Как из солид воркс перевести в блендер

Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Import and Render a SolidWorks Model

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This is how your render will look if you use my example settings.

How to import your SolidWorks model in Blender and render it using Yafaray.

Introduction [ edit | edit source ]

SolidWorks is one of the main product design solid modellers. It has a built in render engine called PhotoWorks. With the release of PhotoWorks 2, rendering within SolidWorks has become more realistic and easier. In a lot of cases PhotoWorks will be the most convenient way to render your model, because you don’t have to leave SolidWorks. However, sometimes you will find the need to make renders that are more realistic (or even photo-realistic), and PhotoWorks is not sufficient anymore. This is when you might consider using an external program for rendering. In this how-to, I will describe how to do this using Blender with Yafaray.

Both programs are open-source software, and you can download them for free:

(version 2.80) (version 3.3.0)

If you use different versions (especially YafaRay), you might have difficulties trying to follow this how-to.

You need a basic understanding of the Blender interface to be able to follow this how-to. If you have never worked with blender before, I advise you to read the Blender Interface chapter of the Blender 3D: Noob to Pro wikibook first.

Another great option is to watch some video tutorials first. This one about the interface is really helpful. There are very good other video tutorials as well at http://www.ibiblio.org/bvidtute/

Exporting from SolidWorks [ edit | edit source ]

I will be working with a model of a lighter (Created by Marko M. Markovic) that I downloaded from the SolidWorks Users Group Network (SWUGN) at the bottom of the «FREE SolidWorks models» section.

Before you can import your model into Blender, you need to export it to the VRML 2.0 (VRML 97) format first. In this how-to I will describe how to do this with an assembly, but it is essentially the same for a separate part.

Open your assembly.
If you don’t want to export all the objects, suppress the objects you don’t want to export first.
The export quality (strangely enough) depends on the screen settings. To improve this, go to Tools > Options > Document Properties tab > Image Quality. If your model looks faceted in your viewport, just set the «Shaded and draft quality HLR/HLV resolution» to a higher value. Especially for complex shapes with a lot of curvature, you’ll probably want a higher value. Take into account, however, that a higher value means a bigger file and slower operations within Blender.
Go to File > Save As.
Select VRML as your file-type and click on the «Options. » button.
Make sure «VRML 2.0» is selected. Usually you need to set the unit to something bigger than millimeters; normally centimeters will do, but for the bigger models I advice you to set the unit to meters. You’ll be able to scale the model again once you’re in Blender.
uncheck «save all components of the assembly into a single file»

Because SolidWorks appears to be making a mess out of large assemblies (randomly combining several parts into one mesh), we’ll export the assembly as separate files into one directory. To be able to load these files easily, you need to create a new directory for this export first. Later on, we’ll import all the files in this directory at once (time saver), so make sure there’s no other files in this directory!

Close the «Export Options» window (click OK).
Create a new directory for the export (or use an empty one), and hit «Save».

Creating an HDRI environment [ edit | edit source ]

Because the aim of this how-to is to get you started on photorealistic rendering, we will be using an HDRI environment. HDRI stands for High Dynamic Range Imaging, and is basically a technique to use a picture of the environment to light your scene. This will result in very realistic and convincing shadows, highlights and reflections. This is very important for realistic emulation of chrome for example.

First of all, you’ll need an HDR image. There is a whole range at http://debevec.org/Probes/ that you can download for free. I will use the Uffizi Gallery probe, but any other HDR image will do just fine.

Now start Blender. To apply the HDRI environment to your scene:

Go to the shading settings (press F5) and click the World button.
In the «Texture and Input» tab, click «Add New» and «Angmap».
Then go to the «Map To» tab and deactivate «Blend» and activate «Hori».
Now go to the Texture settings (press F6) and change the «Texture Type» to «Image».
Click the «Load Image» button and locate your HDR image.
To be able to render using this environment, you need to enable YafaRay. Press F10 and change the «Blender Internal» to «YafaRay».
Go to the YafaRay tab and deactivate the XML button and set Exp (the exposure control) to 1.5.
Set the Raydepth to 6.
In the YafaRay GI tab, select «Full» as your method, and «Low» quality (that’s good enough for a preview). Also enable the «Cache» button.
Set both Depth and CDepth to 10.
For caustic effects you can activate the «Photons» button, but in my case (a lighter lying on a table), it won’t make much difference.

Assigning materials [ edit | edit source ]

Plastic [ edit | edit source ]

The first material we’ll create will be plain plastic. We’ll apply this material to the middle part, the gas regulator and the push button. Whenever you’re going to create a new material, think of it in terms of how much it should reflect, how much it diffuses light, how transparent it is etc. because these are your parameters within Blender’s material editor. To create the plastic material:

Select the two middle parts, the push button and the gas regulator (use SHIFT + click to select more than one mesh at once).
Go to the shading settings (F5) and add a new material (Click «Add New»).
Press CTRL + L (in the viewport) and select Materials from the popup to use this material on all the objects you selected.
Change the color to almost completely black (RGB: 0.07/0.07/0.07).
In the Shader tab, set the specular shader to «Blinn».
Set the «Spec» value to 1.4 and «Hard» to 320.
Press «Ray Mirror» in the Mirror Transp tab, and set the «rayMir» value to 0.3.

Transparent plastic [ edit | edit source ]

For the fuel part, we’ll assign a nice green transparent material.

Select the fuel part, and add a new material to it (again, F5, «Add New»).
Set the color to a bright green (HSV: 0.220/1.000/1.000) and the alpha value (A) to 0.300.
Set the Amb value to 1.000.
Go to the Mirror Transp tab and enable both «Ray Mirror» and «Ray Transp».
Set rayMir to 0.20 and IOR to 1.45 (which is an approximate index of refraction).
Set Filt to 0.250.

Chrome [ edit | edit source ]

The metal part needs to be nice & shiny, so we’ll make a chrome-like material for that.

Set the Ref value to 1.000.
Set the specular shader to «Blinn», and use the following values: Spec 2.000, Hard 50 (default), Refr 6.500.
In the Mirror Transp tab, enable «Ray Mirror» and set the rayMir value to 0.9. Leave the rest unchanged.

Wood Texture [ edit | edit source ]

As stated before, to make it make the lighter more realistic, it needs a realistic environment. We already made part of this environment with the HDR-image, but to make it even more convincing, we’re going to turn the ground-plane into a realistic looking table. We need an image of wood to apply to the plane. I’ll use one from Mayang’s Free Texture Library, called «parallel wooden planks».

Because this texture is 1600×1200, we’ll scale the ground-plane to the same aspect-ratio — S, 1.6 (TAB), 1.2.
Set the Ref value of the diffuse shader (Lambert) to 0.600.
Set the Spec value to 0.175, Hard to 30.
In the Texture tab, press «Add New». Press F6 to switch to the texture properties.
Change the Texture Type to «Image» and load your texture (in my case the wood texture from Mayang) in the Image tab («Load Image»).

Rendered with materials applied [ edit | edit source ]

To render, you can hit F12 directly, or you can go to the render settings first (F10). Because of the render settings we use (GI and an HDRI environment), my render took about 3 minutes on a AMD64 3200+ with 1GB of RAM. If you just want a preview, you can either make a smaller render (set it to 25% in the Render tab), or use worse quality GI settings. For a final render, I advice you to use at least High for the GI quality — it will take more time but the result will be better looking!

Below you can see the result I got with all the settings from this how-to. Remember that this is just a general guide, and I encourage you to change the settings (Exposure for example), to see the effect. You have to get a little bit of ‘feeling’ with the material settings to be able to create a satisfying material quickly. I hope this how-to helps to get started with a SW to Blender workflow.

How to export a simple model from Solidworks to Blender

Solidworks is a powerful application for modelling, but you might want to look to other applications for shading and rendering. In this tutorial I give a simple overview how to export a SolidWorks model to a format which can be accepted by Blender. By importing it in Blender, we can apply simulations, physical renderers and much more to the model.

Solidworks is a powerful 3D cad drawing program, used by engineers and product designers and mainly works with surfaces and curves.. Blender is one of the most popular and powerful open source 3D editors and mainly works with polygons. Using the surface modelling powers of SolidWorks together with Blender’s Cycles rendering engine is a powerful combination.

In Step 1 and 2, I will talk about modelling and exporting in SolidWorks. In Step 3 and 4 I will explain how you can import a SolidWorks model in Blender and give it a simple shader. This tutorial asumes that you have some basic knowledge about SolidWorks and Blender, and know how to use the interface of these programs.

Step 1: Modeling in Solidworks

Start up Solidworks and choose New > Part.

The Bottle

Start by making a circle sketch on the top plane, using a diameter of 50mm, as shown in the following picture. Use the Smart Dimension tool for measuring the dimensions.

screen2

Extrude this sketch using extruded boss/base button or by insert > boss/base > extrude. Extrude 150mm, in blind mode. You will end up with a cylinder of 150mm height.

To get to the curved shape for the perfume bottle we are going to make a new curved sketch, and apply a revolved cut feature to it. Start by making a new sketch on the front plane. You can use the the example measures, but make it at least as high as the pillar we already made.

screen3

Go to View > Temporary Axes, to make the Temporary axes visible. We will use this for the cut revolve feature. Insert a cut revolve (Insert > Cut > Revolve), using the axis in the middle. Make it one direction and with an angle of 360deg. Now we get somewhere:

screen4

Following, start making a new sketch directly on the front plane, make it as high as the pillar, with the example dimensions as shown in the image below:

screen5

Extrude (insert > boss/base > extrude) this sketch 20mm, using midplane mode. This will extrude it from the midplane, thereby placing the extruded sketch exactly in the middle of the circle (as viewed in the image below).

screen6

Make a new sketch on the frontplane. Make it having a distance of 2.5mm from the borders, and use a 3 point arc with a very large radius, as you can see in the picture below. Cut extrude (Insert > Cut > Extrude) this sketch, using midplane mode and extrude it over 15mm. Using this cut extrude, you have defined the inside ‘void’ of the perfum bottle.

screen7

We’ll now add the last part of the bottle itself, and then continue to making the sprayer and the cap itself. Selecting the top face (do this from top view) start making a new sketch, a circle with a diameter of 15mm and with it’s midpoint right above the origin. Extrude this (insert > boss/base > extrude), blind, 7.5mm. Select from top view the top face of this just extruded circle, and draw a circle with diameter 10mm and midpoint at the same point as the previous circle. Cut extrude (insert > cut > extrude) this circle with a value of 10mm.

screen8

End up by selecting everything and apply a fillet of 0.50mm (insert > feature > fillet). You now should have something that looks like the image below:

screen1

The Cap

Start making each object by making it a new part (File > New > Part). We will assemble the three parts later in Blender.

The cap itself is very simple: start by making a circle sketch with a diameter of 50mm, on the top plane. Extrude (insert > boss/base > extrude), blind, this circle 12.5mm. Sketch a new circle on the top plane, with its midpoint at the same point as the midpoint of the first circle, and with a diameter of 20mm. Cut Extrude (insert > cut > extrude) it 10mm, blind. Finaly apply a fillet (insert > feature > fillet ) of 0.50mm to the top face of the cap. You’ll end up with the model below:

screen9

For the sprayer we have to do more. Start by making the sketch (use the same dimensions) below, using line and three point arc, or circle and power trim:

screen10

Extrude blind this sketch 10mm. Start making a new sketch, a circle with the same midpoint, but with a diameter of 15mm. Cut extrude blind this sketch 5mm. Then apply a fillet of 0.50mm to the top of the cylinder.

Now go to back view (or the view that that you look right up at the flat part of the extruded circle), and draw a help line in the middle from up to down. Draw a circle, having a midpoint relation with the helpline, with a diameter of 2mm. Blind extrude it 0.50mm.

screen11

Sketch a new circle on top of the one we just made, having the same midpoint, but with a diameter of 1mm. Cut extrude this circle, using ‘up to surface’, and select the face shown in the picture below:

screen13

If you have done everything right, you’ll end up with something that looks like below:

screen12

Now save all the three parts you made as .vrml. This is pretty easy, just go to file > save as and where you usually save as .sldprt you can choose a lot of other formats, and choose .vrml this time.

Step 2: Exporting from SolidWorks

If we want to be able to import SolidWorks models to Blender, there is only format that can save us from utter frustration: vrml (.wrl). Fortunate enough, exporting from SolidWorks as vrml is as easy as cooking water with a watercooker (I don’t know if that makes sense, but hey, I guess you get the picture). You can export by just going to File > Save As and select VRML under save as type. If you click under options, you can determine the version and measurements. Please select VRML 97 (VRML 2.0), because this is the format that Blender can import. Export each part as VRML.

Trouble exporting? You can download the original VRML files from here.

Step 3: Importing the model in Blender:

Now that you have cooked the water (joking of course), you are able to import the vrml files into blender. And that is almost as easy as exporting them.

You just have to go to: File > Import > X3D Extensible 3D (.x3d/.wrl).

Repeat this for each model, and you have your models imported!

As you may notice, the models appear very small and on their sides, so scale them approximately by 10 (Hotkeys: s, then 10) and rotate them 90 degrees on the x-axis (Hotkeys: r, x, 90). Grab the sprayer and cap, and by using side and front views, place them exactly on the top of the perfume bottle. Now you can optionally add a floor (hit space: add > mesh > plane and scale it), and give it a white color, or a texture, or anything else you want.

SolidWorks model imported into Blender

Our imported model. Beautiful, isn’t it?

Step 4: Shading and rendering in Blender:

We are now ready to add the materials to the model. Select the perfume main bottle, hit f5 or the material button and add a new material. If you have not switched to cycles render yet, do it. But first, remove the existing blue material that is applied by default to imported objects. Now for the bottle, choose a Glass BSDF surface shader, which a white color and an IOR of 1.440 (the approx. IOR for glass):

screen15

For the bottle cap and sprayer, you can use a more ‘metallish’ material. I used a Glossy BSDF with a small Roughness value, but you can choose anything to like. Secondly, as I wanted the bottle to be rendered on a plain white background, I set-up a white background surface under the World Settings tab. Also see the picture below:

World Settings in Blender, for a SolidWorks model

Now, do not forget to set the shading of all your perfume bottle components to smooth, as shown in the picture below:

Perfume Bottle Cap from Solidworks to Blender

Place your camera on a good spot and Render. I cranked up the amount of samples for the preview rendered, and did a quick render y in the preview mode. And tadaaa, the following result emerged from the preview renderer:

screen19

In this tutorial, you learned to export a simple model from SolidWorks into Blender using VRML as filetype, add materials and render it using the Cycles renderer.

Questions you might have

Why should I use SolidWorks for modelling?
SolidWorks is very strong in modelling geometric, non-organic shapes with exact measurements. In many cases, I can model these kinds of shapes faster in SolidWorks compared to Blender.

Why should I use Blender, SolidWorks has a very good renderer, right?
The reason why I love Blender is that you have much more control over material properties as in SolidWorks (although this has been really improved in later versions). This also makes it more complicated though. Secondly, Blender has many more dynamic simulation options (especially with fluids and particles) which you might want to use in your product renderings. At the moment of writing this, I do not know easy solutions for rendering fluid simulations within SolidWorks.

SolidWorks / CAD into Blender?

I'm trying to import my assembly from SolidWorks (or really any CAD) into Blender. I've done this before in University when I was using Cinema4D — I would export my cad as a STEP file, and then import into C4D (although now C4D has SolidWorks support!). When imported, all the individual parts of the model were preserved (and their relative locations), as well as some textures.

Some suggestions online mention exporting the CAD to an STL file, which can be then loaded into blender — however, this isn't very convenient. When doing this, the assembly gets wrapped into one shell — so individual components (wheels, actuators) cannot be moved by themselves. In the old STEP procedure for C4D, each individual part could be moved during the animation process!

Как из солид воркс перевести в блендер