Reload Part

[justindustrial]

I would use this every day!

It would be great if I make a change to my CAD model, if I could just right-click and reload it in KS with the updates, retaining materials.

[guest84672]

You can basically do this today by re-importing it. Make sure to check "retain materials".

[justindustrial]

So thaaaaaaaaaat's what that's for

[martinkopplow]

Yes, though re-importing is not oh so intuitive and it creates funny things in the scene tree.
Like Justindustrial said, this is a frequently needed feature and making it update changes more easily would be greatly appreciated, especially where you have plugins to the CAD system, and do not actually export a .bip file first.

An 'Update design changes' button would be just what is needed, and the scene tree should then not get confused, but the updates simply put in their place.

Best,
Martin

[eric]

Exactly!

All our designers love Keyshot but hate the hassle to get things right reimporting the part or importing extra parts.
I myself also don't understand why the scaling of parts is the way it is now.

Just set real world scale and you are able to import at exact the location you want from out of your 3DCAD or modelling program.
Then I think wouldn't even use the translate/rotate/scale functions inside Keyshot.


I think this is one of the things that needs to be improved to fit into the intuitive nature of Keyshot.

As a Solidworks user I also would really love an "update model" button in the Keyshot plugin.
maybe you can take the file name of the Solidworks part and use that for the Keyshot output. (instead of tmp file) then you can link it to exchange the model while retaining the materials or to add geometry from the SW file.

[guest84672]

The "live linking" of KeyShot and CAD app is something that we are working on.

@martinkopplow - what "funny things" are you talking about?

Retain material at this point is very robust if you do an import of your model (not using the plugin).

[eric]

Live linking is the way to go! great.

But please also add the possibility to reload SW file at a later time and keyshot file and keep the same link
Would this be possible?

[guest84672]

I am not sure I understand the request, @eric.

[eric]

Thomas,

If you add a live link between a Solidworks file and a Keyshot file, be sure this link will still be there or can be restored after you close and reopen the files at later time. (maybe change the model and then update the Keyshot file)

We have "live linking" in our CAM software that uses a temp file. You can export/change parts (from Rhino in this case) and update the CAM program, but once you close the file the only way to update is to re-import the 3D file.
we don't want this situation.

I'm sure you can do this better!

[guest84672]

Yes, absolutely. Otherwise I would think that it is quite pointless.

[eric]

That's great! thanks
When do you expect to release the new SW plugin?

[guest84672]

We will wrap it up next week. Live linking is coming later this year.

[martinkopplow]

@martinkopplow - what "funny things" are you talking about?

The tree basically acting as if multiple copies of a model were present, except the outdated ones are empty or almost empty, and even if empty, cannot be deleted. Each time I re-import an updated model, an additional empty copy is added in the tree, and if I like to access the model via the tree, I have to dig through them to find the one that holds the part I want to edit.
This is confusing, especially for anyone precisely knowing to navigate the original tree from his CAD, as he's been creating the model over weeks or so. For each imported model, there should be only one updated tree, and not more.

Best regards,
Martin

[guest84672]

Are you using 2.2.65?

[eric]

Hi Thomas,

It is the end of "next week" now.
Any news on the update of the SW importer?