Advice on how to animate stress levels in keyshot?

[WKSouthwest]

Our office uses Solidworks, we do high level Mechanical engineering for the mining industry. It would be nice to have some examples of stress tests in an animation form, if it is even possible, i am in no way a professional Keyshot user. But if anyone has tips on where to begin to understand a process like this, i am all ears.

Attached a photo below as an example of stress levels, want to actually use one of our latest designs, a Boom for a dragline machine to indicate increasing stress levels while lifting different masses.

Second attachment is an example of a dragline machine, with the boom being the long arm extending, i cannot attach the design.


Thank you in advance!

Waldo

[CoalHedgehog]

Had a quick look at this as I've thought about this for a while. I'm coming at it from an Autodesk view though.

There's no way you're going to simulate/animate stress levels in Keyshot, so you'd have to export it from SW as an animation. What can you export as? Keyshot supports fbx and also has free plugins for Maya, 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, and PTC Creo.

If I were to do it, I'd just export it as an avi, import it into a video editor and add the information there.

Perhaps someone else can think of a more elegant solution.

[Eric Summers]

Hey Waldo,

I know you can save out a single frame of a stress analysis as an .obj as I've seen the result 3D printed in color. So you could load a single frame into KeyShot, but I know that's not what you're looking for.

I haven't played around with stress tests before. I don't think you would be able to get the stress level colors out of SolidWorks. The deformation, perhaps. Can you save the results as a Motion Study? If so, using the KeyShot plugin (KS 7 or 8 ) will let you send the Motion Study to KeyShot.

If I get a chance, I'll take a couple minutes to see if anything comes to mind.

[WKSouthwest]

Hi,

Thank you both for your input, I appreciate you taking the time.

I will see about the keyshot/solidworks plug in. Maybe i can export the animation and perhaps use in keyshot (not optimistic).
Otherwise i would either have to render frame for frame animation.

I will keep looking into ideas on how to achieve it.

Thank you both!

If anything else comes to mind, please let me know!
Thanks again!

Waldo

[CoalHedgehog]

This is purely hypothetical, but using Eric's idea, maybe you could export each frame (on Inventor I think you can change the FPS) to an obj, import them all into Keyshot, apply the fade-out animation to all and then space out each animation.

You can overlay this over the actual model, or whatever it is you've got planned.

Like I say, this is hypothetical, I'm just thinking aloud...

[Eric Summers]

If you have any success let us know! Unfortunately, like you, I'm not too optimistic that the simulation animation can be sent to KeyShot. I think the plugin only works for motion studies but it'd be worth a try. It sounds like this may be something for the Wish List.

[mattjgerard]

If there is any way to get the color data out of Solidworks, then it could be applied as a video texture to the model. I have less than zero knowledge of SW, so not sure if that is even an option.

[WKSouthwest]

I will keep investigating to find out if there is a way, the video map isnt a bad idea. Doing frame by frame is possible, just extremely time consuming.
Hope fully keyshot can add a feature to allow SW FEA analysis to be exported to keyshot.

If i find anything that works, i will post about it to share with others.

Thanks