JPEG madness

I'm creating some images for a technical specification. Each is a
detail view of an assembly with different components/configurations
displayed to show the various steps of a process. I'm using shaded
views, adding a dimension or two and saving as JPEG. The first attempt
turned out fine. All subsequent attempts refuse to save as a color
image. They show up as greyscale. If I attempt to resave the first
image which was OK, it too shows up as greyscale. Madness. Sheer madness.

Jim S.

 

Jim,

I just went through this and may be able to help. First, make sure you have
SP2 minimum. Then, in Photoworks, choose "render to file". Make sure to
check "use Solidworks materials and color" if you are already set up
properly. The default is .BMP but there is an option for JPEG. I always set
the picture size to 20"x (fixed aspect ratio) which tells you that the file
size will be 4 MB or so. When the JPEG is actually rendered it turns out to
be more like 450KB but with photoworks anti-aliasing and resolution. The
same in a BMP is about 6MB but zips down to less than 100KB. Both look
terrific. You might want to check your printer setup to be sure you have
AUTO or COLOR selected.

Dennis

 

Jim:

Even when it's working you can do much better for screen capturing than
with what is available in SWX.

I use a program from Techsmith called SnagIT which is easy to use and is
so much faster and better than SWX capture. It's shareware, and if
you don't pay the $10 it will begin watermarking your pictures in 30
days. I have purchased this tool because it works great. However, I do
have an older version which doesn't nag or watermark, and I'm happy to
email it to you if you like. Just send me an email.

Todd

 

not ideal, but in sw you can do a print preview, then print screen (or
alt+print screen), paste into application of choice & crop edges. image is
quite nice using this method.

 

someone posted this macro a while back, it may help you.


Dim swApp As Object
Dim ModelDoc2 As Object
Dim filenameIn As String
Dim widthIn As Long
Dim heightIn As Long

Sub main()

Set swApp = CreateObject("SldWorks.Application")
Set ModelDoc2 = swApp.ActiveDoc

' path where Bitmap should be saved
filenameIn = "c:\temp\test.bmp"
' desired height and width
widthIn = 1056
heightIn = 816

' save and check if okay
If ModelDoc2.SaveBMP(filenameIn, widthIn, heightIn) Then
MsgBox filenameIn & " saved successfully"
End If

End Sub

 

Try Captura (free)
http://www.hernansoft.com/downloads_en.html
Works fine

'Sporky'