@Brian HILLNER  @Ron BATES

Hey Guys, I'm really looking forward to SW 2021 coming out. Here are some feature requests. Let me know if you have any questions. Thank you for taking a look, I know there is a lot here. I spend about 80% of my time doing SW Visualize still and animations, so every enhancement is very valuable and appreciated. I'll file these with SW formally if I find time...

1. When there are multiple configurations, the polygon count includes all configurations, not just the active one. If the other configurations are not loaded into memory, exclude the polygon count from the inactive configurations
2. Auto scroll using keyboard letters when browsing the library. i.e. pushing the letter C would scroll down to the first appearance with the letter C
3. Increase speed of the search bar on the pallet. Its almost prohibitively slow right now.
4. If there are hidden bodies in solidworks and the assembly is exported to visualize, those bodies are visible in Visualize upon importing and cannot be selected. The user must scroll through the model tree until the item with 0 opacity is found and that item is made not visible or disabled. I suggest changing how Visualize handles hidden bodies in Solidworks, or adding a selection feature to select all bodies with 0 opacity so the user can suppress them manually without having to hunt for them. My current practice is to suppress all hidden bodies in Solidworks before exporting to visualize, but this is sometimes missed
5. A tool to view where there are multiple overlapping surfaces. I currently have to hunt down and find where there are multiple surfaces occupying the same plane. These can cause rendering errors and sometimes are only visible in the final render. Some kind of tool to visualize where these are present would be helpful. A utility to selectively disable parts, groups, or models would be even more useful. Having this utility available upon import would be great
6. Ability to set all parts, groups and models to a specific texture mapping mode, with the option to change texture scale across the board. This would also be very useful upon import. I spend a lot of time changing every component texture size to be the same. Changing my import settings won't help my workflow. 
7. Ability to move parts and groups from one model to another. Even if this has to break the link to the model.
8. Ability to disable individual shadows cast from one component onto another
9. Keyboard shortcuts to navigate to specific appearance folders
10. Ability to lock the pallet location. It’s too easy to move and can cause the program to become unstable.
11. Laso selection tool for working in the model tab
12. System option to keep the display configuration the same when switching between model configurations.
13. GPU utilization, VRAM and  RAM utilization percentages in HUD
14. Ability to export and import scene and lighting settings from one project to another with 1 file or utility. Right now everything must be manually created.
15. Save all light settings when exporting lights including position, brightness, etc… Right now no information is saved when exporting lights.
16. Have small thumbnail of part, group and model available in the model tree general tab.
17. Have an icon or detail view available for the model tree, similar to windows file explorer.
18. Option to move pivot point to current cursor location on the model
19. Ability to move pivot point to center of an imported cylindrical object. Right now everything is done painstakingly manually and is never perfectly in the center.
20. Ability to move parts by selecting surfaces. Aka having some resemblance of solidworks mates. Even if it’s not perfect. Having the option to lock the X, Y, Z, pan, tilt and yaw during this operation would be good. This is currently done manually.
21. Ability to do basic flexing within visualize. rope, paper, etc..
22. In output tools, ability to select only some configurations to render. I don’t use the default configuration in any final renderings since I can split and manipulate the model only in that configuration. Otherwise, it’s a waste of machine time when I only need some of my configurations and I have to render them all. Sometimes there are a dozen configurations.
23. Utility to adjust final rendering using compositing layers. 
24. Option to select timestamp range instead of frame range in animation output tools
25. Integrated project number generator and rendering asset number generator. Right now I have to assign and track project and rendering numbers so I can find which project file was used for which rendering if changes are needed. This is very time consuming.
26. Option to have some kind of smart file naming system. Specific environment, camera, display configuration and model configuration settings are needed in most of my file names. I have to manually enter those so I know which combination was used for that rendering. Here is my file naming convention “Unique Rendering#_Description_CAD Model Date_ Render Grade_ Environment #_ Project#”
27. Button to change aspect ratio to fit model, or selected items. Having an adjustable margin would be convenient.
28. Use a symbol or series or characters on appearance icons to know what appearance type it is
29. Lock camera name when camera is locked.
30. Ability to import multiple decals at the same time. Sometimes I have dozens of decals and it’s very time consuming.
31. Some kind of “S” key like solidworks with customizable commands, and a running list of last commands used to perform again. i.e. split part again, apply appearance again, Increase brightness again
32. When in the appearance tab, have some kind of utility that can pop up next to your cursor to modify basic texture settings like bump depth, tile and rotation, enable/ disable, texture mapping scale, displacement, face floor, flop color
33. Ability to use the same decal for multiple surfaces instead of having multiple identical decals in your pallet. Optionally, group decals together.  Large numbers of decals really seems to bog down the program.
34. Ability to toggle render layers in live viewport
35. Have thumbnails for IES profiles, or a way to upload thumbnail graphics.
36. Ability to lock longitude and latitude when moving a light. Right now when I drag the position XYZ dials in the transform tab, the light target doesn’t move.
37. Add different interpolation calculators for animations.
38. Ability to change interpolation curve by dragging lines and notes on a line graph.
39. Ability to change camera interpolation in animations by dragging lines and notes on a line graph. Ability to control, X, Y, Z, longitude, latitude, Depth of Field, perspective, dolly
40. Tool for simplifying making components flash in and out in an animation
41. Tool for making appearances flash to a different color more simply
42. Ability to toggle from one appearance to another with a different appearance type in an animation. Right now I have to juggle 10-20 keyframes and make sure they’re all the same spacing and the correct space apart.
43. Ability to group lights and control all from the top group level.
44. Ability to select multiple lights and move them to the same X, Y, Z, longitude, or latitude.
45. Ability to modify settings for multiple lights simultaneously
46. Ability to change default decal depth in visualize options
47. Ability to render bristle pile or simple furry objects. Displacement doesn’t work well for this.
48. Integrate common texture websites into the library tab. I.e. search for and download textures from textures.com or Poliigon.com right from the software. Perhaps this could be a separate companion software similar to Adobe Bridge. I don’t want to handle individual texture files and figure out which one to upload.
49. Ability to select which texture resolution (LOD) to use if multiple texture resolutions are available. Or have visualize automatically generate these for me.
50. Ability to select which resolution environment to use if multiple options are available. 4k, 8k, 16k etc.... If visualize could provide lower resolution environments as an option, that would be great too. Save on VRAM and render times.
51. Queue feature
    • Lookup list of errors and warnings and what they mean
    • Notification when your hard drive is full and is causing queue issues. Perhaps setup a minimum disk space recommendation with notifications. I’ve had my hard drive fill up very quickly with full HD animations and fail days into rendering it out due to running out of space.
    • Increase reliability of still and animation render estimate times. For animations, render out a handful of frames throughout the animation and take an average instead of working from one end of the animation to the other.
    • Hard restart button for queue. This would stop the queue, restart the boost and services on the queue and farm PC’s, restart the services from within the queue tools, and restart the queue. I have to go through this sequence to get it working frequently.
    • Queue folder size indicator on the queue utility. This can get big in a hurry and it’s easy to forget about.
    • Notification when the file name and folder location exceeds the maximum 255 characters and is causing rendering to fail.
    • Ability to detect previous installations of Solidworks visualize queue and Boost. Boost and queue don’t work when prior installation services are running. Mine always restart when windows starts and I have to shut everything down and disable those services before trying again.
    • Ability to change output folder and filename from within the queue utility.
    • Ability to open up the working folder in the Queue output directory from the job in case the render completes, but get stuck moving it to the final output folder. This happens occasionally.
    • Have queue perform test rendering each time it starts to ensure it actually works. Pushing the start queue button doesn’t guarantee all is functional.
    • Utilization statistics for boost farm computers.