yang686526

problem with photoworks
i'm having a problem when trying to apply materials to a large assembly (hydraulic oil field tools with ~1000 components) for rendering. i usually start by saving the assembly and all it's components locally, then applying the base paint color material to the entire assembly in the feature manager tree, then work my way back. as i go back over the assembly and try to change materials for certain components, photoworks will sometimes refuse to apply the material; the component's color changes to the material's color i tried to apply, the new material doesn't get added to the render manager tab, and i get no kind of error message, so i don't find out until i actually render or check the render tree.
usually i'm applying materials to components of sub-assemblies, and dissolving the sub-assemblies fixes the problem, but i'd rather not have to do that in case i need to move something around later. on top of that, most of the sub-assemblies have supressed features, and thus cannot be dissolved. is there any way to apply materials to individual components of sub-assemblies?
please tell me i'm overlooking some kind of basic thing here.
running solidworks 2007 sp5, by the way.
i've had poor results attempting to apply materials within the context of the assembly, and i'm using the same version of sw as you are. maybe you could look in your options and see if they're set like mine:
thanks for the reply. i may just have to apply materials individually if i run out of options, though with the sheer number i'd have to deal with (this assembly has 247 part files) i hope it doesn't come to that. i've been using the option to display pw colors in the view window, and it's almost always inaccurate for some reason, even with materials that have been applied properly and show up correct in the render.
i'm just puzzled as to why there's no kind of "export for rendering" option in pw for large assemblies that would make it possible to apply materials to whatever part or surface you wanted to, regardless or hierarchy.
submit an er. lots of this appearance stuff has been updated/tweaked/renamed/changed in the new versions, so it's completely different now--so you can relearn whatever you've learned thus far in future updates.

jeff mowry
i added materials to my database that may help with pw. does it help for any of you?
chris
solidworks/pdmworks 08 3.1
autocad 06/08
i've downloaded but not yet tried the latest. i didn't know it had anything to do with photoworks. will it work for v2007, too?

jeff mowry
there is one version for 2008 and one for older than 2008.
chris
solidworks/pdmworks 08 3.1
autocad 06/08
thanks, chris! i'll have to install it and see what there is to see. thanks for making your materials available to everyone like that.

jeff mowry
you're very welcome. please let me know how it works for you.
chris
solidworks/pdmworks 08 3.1
autocad 06/08