OTOY Forums

Hi people,
I hope to have this project finished off in a few days and will make the macro available.
I made a short demo which you can see below and yes I know its not the best video ever made... You shouldnt try to do this stuff at 1am.
Just to be clear this is not an integrated plugin.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbhBpZa8GXI

Ha well no other SolidWorks users here obviously.
Maybe I won't bother releasing it

hey pixelrush, fellow solidworks user here although I am not sure I would use that macro. My current workflow is solidworks to rhino to softimage to octane. Sounds horrible I know, but I like the flexibility it gives me. Rhino opens native SW files, then I can control how it exports the .obj. Then I can work with cameras and UVs in softimage.

Well at least there is one other user SW here. I was beginning to feel a little lonely.
If you are happy with your present workflow thats cool but you're welcome to try this out anyway. Should work on SW2005 and later.
Functionally this a better obj export macro than the one being sold for $200 in that it handles materials and textures, complex assemblies, and gives more tessellation control
In the past I have used vrml out of SW and then imported to Blender manually, applied mats and reworked stuff, and then exported as .obj to import into Octane manually....
The vrml faces coming out of SW were not very good either so this is a decent improvement in workflow for me.
I expect I will be using Blender to redo the UV for anything that isn't prismatic since the native SW unwrap is very poor but its generally OK for machinery and such.
I'll put the macro up here soon for stray passersby to inspect and perhaps make use of.
I would have thought there would be more SW/Octane users out there than there are with over a million SW seats, still.....

OK here is a release candidate for a person or persons to try.
I will leave this RC up for about 3-4 days so people(?) can report any issues and give feedback. Please dont distribute it anywhere until it is final.
I dont believe there are likely to be issues but make sure your SW files you export from are backed up before you try this out.
Look at the Read Me.txt and About.txt for info about the macros practical use.
I have tried to anticipate your questions etc. but some info may not be clear or I might have missed something.
The About.txt is the same as that in the macro UI but some people might find the print used there too small to read easily on their monitor.
Thanks for trying.
Download at the bottom of the post.
EDIT: removed will be posted on SW main forum soon.

Hmm well a few views but no takers so far.
I guess we know not to bother developing Octane plugins for 3d CAD.
In light of that I think I will put the final macro on the main SW forums and at least people who want to export .obj can save themselves $200.
If there are any Solidworks users visiting this thread in the future they can track it down there.

Hey pixelrush, sorry for not looking at this yet. I grabbed it and will give it a try.

hmmm, keeps telling me "Nothing selected to export, please try again"

I tried editing the macro and resaving (I'm on SW 2011) --none of the references were 'MISSING' -- but still no dice

OK that might be a glitch in my error handling code. I have seen that too sometimes but only when running the macro from the vba editor or Tools/Macro/Run. I think you will find its OK if you run the macro from the supplied icon placed in the SW toolbar? If not I had better look at it again. In that case can you make a screenie of your references panel for me please.
I've tried it on SW05 and SW09 successfully and someone even ran it on SW2001+ with some small mods for older textures code.
Anyway thanks for looking at it. Don't want to take up your time with silly niggles but at least I find them and can fix them. Hopefully this is the only one

EDIT make sure the custom icon is set to start the UI and not the main code.

For anyone coming along to this late I've removed the release candidate of the macro for some usability tweaking and it will be reposted on the main SolidWorks forum as a free .obj exporter soon. Follow it up there.