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apparance problems in 2009?

Question asked by Geo Hagen on Oct 20, 2008
Latest reply on Jun 9, 2009 by David Demaria

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Does anyone have problems with the apperance in photoworks 2009?
I have an assembly with several parts and I attached apparance to parts in the assembly from the assembly level not from part level.
The problem I have is that some times the apparance of the assembly is present in a render and sometimes the apperance of the part.

I also can't delete the apperance of an assmbly itself.
This disturbs the apperance in a higher level assembly.

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Geo Hagen Oct 22, 2008 1:08 PM
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I have an assembly with three subassembly's.
Everthing is set correct in the subassembly's (apperance,etc)
I set the scene. lighting etc in the top level assem.
Everything fine
I close and open the top level assm again.
SW has put apperance on the subassm, mostly default plastic.
I have to open the subassem. and then go back to top level assem.
Then the apperance is gone.

Why is SW putting apperance on the subassem?
I think there is a problem with the layer structure in SW for apperance.
(the range from assem, face, feature, body, part,)

I also can't delete the apperance in higher level.
When there is an apperance in the assem and on the part, I can't delete the apperance of the assem.
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Rob Rodríguez @ Geo Hagen on Oct 22, 2008 1:16 PM
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I haven't used 2009 heavily yet but I have noticed various appearance issues when opening older (2008 and older) files in 2009. I also find the "default plastic" material attaching itself to all sorts of parts and assemblies for reasons I can't explain. A file that is 100% perfect in 2009 with respect to appearances can have issues in 2009. I'm not sure why but it can be frustrating. I'm hoping SP 1 will solve this. I don't have SPR #'s for the issues but I have talked with SW about this.
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Geo Hagen Oct 22, 2008 1:16 PM
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Same problem in part.
I have a part with several body's
Apperance is put on the body's (not on the part)
Everything fine.
Close the file.
Open file again.
SW has put apperance on the part (Default plastic).
This apperance is visible when rendering in an assem not the apperance of the body's.

Is it something I do wrong?
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Geo Hagen @ Geo Hagen on Oct 22, 2008 1:23 PM
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Rob,

It is very frustrating!
I did some rendering for a customer and he asked for a small adjustment.
It toke me more then 2 hours to get everything fixed up again.
Toplevel assem with three subassems of about 50 parts each.
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Mike Wilson @ Geo Hagen on Oct 23, 2008 5:16 PM
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I was having an issue regarding 'Defualt Plastic' as well. It turns out that if Real View is not enabled, as well as 'Display PhotoWorks appearances in SW OpenGL', then all your appearances are set to Default Plastic.

Enable either one and your good to go. The appearances reset.
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Matt Graves Oct 31, 2008 2:08 PM
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I'm experiencing the same thing, and it's f'ing maddening. I have spent all morning wrestling with a model - sub assembly with configs, with materials applied at the part level (faces and such). Top level assy insists on assigning default plastic to everything. Fix at part level, then sub - everything looks fine. Render at top - some configs are good others have the default plastic again. I've probably fixed the same sub-assy- and it's just a prop for scale- 4-5 times.

This is a serious frickin' problem. Realview turned on helps a bit, but not always. Also, some of my appearances are made from custom jpegs, and not all of them show up when realview is turned on.

They should not assign a default texture to anything - render with a default texture, but don't actually assign it in the PW appearances manager.

Hope this gets fixed fast.
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Bruce Mutch @ Matt Graves on Dec 2, 2008 4:59 PM
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I'm glad I'm not the only one who is having issues with PhotoWorks... having a lot of trouble with "default plastic" attaching itself, which then stuffs up the ability for PW to render decals (they disappear).

Also, I've discovered that in '08 having background appearance set to gradient was never a problem when using a presentation scene. Now, in '09, I need to switch back to "use document scene background". I spent the best part of a day to-ing and fro-ing with customer support to sort this out.

SW... pull your socks up!
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Bruce Mutch @ Bruce Mutch on Dec 2, 2008 5:57 PM
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RRRRRAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

I'm beginning to wish I never upgraded to SW '09... having no end of problems with PW... especially with files created in '08.
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Geo Hagen @ Bruce Mutch on Feb 25, 2009 2:06 PM
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Everybody,

Any update on this subject?
Some workarounds to get the default plastic ripped out?
I have a new render project with 2009 files from a customer.
I'am afraid it will cost a lot of time to make the renders.

Maybe export the files to 2008 is an option?
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Matt Graves @ Geo Hagen on Feb 25, 2009 6:34 PM
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I believe SP2.0 took care of this problem- at least it's not nearly as bad as it was.

Of course, if you're already on 2.0 than I'm wrong.
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Paul McCrorey @ Matt Graves on Feb 25, 2009 10:44 PM
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I am on 2.0 and I am still experiencing the problem
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Rich Thompson Feb 26, 2009 8:14 AM
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I'm also on 2.0 and have been having the same problems. It seems worse with old files, or files with multiple configs and appearances assigned at various levels (body/face etc). I also had a few crashes just removing appearances from the render manager. Please don't assign default plastic in the render manager, it gets soo confusing.
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Anna Wood @ Rich Thompson on Feb 26, 2009 4:31 PM
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SolidWorks should let the user decide what material we would like to make default during this process.

The majority of our work is with metal. Why would I want my parts to default to plastic.

Edit: See Rob's post below, you can set the default material. Yippee!!!

Cheers,
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Rob Rodríguez @ Anna Wood on Feb 26, 2009 4:35 PM
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You can define this now Anna. If you right click any appearance in the task pane one of the options is "set as default appearance".

Missed you at SWW
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Anna Wood @ Rob Rodríguez on Feb 26, 2009 5:08 PM
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Rob Rodriguez wrote:

You can define this now Anna. If you right click any appearance in the task pane one of the options is "set as default appearance".

Missed you at SWW

Well I will retract my statement then. Looks like we need to let everyone know this option is available. Thanks for setting me straight.

I missed going as well. Was hanging on all the Blogger and Twitter posts about SWW09, to keep in touch with the happenings. I already have my hotel room reserved for SWW2010.

Cheers,
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Rob Rodríguez @ Anna Wood on Feb 26, 2009 5:15 PM
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Maybe I'll post a video to the blog about this?
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Ron Bates @ Rob Rodríguez on Feb 26, 2009 10:31 PM
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Hi Folks,

There are a lot of different issues likely being discussed by people in this post. All of which could be generally regarded as either:
- issues we may have recently resolved in sp02 or forthcoming sp03
- issues we're aware of that we're still working on resolving
- some user confusion of what is happening intentionally, why it's happening, and why it's not an issue.

So one thing for certain is that each case could present a variety of different combinations of the above. It can all depend on what precisely you're talking about, what prior PW appearances were applied, what prior custom textures or standard colors were applied, in what version, where they were applied (as in were they applied to a sub-sub-component while editing a top-level assembly? or just at the part level?), whether configurations are being used, etc. etc. etc. So I'll try to keep this stripped down to a couple issues that I'm reading which come across to me as "general". Forgive me if I'm explaining something you already understand too. Also, this can all sound particularly confusing, so I'll look to post some videos that show examples too.

Every legacy color or texture needs to be converted into an appearance. It HAS to happen. Colors and textures no longer exists as 2 separate pieces of functionality. They have been combined with appearances. So an old SW color (plain old fashioned opengl color) or SW texture, is converted to "default plastic" or "default texture", respectively.

Now, the part Level Default Plastic always re-appearing - This is currently intentional in 2009. The reason is...there's really no such thing as the part having NO APPEARANCE. If you can see it...it has something on it. So we put Default Plastic on it...or whatever default appearance you have set as Rob/Anna discussed above. So take the example of the part. You put an appearance on some faces and the body. Render manager shows these but it also shows that you have your default appearance on your part. If you delete it...what have you just accomplished other than removing it from the render manager itself? When you re-open the part, we identify you have nothing explicitly applied to the part, and therefore use the default appearance as what is applied to the part. And this displays in the render manager. We realize that for PW users, this can be an annoyance b/c the default appearance used to never show up in the render manager. For non PW users, well they don't even get a render manager so it's not an issue. We are looking into ways of resolving this by simply not displaying any default appearances in the render manager. It is not as simple and straightforward as it may sound, but we are looking into this. In the end, however, it should not affect your rendered result. Again, consider the part with a face and body appearances applied...those should ALWAYS be rendered on top of any part appearance...even the default appearance. What concerns me more is the comment that "This apperance is visible when rendering in an assem not the apperance of the body's". This should not be happening unless there is a component level override applied, which it didn't sound like. I would welcome looking at an example if you could send me such a file.

Next, were Mathews' issues. The general point I can make is that RV ON and the option of "display PW appearances in SW OGL" are essentially the same. That is, RV ON = your PW appearances. WHY? In order to maintain old SW colors and textures, but convert them to a single database of things called "appearances" and not conflict with old PW materials, they all have to live together. In my presentation at SWW with Mark B, we went over this exact paradigm. Basic example would be a block created in 2007, with a face made red using SW colors. Then the same face made aluminum treadplate with PW materials. In 2009, what should that face look like? Old colors/textures functionality is gone. Everything is an appearance. Whether it's an old simple color or a real PW material that was applied. Rob has expressed some concerns over our direction here to consolidate the database of how you "paint your model"...and that PW should always be handled separately. But in the longer haul, I think you'll find that always using a single database of appearances to modify what your model looks like will be a huge improvement. New users in particular will not have to search out how to change what their model looks like for renderings VS what it looks like for regular SW. I digress...back to the 2007 block. When you open it in 2009, what you get is:
RV OFF = Red Face
RV ON (or "Display PW appearances in SW OGL") = Aluminum Treadplate.
So no data is lost. If you render with RV OFF, well, we render whatever appearances are displayed so it will render with the red face. If you render with RV ON (or the pw option) then we display those appearances and you see that when you render. We realize this is a cause for a lot of confusion and are working on improving the solution. But as it is, we simply didn't want to jeopardize losing information on conversion. Plus this confusing RV toggle action on legacy data only has an impact for legacy models. Moving forward, since you'll always be using an appearance to change what your see on your model...when it comes to rendering, WYSIWYG.

As far as the details of individual cases go, I'd love to be more specific of what might be going on, but I it's hard without specific datasets to look at. There was mention of cases where sub components of assemblies, particuarly throughout different configurations, are presenting some problems. We are aware of some issues in this area and are working to resolve them.

Watch this space for mention of where to get access to some video...

Thanks.
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Anna Wood @ Ron Bates on Feb 26, 2009 10:46 PM
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Ron,

Thanks for taking the time to post. This info from the experts at SolidWorks is very valuable to the user community. It is very helpful to get the info, along with the decision processes of how the different SW behaviors came about. Adds much to my knowledge of how SW is functioning under the hood.

Glad to see you here participating in the forum.

Cheers,
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Geo Hagen @ Anna Wood on Feb 27, 2009 5:45 AM
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Ron,

Good explanation of the apperance problems.

Concerning the apperance applied to parts with configurations with different apperances I send some examples to my VAR.
Maybe you want to receive this parts too?
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Neil Larsen @ Anna Wood on Feb 27, 2009 6:45 AM
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I second the appreciation of the return to some forum participation from the SW good guys..

from time to time SW forum replies and even the beta discussions yield very valuable explanations and insights into SW workings or at least the intentions of the workings that are not available anywhere else.
I wonder if SW would consider gathering these up somewhere as a monthly SWManager2User Diary (maybe with a tiny bit of readability editing - not by marketing though thankyou guys ) and with perhaps a link to it in the SW Express newsletter.
I think there would be a lot of users who do not have the time to follow the forums in detail who would be interested to read some compiled highlights particularly of topical useability issues where there seem to be a number of people having some related 'difficulty' understanding a facet of the software.

just a thought..
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Geo Hagen @ Neil Larsen on Feb 27, 2009 8:00 AM
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Update,

I just received a call from my VAR about the problem with the apperance and multiple configurations with different apperances.
The problem seems to be solved in sp 2.1.
The one thing you have to do is to apply the apperance again in every configuration.
I tried it and now the apperance is right when rendering in PW.
Also with body's and face's it seems to work.
Important is to apply the apperance again.
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Ron Bates @ Geo Hagen on Feb 27, 2009 12:10 PM
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Yes. Re-applying may be an "unfortunate" solution in some cases but necessary. Re-applying ensures that the appearances are set up correctly moving forward.

I'm happy to give this feedback. I think hearing the user appreciation is gratifying to not only me, but SW as a whole as we do begin trying to ramp up this sort of stuff. I'll be sure to pass along the suggestions...
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Neil Larsen @ Ron Bates on Feb 27, 2009 6:56 PM
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...reads and thinks: either someone important died at SW recently and we havent heard, or when they took Mike Puckett to the far side someone important returned to the living in exchange....its not all bad, I suppose...
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Ron Bates @ Neil Larsen on Mar 2, 2009 3:41 PM
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Hi Folks,

I've had a small video posted to explain the details a bit of how conversion is handled for legacy colors/textures and PW materials applied to the same references...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhoRHXKmPPs

-Ron
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Jason Capriotti @ Ron Bates on Mar 2, 2009 3:47 PM
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Can videos be hosted on the SolidWorks site? YouTube (and most other video sites) are blocked here at work. I imagine most other companies do the same.
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