Engineer Enea: What’s New in SOLIDWORKS 2016 — Enhanced Rendering, Visualization and Animation

SOLIDWORKS 2016 is set to launch in just few days, but before it hits the market, we’ve been profiling its most important updates. In today’s article, we’ll look at the 2016 rendering and visualization studio.

Photorealism in a Snap

Let’s face it, the world is becoming crowded with products. Whether they’re being developed by large corporations or one-man startups, it’s becoming ever more important to impress customers by providing killer function as well as sublime aesthetics.

Fortunately, CAD packages are coming around to this reality, and new releases have begun to include high quality rendering packages that make generating photo-realistic images a snap, SOLIDWORKS 2016 included.

In 2016, Dassault Systèmes has integrated, and rebranded, its Bunkspeed visualization studio. Now called SOLIDWORKS Visualize, the seamless union between Dassault’s design studio and its photo-realistic rendering studio streamlines workflows without having to tie up additional SOLIDWORKS licenses.

True to their word, SOLIDWORKS’s Visualize studio strips away the complexity that was once part and parcel of creating photo-realistic marketing material. Once Visualize has been launched from the SOLIDWORKS ribbon, users enter a new interface controlled by just five steps. The first step, “Import,” is to select the model or assembly you’d like to render.

Once the model has been added to the Visualize environment, it’s time to “Paint” the product. With hundreds of standard colors, materials and finishes available (not to mention a library of web-based user-generated content, and the option to build custom materials) this can be the trickiest part of the rendering process. To improve that process, SOLIDWORKS has made the application of materials as easy as can be. Users only need to grab a material from the materials library, drag it over to their product and drop it on the component they’d like painted.

Following painting, it’s time to create an environment for a render to inhabit by choosing the “Scene” option. Much like the Paint command, the Scene command comes loaded with a number of environments (shop floors, white studios, industrial settings, etc.) that can be used to create the appropriate mood for your product’s final image. Again, like the paint command, an easy drag-and-drop method can be used to add scenes until the right background has been selected. Once a final scene has been chosen, the model can be rotated or otherwise manipulated in the environment to perfect the shadows and reflections interacting with the model.

With Paint and Scene selection in the rearview, it’s time to setup the “Camera” that’ll capture the render. As always, Visualize comes prepackaged with a number of camera options that can be used to capture minute product details or an entire product package. With the right camera in place, artistic filters, depth of field and other options like brightness and perspective can be toggled through to create truly photo-realistic results.

With all settings in place, it’s time to move to Visualize’s last phase, “Render.” Though Visualize comes preconfigured with several rendering options, users can tweak the studio’s rendering method and quality to meet their marketing needs and time frame. However, with integrated GPU rendering support, no single frame render should be so overwhelming that it can’t be crunched in a matter of minutes. Still, if rendering become too onerous, Visualize can pause a rendering operation until a more convenient time.

Animated Assemblies Bring Complex Dynamics to Life

While creating photorealism in a single image is extremely valuable, it can’t explain a complex set of motions like a video. In 2016, SOLIDWORKS’s engineers have added an easy-to-use Mate Controller that can bring life to an assembly with a few clicks.

Having to show how a product behaves can be a cumbersome task. No one wants to sit down with a client, launch a CAD tool and then have to drag an assembly through its range of motions and abilities. First off, you would look silly if your mates are constrained in such a way that your product won’t move like it should. Secondly, untangling a maze of mates could take some time, and neither you nor a client want to have to sit around while you deconstruct a monolith of mates. Beyond that awkward interaction there are other situations in which you might want to show off section views that illustrate the inner workings of a mechanism that just take too much time to create on the fly.

So, how can you create dynamic illustrations that make your product shine, and do it with ease?

In SOLIDWORKS 2016, the answer is simple. You use the Mate Controller.

With Mate Controller, users can select any mate in an assembly and modify its corresponding values to produce a range of motion that’s true to a product’s performance. That might sound complicated, but 2016 has made the process simple.

Once an assembly has been properly constrained, a user can select a series of mates that control a specific range of motions and enable the Mate Controller option. Once fired up, the Mate Controller labels the selection with a position number and populates a sidebar with all of the dimensional controls that correspond to the selected mates. Users then have the option to input numerical values or drag an assembly to move it to an ideal position. Once that position’s been established, it can be stored and a new position can be created in the same manner.

After creating multiple positions, SOLIDWORKS can gather them together and simulate the motion between each position, creating a fluid animation that clearly shows how a product will behave. Once set, an animation can be exported to SOLIDWORKS animator or exported to a movie file.

SOLIDWORKS 2016 Delivers Enhanced Communication Tools

With its new visualization enhancements, SOLIDWORKS has enhanced its ability to create marketing and demo material that can be valuable to both internal and external customers. By slashing the time it takes to create photorealistic renderings and animations, the job of conveying the stunning nature of a product and the depths of its ability has been (if you’ll forgive me) rendered simple.