Import SW 2012 files into Keyshot 2.3.2?

[Thomas Teger]

I don't think so. I will take another look here on one of our systems.

[cash68]

I got it working.  Sort of.   It works with smaller models...   but it refuses to work with a massive model.  It just hangs after reading data, then merging parts, then on "preparing geometry" it just sits there for over an hour, at 25%CPU usage.  Is it still working?

[Speedster]

Hi Roy;

One thing that I noticed from SW 2011 to SW 2012 was the folder naming convention.  Instead of putting the Solidworks files in a folder with the year (Solidworks 2011), the folder is called (SolidWorks Corp).  Could this cause a problem with the plugin for locating the proper files?

Maybe.  I have 2011 and 2012 on my box.  GoEngineer, my reseller, advised me to rename the folders SW11 and SW12 for just this reason.  I don't know if it affects KeyShot, however.

Bill G

[ggroener]

Is the Solidworks 2012 incompatability issue only with the plug-in?  Or can you still open Keyshot 2.3 and import a Solidworks 2012 file?  My entire department is using Keyshot 2.3 and we are about to upgrade to Solidworks 2012, am I going to have an issue?

[Thomas Teger]

It will work with the plugin. You can't import native SW 2012 into KeyShot 2. You should strongly consider the upgrade to KeyShot 3. There is a lot of stuff that will make the upgrade well worth it.

@ cash68, we have improved this significantly in KeyShot 3.

[ggroener]

So you are saying if we use the plugin we will still be able to import Solidworks 2012 files into Keyshot 2.3?  If we just try to import the files it will fail?

[Thomas Teger]

yes and yes. There is a plugin for SolidWorks that works with SW 2012 and KeyShot 2 on our website.

[cash68]

I highly suggest you don't upgrade to SW2012.  I have the Keyshot Plugin installed in SW2012, and it took me about 1.5 days of fiddling with stuff.  I don't even remember how i got it to work, I had to run everything as an administrator, and manually put things in various folders inside SW, because Keyshot won't release a straight up patch that allows KS2 to import 2012 files, for some reason.

It sucks.   Also, the tesselation is pretty bad, and when I change "Bodies" to different colors/apperances withing SW, then import them, they come in as one color, which makes rendering pointless.  I have to select every single face of each body, and change the face colors in order to get it to work.  Super annoying.