How to automatically export a list of step files?

sebastian_glanzner

I have a lot of assemblies that I want to export as step and render in KeyShot. 
My customer wants a small rendering of each assembly for their website. 




Is there any way to automatically export step files using an excel file with all the partnumbers?
Also is there a way to export a specific configuration? (I made a configuration named "detailled" with the threads to be modelled in 3D)

What is the best approach to do something like that? An API?

harmanpa

Hi Sebastian, using the API you can export an assembly with a specific configuration, so you could iterate over the assemblies and configurations you need - there is a "Create Translation" method in the "Assemblies" section of the API (and despite what the documentation says, it does take a configuration as a parameter).

bill_schnoebelen

How many do you have? It is not trivial. STL or parasolid would be less steps. I believe you would first have to cross reference the part number to the document element string.

https://onshape-public.github.io/docs/translation/

billy2

The rendered image looks great, I want that look on my website. I think the cadillac solution here would be to link a gltf and stick it into a webgl rendering engine on your client's website. This way a customer could spin the model around and interact with it. 

Export is a dirty word and should be avoided. Creating a bunch of files is bad and hard to manage. Onshape's version control is a great way to manage what's appearing on a companies website. You should link your client's website to onshape and avoid all those files.

This isn't a plug-in or something simple to do yet. It's the future and it's coming.

bill_schnoebelen

Try cadasio https://appstore.onshape.com/apps/Design & Documentation/PTEX5DUHZZPNOGPZ3OXSZI4DXDGL43P4TMENGGY=/description

bill_schnoebelen

billy2 said:

Export is a dirty word and should be avoided. Creating a bunch of files is bad and hard to manage. Onshape's version control is a great way to manage what's appearing on a companies website. You should link your client's website to onshape and avoid all those files.

I tryed linking to Onshape. This was a very simple test. It does work for pics, but there are several issues. The images load very slowly (granted i did not web optimize for size) and the gltfs do not get served. I believe you also have to make the whole OS document public to get it to work. OS can filter those paths in the future as there are not documented. I went back to AWS S3. 

https://onshape-test1.netlify.app/

EvanReese

Just throwing it out there that Keyshot has a plugin to connect to Onshape directly, which is what I use, but it may not be able to handle configurations. I'm not sure. You may already be aware of this, but I'm sharing just in case it's handy to you or someone who finds the thread later.

bill_schnoebelen

5 minutes of playing around with cadasio. I really don't have the patience for this sort of stuff, but I think this is pretty cool.

https://www.instructions.online/?id=1591-saw stop

sebastian_glanzner

So many great ideas! .gltf files sound interesting, I have to ask the web developer if can use these files.

I have around 150 files at the moment, when I'm finished it will be 1000 assemblies. In KeyShot you can write scripts to import all step files in a folder and render the images.

The cadasio app looks cool. Maybe we can create a animated explosion view of each product 

billy2

I'm trying to expose onshape models on the web. The idea that an engineer can create a family of products through configurations and exposing them on a company website is very interesting to me. I'm not sure where this is going, but I think its promising.

https://rustyshed.com/?quill=5fed5590dd784a11e1364a0e

The onshape image regenerates fairly quick



Then switching to the end view is also quick



Then changing the depth & switching to the view reverse iso is quick

Onshape does have to serve up the image, which isn't bad if the document is active. It is much slower if the document hasn't been accessed for awhile and gets moved to the "S" archive drive. You could create a script that touches each document and keep it active. They also cache the images, if an image of a configuration has been generated previously, it's served up quickly.

@bill_schnoebelen you are right about serving up gtlf, it's not documented. You can snoop onshape and see the commands it sends to the server, then just duplicate those from your own server. The API documentation isn't growing quickly, but there are no secrets, you just have to scrap the commands the client is sending to the server. That's your updated API documentation.

As far as speed, you can ask for a coarse model 1st, render it, and ask for a medium model, then render it. You can make it progressive. You can also save it to local storage so the next time it's fast. There's a lot of things that can be done. The model above in coarse mode was served up in seconds. I think progressive load can keep a web user entertained while the data is loading.

What really bugs me are the images. I keep trying to rotate the model. I read the named views from the document and display them on the web page, but it's a pain to change views by clicking a select box on a web page.

Also, why can't the drawing update? This bugs me too.

With gtlf you get the geometry, color mapping and it's native to webgl. I'm refraining from three.js and working directly inside webgl to build a rendering engine for onshape. I want it to behave like onshape, and look like onshape. But, I want an option to render based on the materials defined in the model. Brass will be brass, aluminum will be aluminum and candy apple red will look like a flame speeding down the road.

It's a lot of work and currently I don't have the time. Hopefully in the future I'll free up some time and build it. I haven't seen this type of integration yet but hope it gets here soon.


sebastian_glanzner my goal is to create an image equivalent to your rendered image without any model setup or additional image setup work; one that'll spin on a webpage. I like the pretty pictures, but I'm not willing to speed the time to create them. I also have a version pattern inside onshape that allows me link workspaces to my website. I can edit a model and merge it into the workspace which automatically updates my website. I found trying to update the website after changing the model was painful. With this version pattern, I can control a dynamic working environment and not crash my site. Well, not that often anyway.

sebastian_glanzner

@billy2
Your website is pretty cool, I always read your forum posts about it! It is awesome that you can change the configurations 

Maybe Onshape really makes an update in the future so you can use embedded Onshape live view? 

billy2

Thanks for the kind website words. It's more of a playground than a website.

I'm not sure Onshape will ever venture into a rendering engine for websites, they need to focus on cloud cad. harmanpa has written the best web rendering implementation so far and it's pretty slick. 

I download everything from the web these days and stay away from suppliers that don't have 3D geometry available for my use. It's expensive for a company to create a website offering up CAD data. With onshape acting as the backend server, a company could build a warehouse of their components simply. If done right, components would have pricing and availability integrated which could update real time as long as you're in the onshape ecosystem. Desktop folks will always be downloading, converting out of date data, they live in a dark world.

It's going to get better, I'm pushing it forward millimeters each day.