Photoworks floor offset investigation...

All;

Playing with the photoworks studio, I have always had the same issue
complained about here by others:

The floor when set to an offset of 0, is not touching the parts.

Playing with this further, I found that it has to do with the for lack
of a better term, "bounding box" of the parts in the scene.
Unfortunately, when you use the default studios, it constantly
readjusts your floor offset to 0, so you can't workaround the studios
with using a negative floor offset from what I can tell. So, that
forces us to go back to using the standard rendering procedure.

Here's what I mean in regard to the bounding box issue:

If I lay a cylindrical object on the top plane of the assemly I intend
to render, and give it a floor offset of 0, and the cylinder is perhaps
mated tangent, and is free to rotate and translate, if it is oriented
such that the corner of the bounding box protrudes through the intended
floor, it sets the floor to that lowest point, making things look like
they are floating.

This is all pretty unscientific, and not always a "feature" that I can
turn off and on at will, but it does behave this way most of the time.

Just some thoughts for discussion...

--cutthroat

 

Keep it simple. Make your own floor.


KM

 

I hear ya, but it would be nice to be able to use this functionality.
I can create floors better than the studio floors, but when I get a
quick rendering project to do, call me silly, but I would have thought
this would be fixed by now.

I'm on 2005 SP 3.1, how does 2006 work in this regard?

--cutthroat

 

On 25 Jan 2006 09:38:49 -0800, "cutthroat.trout" <>
wrote:

Any relation to Kilgore?
http://www.vonnegutweb.com/vonnegutia/trout/

 

For me, the floor offset problem has been going on for so long that I
just have my rooms created. You have more control over the overall
rendering, at least in the sense of where the model is in the room. (ie
models are always in the middle of the floor.)

Saves on headaches of waiting until the fix happens.....

 

There is a tuturial somewhere in Phiotoworks. In it they set the
offset to -59 not zero. I can't find the tutorial I thought it was in
Photoworks Help Topics. Try setting the offset to a negative number
and approach -59. I think you will find that your objects will
approach the floor.

 

I found it!!!

SW2006 has Task pane on the right side of screen (I can't remember if
it was in SW2005). Quick check is to put your mouse up in the tool bar
area on top and right click for list of toolbars. Look for Task Pane,
enqable it, click on the icon that looks like a house. This is
Solidworks Resources. Select Online Tuorial and then Photoworks.
A few pages into the tutorial is where you set up the room.
*********
Set Floor offset to -59. When you set Floor offset to a negative value,
the floor moves up so the coffee cup rests directly on the floor.
*********
The Help file within Solidworks says;
Floor Offset - sets the position of the floor relative to the
SolidWorks model.
TIP: Decrease the value to move the floor closer to the model.
*********
But it never says to keep decreasing past zero!!!!!

 

The only reason I used the Solidworks floor was to retain perspective
without the flattening associated with creating your own floor.
The camera feature in 2006 was built for this reason (and for
compatibility with other programs like Maxwell). So I would suggest
building your own studio with associated materials and creating a set
of cameras with a few good perspectives.

 

PhotoWorks has been kind of the runt of the litter, but I believe that
things are going to improve. I have great faith in Mark Biasotti and I think
that he will see that the PW user interface improves substantially. (That
isn't based on any "inside" knowledge, but Mark has never touched a CAD
program that didn't get substantially better and he obviously has an
interest in PW.) Mark has only been at SolidWorks for a year or two. You
would be amazed how long it takes to turn a program like SolidWorks.
Software is the hardest thing in the world to change.

Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"

 

You make a good point here Jerry. I agree, I think Mark brings more
interest in PW to SW and believe we will see some major improvements in the
next couple of releases. Its also important to note that PW is the largest
selling and most used add-in for SW. With numbers like that behind the
application SW will have to devote some resources to it soon.