Photorealistic Solidworks

[Nathen Paisley]

SOLIDWORKSVisualize is a recent addition to the SOLIDWORKS ecosystem of products, and it has the ability to create stunning realistic rendered images. I attempt to be a photographer in my spare time, so I thought I would give it a shot to see what the hype was about as well as attempt to actually create my first photorealistic image.

After installing, I had Jesse Sprague (our resident photo expert) give me the quick run through of the software and I was ready to begin rendering images. I was trying to create a rendering of an electric carving knife but this is where I ran into my first issue. The product does render out nicely but the exported image still has that rendered look.

I started off by creating a countertop and backsplash and then the rest came quickly after that. I created all the cabinets and drawers using the same techniques. I decided to place a wall outlet and block of knives in there as well just to liven up the environment.

I even created some split line circles on the underside of the cabinets so that we could use those as lights. Jesse actually gave me this idea thinking it would add some dramatic effect to the image along with looking more realistic. I added the blue color to the faces so that when the model is imported into Visualize they are grouped together. Once the files are imported into Visualize we can add a Warm light to those faces.

SOLIDWORKS Visualization products provide a suite of tools that combine industry-leading photorealistic rendering capabilities with design-oriented features and workflows that enable easy and fast creation of visual content for designers, engineers, marketing, and other content creators.

If you got a SOLIDWORKS Premium or Professional license, you have access to an industry-leading rendering tool, SOLIDWORKS Visualization Standard. For those of you that use SOLIDWORKS Standard there is a 15 days Trial version. Follow the instructions below to get started.

SOLIDWORKS is a widely used CAD software in the engineering and design industries. While the software is known for its efficiency and ease of use, users may still encounter issues that require trouble...

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The team's core function is to use their wealth of experience to deliver enterprise solutions from the Dassault Systmes portfolio of products and solutions, including CATIA, DELMIA, ENOVIA, SIMULIA and the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform.

They manage the full process from sourcing to starting and regardless of your choice of CAD toolsor what you're designing. So if you're looking to find a suitable CAD professional for yourbusiness then visit their site to learn more.

The standard scenes and environments are great for getting you started and familiar with creating photorealistic renders, but sometimes we need to get a bit creative and go beyond simple brightness and light position changes.

First, set up a new camera with what you feel are the ideal settings and position to capture the details you want to show off on your model. Once you have the right shot, lock it and switch back to the default camera.

For the environment, add a Visualize model and scale this to surround the main object. This model will be used as the scene, acting similar to a photography studio where adding lighting within this space will be reflected off the walls and focused on the geometry.

The Rounded Gumdrop model is a great example to use as this produces smooth reflections. The appearance applied to this model will control the reflectivity, for this example we have used the Matte appearance type.

The positioning of lights can be made easier using multiple viewports in Visualize, selecting View > Multi Viewports > Dual Horizontal Viewports. With this method, you can quickly check your original camera view to see the effect after making any subtle changes to the lighting.

Lights are only included in Visualize Professional however, an alternative for setting up the lighting can be to use Visualize models within the space and apply an emissive appearance to their surface.

In this example we have added two spheres from the Visualize models, then applied any emissive appearance, adjusting the brightness level and moving the spheres closer to the model for more effect.

Working with photorealistic computer-aided design models in real time and 3D is a huge benefit for design teams. They can create, iterate and review designs faster, make better-informed decisions and save money in the process.

This week at SOLIDWORKS World in Dallas, BOXX Technologies, Dell, HP Inc. and Lenovo unveiled lineups of NVIDIA Quadro RTX powered design workstations that bring industry-leading capabilities like real-time ray tracing, AI, VR and simulation to millions of designers and engineers. With Quadro RTX, nothing slows them down.

With AI-accelerated denoising in SOLIDWORKS Visualize CAD software, powered by the Tensor Cores of Quadro RTX 4000, LYFE Motorsport was able to get close-to-photorealistic renderings in one-tenth the time of a final photorealistic rendering.

NVIDIA and SOLIDWORKS are working closely to integrate RTX performance enhancements, including more CUDA cores, RT Cores, Tensor Cores and larger GPU memory. SOLIDWORKS users upgrading to Quadro RTX GPUs will see substantial improvements in workflows, including:

Get up to speed quickly and benefit from this powerful 3D design and manufacturing solution. Along with part, assembly, and 2D drawing functionality, specialized tools are included for sheet metal, weldments, surfacing, molds, product configuration, design analysis, DFM, and CAM. CAM included with an active subscription.

SOLIDWORKS Professional builds on the capabilities of SOLIDWORKS Standard with ECAD/MCAD collaboration, automated cost estimation, collaboration capabilities, design and drawing checking, a sophisticated components and parts library, and advanced photorealistic rendering.

SOLIDWORKS Premium builds on SOLIDWORKS Professional by adding structural and motion analysis capabilities, advanced surface flattening, reverse engineering, and electrical cable and pipe routing functionality.

Developers of SolidWorks have always had one mission in mind: To make computer-aided design accessible to millions of industrial product designers and developers around the world. Over the years, SolidWorks has improved every part of the design process. The ease-of-use this tool has explains why designers and engineers consistently rank it as a top choice.

You can also refer to it as modeling software used to turn ideas into 3D models. The primary focus of using SolidWorks is to come up with a design model, often starting with a 2-D sketch. Even more importantly, SolidWorks employs a computer-aided design (CAD) approach to give photorealistic design outputs in a 3-D design environment.

SolidWorks is a key tool in our toolbox as it bridges the gap between concept sketches and production ready files. It can do the 3D modeling as well as create production documentation that will let your product become a reality.

There are several package options you can add onto your purchase. These include things like technical support, knowledgebase, access to discussion forums, and service request. You can also get the next annual SolidWorks release, Service Packs, and access to a customer portal. A few less used options include performance reports about the software.

SolidWorks has become an indispensable tool in product development and design processes. It is especially useful in 2D or 3D modeling. In the 3D design process, you can perform functions such as beveling, extrusion, and more.

Rendering or image synthesis is the automatic process of generating a photorealistic or non-photorealistic image from a 2D or 3D model using a computer program. The resulting image is referred to as the render. Multiple models can be defined in a scene file containing objects in a strictly defined environment. The scene file contains geometry, viewpoint, texture, lighting, and shading information describing the virtual scene. The data contained in the scene file is then passed to a rendering program for processing as digital images or raster graphics image files. The term "rendering" is analogous to the concept of an artist's impression of a scene. The term "rendering" is also used to describe the process of calculating effects in a video editing program to produce the final video output.

The two major categories of rendering: pre-rendering and real-time rendering. The striking difference between the two lies in the speed at which the computation and finalization of images take place.

"Software rendering" depends on the CPU to generate the screen elements. The problem is that the CPU is busy doing other "stuff" at the same time, which could slow down screen painting. So, in general, the software rendering will take a longer time than the GPU-based rendering.

PhotoView 360 is a SOLIDWORKS add-in that produces photo-realistic renderings of SOLIDWORKS models. The rendered image incorporates the appearances, lighting, scene, and decals included with the model. PhotoView 360 is available with SOLIDWORKS Professional or SOLIDWORKS Premium.

By default, lighting is based on the environment you choose in Solidworks Visualize. With lights off, you can use the realistic lighting provided by scenes, which is usually sufficient for rendering. You typically need additional lighting in Solidworks Visualize to illuminate occluded spaces in the model.

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To improve concepts that are viewed throughout the design, development and marketing phases. SOLIDWORKS visualize helps the user to select, validate, improve and sell the best and most robust design concept before committing expensive engineering, prototyping, and marketing re-source to the projects. It helps to reduce errors and ensures product get to the market faster, improving engineering design and sales review, helps to make more educated final decision which in turns drastically reduce cost and reduce the number of physical prototype that helps to achieve much more efficiently delivering the rendered content to marketing to promote new products via online or as a presentation content which allows added time saving for more design results in overall better final product.

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