Maxwell Render

Hi,

I´m experiencing problems with material assignment in SW2009.
- No matter what item (surface, body, etc.) get´s a material assigned - the workspace don´t show it.
- the materials don´t render in maxwell
- Selecting the surfaces manually, the plugin reports the assigned material correctly.
- Texure rotation is permanently disabled
- crashes from time to time..

System:
DELL Precision T7400 - dual quad core Xeon, 16 GB Ram, Nvidia Quadro FX 5600
Solidworks 2009, plugin 1.8.3.0

please.. (of course..)

- No matter what item (surface, body, etc.) get´s a material assigned - the workspace don´t show it.

If you look at the toolbar at the top of the Database Manager window, is the leftmost button showing as a red or a grey dot? This toggles on/off the plugin's Real-time viewport materials feature. When it is off, nothing related to the appearance of Maxwell materials will be shown in the viewport. This is to accomodate users who have different purposes for their SW materials and who therefore do not want the plugin to alter them.

- the materials don´t render in maxwell
- Selecting the surfaces manually, the plugin reports the assigned material correctly.

What are the status of the Scene Manager > Output > Export > Disable Materials and Multi-Materials settings. Either of these may explain what you are describing.

- Texure rotation is permanently disabled

It will only be enabled when a supported entity is selected. That means that the selected entity must have a texture showing in the viewport. It is not a plugin-specific state, meaning that it will work either with textures assigned via SW, or those being shown as a result of having a Maxwell material assigned.

- crashes from time to time..

Could you provide any details about this? Such as, are you seeing the 'Exception Report' dialog box being shown from the plugin, indicating an internal plugin problem, are you just seeing a general error message from SW, or is there no message at all?

Thanks...

_________________
Next Limit Team

JD,

many thanks for your quick reply.

- No matter what item (surface, body, etc.) get´s a material assigned - the workspace don´t show it.

If you look at the toolbar at the top of the Database Manager window, is the leftmost button showing as a red or a grey dot? This toggles on/off the plugin's Real-time viewport materials feature. When it is off, nothing related to the appearance of Maxwell materials will be shown in the viewport. This is to accomodate users who have different purposes for their SW materials and who therefore do not want the plugin to alter them.

yes. I tried even refreshgin to alter them.


- the materials don´t render in maxwell
- Selecting the surfaces manually, the plugin reports the assigned material correctly.

What are the status of the Scene Manager > Output > Export > Disable Materials and Multi-Materials settings. Either of these may explain what you are describing.

disable materials = unchecked
multi materials = checked

- Texure rotation is permanently disabled

It will only be enabled when a supported entity is selected. That means that the selected entity must have a texture showing in the viewport. It is not a plugin-specific state, meaning that it will work either with textures assigned via SW, or those being shown as a result of having a Maxwell material assigned.

I never use the SW material system. What is strange is, that the material dont show in the workspace - but maxwell correctly reports the assigned material in the object properties.

- crashes from time to time..

Could you provide any details about this? Such as, are you seeing the 'Exception Report' dialog box being shown from the plugin, indicating an internal plugin problem, are you just seeing a general error message from SW, or is there no message at all?

I will do that as soon as it appears again.
What is so strange is that after I installed the last version of the plugin everything worked just fine and I didn´t change anything on the software installations on my machine. I will let my system check by an expert to be sure.

many thanks

regarding:

yes. I tried even refreshgin to alter them.
I never use the SW material system. What is strange is, that the material dont show in the workspace - but maxwell correctly reports the assigned material in the object properties.

So far, I can think of only one other possibility regarding the material assignments not showing up in the viewport: you have a Maxwell material assigned to a face, but you are working in an assembly, and there is another SW material at the component-level which is hiding the Maxwell face-assignment. Is this possible? Who knows how it may have gotten there, but if there is some SW material assigned to the component, it will hide any body-, feature-, or face-assigned Maxwell materials in the viewport.

Even if so, that does not explain the Maxwell materials not showing up in Maxwell itself. Is this just happening with a specific model, or can you duplicate it with a fresh part/assembly? If so, could you send me the file so I can take a look?

_________________
Next Limit Team