Views on Onshape Apps

peter_hall

Whilst this can only ever be one persons view on an app, it may help choice for some people.

peter_hall

Solidparts - seemed to be a limited library and to have no metric options , so not much use for us in Europe.

peter_hall

Maxwell Rendering - The important words here are "advanced rendering technology" , my first impression is it would take weeks or months to achieve a result and I want to quickly achieve a reasonable quality render of my models.

peter_hall

MIgenius - (RealityServer) Reasonably easy to use but changing materials is not a simple pick and drop, plus no obvious  lighting effects

cadmando

Maxwell Rendering:

I fully agree with you on this one Peter.

cadmando

SimulationHub:

This App started with a few teething problems, soon sorted out with the help for Amil. The results are a little basic, but a little more work by the development team should make great improvements. This app has potential, being easy to learn and use.

thomas_kozak

Maxwell Rendering I am currently trying to get this working and the OnShape integration is really unstable.  I'd be interested to hear from users who have had success with this because so far every step of the process has a ~60% chance to crash and so far I've been unable to get an OnShape file imported at all. I did pull in an exported STL and that worked okay, but at that point I'd rather just take the file into Blender and use their render options.

peter_hall

Mastercam: I downloaded this onto my computer but couldn't work with it, so I am guessing it needs to be downloaded by the company or machine, which has mastercam software on it. So is not much use to myself. The best way for me seems to be to export my models as a step file and send to the manufacturer.

peter_hall

Keyshot: Well so far the connecting to Onshape is painfully slow, see screen.

peter_hall

I am fast coming to the conclusion that these Apps have not been investigated enough by Onshape. I like Onshape but with the experiences I have with the Apps I don't have the time to investigate their usability so Probably will just give up on all of them. How about only promoting decent working Apps, Onshape!

DriesV

peter_hall said:

Keyshot: Well so far the connecting to Onshape is painfully slow, see screen.

Hi Peter,

The KeyShot connection should not be painfully slow.
I use it everyday in Luxion's Aarhus office (Denmark). Performance for browsing documents and importing models should be quite good.
Can you send me more details, concerning your setup and locale, over mail?
dries@luxion.com

Dries

peter_hall

@DriesV Ok the connection is now fine and onshape loads well. I have played a little with rendering and it seems to work fine. Did these renderings
from Onshape parts.

 

I will use Keyshot some more to show my design intents.
However I do not fully understand the 14 day trial. It says 14 day trial of unwatermarked renderings, does this mean after 14 days I can still use Keyshot with onshape with watermaked renderings, or that I would have to buy Keyshot at $1000 + , this I could not do as I don't have income generation to support that kind of purchase price for a rendering tool. Shame because Keyshot looks a good tool. Not sure its worthwhile investing learning time if it is only 14 day trial, needs to be 3 - 6 months minimum to decide its worthwhile spending that sort of money.

DriesV

Hi Peter,

After the 14-day trial the Onshape connection will lapse.
If you would wish to continue using it, then indeed a commercial license is required.

As a side note: if you want to try out KeyShot Pro with all bells and whistles (including Animation), you can get a trial for that by getting in touch with Luxion directly.

Dries

peter_hall

WebGL Exporter - Works well converts to an easy form so people can read in their browser, my only issue was that to view it I needed to scroll a long way on my mouse to bring it into view. Problem with the size of the model and size of the computer screen compatability. So for now sending A Jpeg image is better, pity as this would be a good way to send a 3D model for viewing.

So I guess what I am saying is that when WebGL exporter creates the HTML file of an onshape model it need to size it to about A4 size so it automaticaly fits onto a normal computer screen. Otherwise using this tool to send someone an email is no good as they may not see the model or have the understanding that they need to bring it into view with their mouse. So there needs to be some automatic scaling being done by the App. Never the less I give this a thumbs up!

peter_hall

3D PDF Exporter from Prototech Solutions, linked to above WebGL , so you only get 10 free downloads between these two Apps. However opened a sizeable part and worked well in 3D using Adobe Reader. So again thumbs up although 10 free downloads only then Dollar a time.
Be careful on your models before downloading I had hidden parts that then showed on the download so suppress or delete what you may have hidden.
Housekeeping required ......not like me !

Paul_Arden

peter_hall said:

MIgenius - (RealityServer) Reasonably easy to use but changing materials is not a simple pick and drop, plus no obvious  lighting effects

We are definitely planning to add a material library in the future. In terms of lighting, there is the ability to switch the image based lighting environment between various presets already, however currently there are not light sources other than the environment or daylighting.