[RESOLVED] SolidWorks plugin question

[Eric Summers]

I had posted about this a while ago in the Plugin section but hadn't heard anything back: https://www.keyshot.com/forum/index.php?topic=23898.0


I'm on KeyShot 8.2.80, SolidWorks 2018 SP 4, plugin version 1.2., Windows 10 Pro.

Now my question is will the plugin support a rebuild of the SolidWorks file between frames of an animation in a future version?

I have an Animation Motion Study that shows a spring expanding and collapsing and it does so by having the length of the spring driven by a helper part. This helper part is animated in an assembly to move up and down. Because SW rebuilds between every frame of the animation, the spring expands and collapses. However, sending this Motion Study to KS with the plugin results in an empty animation timeline. This leads me to believe that a rebuild isn't happening for each frame so I'm curious if this will ever be a supported function.

Thanks!

[INNEO_MWo]

Hello Eric.


With Creo Parametric we have the same situation. Deformable meshes aren't supported now. (Without knowing the insights) I guess as long as CAD programs can't bake alembic files, we're only transfer "solid" parts.


A complex workaround comes with a third party program to build the animation with deformed meshes and bring'em together in KeyShot.


Maybe someone is able to build a spring creator fancy python script for blender?!?


Cheers
Marco

[Eric Summers]

Hi Marco,

Thanks for the insight. Maybe in a future version there will be support for deformable meshes. Or perhaps programs like SolidWorks and Creo will have support for .abc files.

Luckily this spring was just some practice and I don't actually need to get it working in KeyShot. And I now know the limitations of animations from SolidWorks so I can plan ahead.

Cheers!