Frustration with material groups

[quigley]

Yesterday I had probably the most frustrating day ever using Keyshot. I had been sent some CATIA data for a train to render for a customer's website. My usual workflow is to open the file in Acrobat 9 Extended, export to STEP, import to Keyshot. Recently I've been experimenting with Shark FX 7, importing as CATIA v5, exporting to Keyshot as .OBJ, also works well.

These train front assemblies are pretty big files with a lot of detail. Opening and saving in Acrobat tool over 30 mins, even longer in Shark. Importing the STEP to Keyshot took over 15 mins.

Issues:

1. When the file is imported into Keyshot all the parts are colour coded as different materials yet moving the parts just moves the whole assembly. Even when you break the links to the material and parts it still moves as a block. This makes moving parts around for tweaks and exploded views impossible inside Keyshot. The only solution I have found is to import the same file again, break all the links and try moving copies around but on big files like these this is impossible. I really hope this can be sorted as it is a pain. If I see different material groups in the scene manager I should be able to move those groups independently using the move/rotate tools in Keyshot.

2. The importers are still not working unless you turn off use new importers. And that preference is not retained between Keyshot sessions.

3. When importing large files there is no progress bar. Acrobat and others have a progress bar. Keyshot seems to run multiple progress bars or sometimes none. All we need here is a linear bar that estimates the time.

FYI I ended up downloading an app called SimLab Composer. This exports to the Keyshot format. It imports STEP files perfectly, and part handling is perfect. I see Luxion provide them with an OEM version of Keyshot. Maybe Luxion could use some of their technology to make Keyshot handle parts and material groups better?

[KeyShot]

We are making a significant update to the importers in KeyShot 2.1 (expected to be released end of September - free to all KeyShot 2 users). I hope it will address the issues you are seeing. It will support native import of CATIA files as well as several other new formats. Regarding the Simlab importers then we are using them when you uncheck 'use new importers'. Unfortunately, the simlab importers run in the background without any progress bar. All the other importers have progress bars. In terms of moving individual parts around then we will add this capability as well (it will not be ready for 2.1, but hopefully later this year).

If you have specific files that cause problems then we would be happy to take a look at them to ensure that our updated importers in 2.1 supports them. If you can share them with support@luxion.com then that would be great.

Thanks,

Henrik

[quigley]

Henrik, did I read that correctly? CATIA support? Is that CATIA v5 or v4 or both? If v5 this will make a huge difference to many.

[KeyShot]

You read correctly. We will support both CATIA v4 and v5 in KeyShot 2.1
We will also support native Alias .wire files
And SolidEdge files
And Autodesk Inventor files
And more.... we try not to sleep too much these days 

Cheers,

Henrik