustrations with you. He has been very patient with us as we've tried to learn and work with Keyshot rendering and animation, and has actually helped us to understand what we were doing wrong in a number of cases.

Beyond the daily crashes, and often inexplicable behavior, I think a big part of our difficulty has been the inability of the animation program to allow pivoting around... pivot axes, of all things. Our new product has one flat surface, and almost no straight lines. We can't seem to figure out how to get the model to export from Alibre and import to Keyshot without landing on it's ear. There doesn't seem to be any way to get any axis/plane to correspond between the two programs. We have multiple pivoting parts in the model, and they are not mutually orthogonal, so even if we could get the part to lie on the ground plane in an orientation that matches your XYZ, it wouldn't help much. So, it's a completely non-intuitive trial and error process to get parts to rotate, massaging things as they go along to try to mask the errors. Actually, there are so many sliders and select buttons lying all over the program, sometimes in deep menus, sometimes with the same name for different processes, that doing most anything is a trial and error process, with no way to even guess if we are on the right planet toward optimizing the results.

After spending weeks creating a nice looking video of an animation, we needed to update the model, as it was still in development, and there were some changes. What a disaster... Another week of emails and phone calls, to find that it's simply not possible to do when using Alibre. Alibre can export .bip files... there is no 'exchange' mechanism. There appears to be no way for Keyshot to update the model from one .bip to another, and there appears to be no way to group a set of animations on a timeline to copy/paste to the new model. This makes Keyshot less useful in the development process, as you effectively need to redo the time-line for the slightest change in the model. Now that we have a 30 day trial to the full Keyshot Pro version, we are going to try doing an update process via a .step or other file format.

While I'm eager to see V6, where you folks have suggested that Keyshot will make use of a pivot axis, I implore you folks to address the bugs and simplify the user interface as well, so that it's something that actual humans can make sense of.

Through the minute by minute cussing, and weekly tears, some days it goes well, and we get some output that suggests that all the money we've spend on this software might eventually yield fruit. We remain hopeful... mostly because I can't find anything better!

[guest84672]

The team at 3D Systems has to update the plugin to take advantage of LiveLinking. I hope that this is happening soon, but it is out of control, unfortunately.

The pivot axis issue will be addressed in KeyShot 6.

As far as the UI goes, I'm a bit surprised by your comments. Can you give a specific example?