No wireframe in SolidWorks Viewer

I don't know whether Solidworks Corp removed the Viewer's capability to
show models in wireframe only or whether it was never there, but it
seems that the Viewer lacks this capability. I have a client who wants
to create his own wireframe views and annotate them for a patent
application and I don't know how to give him that capability. eDrawings
only creates very crude wireframe views . . . not quality enough for
patent drawings. Anybody have a suggestion?

TIA, 'Sporky'

 

Spork,

Have you tried saving the file with fast HLR-HLV (the little box with the
lightning bolt) on. I think this saves a tesselated wireframe for the viewer
to read.

Regards

Mark

 

Sporky,

I test a simple part drawing created with SW2004 SP3.0, with the views set
to wireframe. I was able to display the drawing successfully in the
SolidWorks Viewer SP2.1 version. Didn't try any later or earlier versions.

John

 

Thanks John and also Mark Mossberg. I've saved as wireframe and I'm
sending the design that way now -- should have thought of that. The
Viewer is just SO limited!! Can't even explode/collapse, much less view
configurations. What a next-to-useless application!! eDrawings is
better by far, except (again) the wireframe is such poor quality with
it.

Mark 'Sporky' Stapleton
Watermark Design, LLC
http://www.h2omarkdesign.com

 

Thanks John and also Mark Mossberg. I've saved as wireframe and I'm

Hi Sporkman.

I personally would vote for them to merge these two applications into
one, taking the best from both. I commonly find that when I'm using
this one, I wish for functionality of the other and so on.

I wonder if there is a compelling reason why this would not work. I'm
sure some programmer somehere is rolling his eyes and saying "man, he
just does not get it, does he?" . . .

The configs thing would be at the top of my list for both packages as
well.

One thing I absolutely love is e-drawings is the model view conrol in
the tree - hide others, transparency control and how the models are
show & hidden, and so on. In my mind SolidWorks itself would be so
much nicer if this were implemented in the editor. I find myself
whishing for solidworks to be a good a e-drawings viewer in this
regard - now that's a scary thought.

Regards,

SMA

 

imho, viewer prints slddrw's with higher quality (fonts & lineweights). i
like edrawings, but this lack of print quality has always been a pet peeve
of mine.

 

Mark,

Have you looked at ModelPress Publisher/Viewer for customer
communications? The price is right-- $0

http://www.modelpress.com/

I use it frequently for design reviews. It's much more capable than SW
Viewer.


Art W.

 

Art,

Yea, it's a good product. Small files and you can acually measure them !!!

Not really free though. The publisher has a two week time limit. A license
for the publisher is $600.00.

The viewer is free, but if you want to actually use it, it'll cost ya.

Regards

Mark

 

Mark,

I haven't used the publisher for a few weeks and tried it today. It
warned that the license for version 4.0 had expired, so I went to the
Web site and downloaded the latest version (4.1). I uninstalled the old
version and installed the new one without any problems.

The Web site really does say the product is free for corporate and
personal use. There is a license fee to bundle the software with another
product. See: http://www.modelpress.com/license.htm

I've heard a comment somewhere that the forced renewal is just to keep
users on the latest release. Anyway, I'm still using the product, and
haven't had to part with $600.

Art W.

 

Wow, that's news to me also, Art. I had the Publisher app loaded a
while back and liked it pretty well, but the license did time out on
me. After that I just uninstalled it and never tried it again. Thanks
for mentioning it.

'Sporky'

 

Hi All,

Art W is right on. Modelpress is free and does require updating
(every six to eight months) to the latest (free) version. More info:
www.modelpress.com.

Thanks, Informative Graphics Corp.