Render questions (Blender Bunkspeed Shot)?

[dpsmith85]

I'm fairly new at rendering, I've used inventor studio and Photoview 360 (solidworks rendering software) but I've never used any third party software.  I've been looking into using either blender or bunkspeed shot to do some rendering but I'm wondering how I save my models in Inventor.  I know that I should save it as a STEP file but is a step file similar to a "pack and go"?  In other words if I save an assembly as a STEP file could I take just that STEP file to another computer and begin rendering?  Does it contain all the parts and subassemblies or do I need to do something else?  I'm imagining/hoping that a step file would be like a zip file that contains all the model data and references.

Also, I've been looking at bunkspeed move as well for the animation capabilities.  I know that inventor studio uses the constraints to animate.  Does anyone have any experience using move?  I'm wondering if it works similar?  And that raises the question does a step file contain the constraints so I could animate them?

Thanks

[jtylerbc]

STEP does act like Pack & Go in the sense that you end up with a single STEP file for the entire exported assembly, which does not require any other files to be able to open it.  Itis intended to be a neutral format for interchanging between different CAD systems, but some things just don't translate.

The STEP file does not retain any feature history or parameters on the parts (they become dumb solids), and does not keep any assembly constraints.  They will be in the location they were in the assembly, but there will be no constraints keeping them there.

[joshmings]

KeyShot which has full-realtime 3D rendering and animation and will import Inventor part and assembly files directly. You can get a free download of it here: http://www.keyshot.com/downloads/

Additionally KeyShot doesnʼt require any special hardware or graphics card because it's CPU based. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to help.

[dpsmith85]

Thanks for the responses.  I saved a large assembly to a *.stp file last night and took it home and tried to open it in the demo version of bunkspeed shot and literally nothing happened.  I know this isn't a bunkspeed forum but does anyone have any suggestions of what file extension I should be saving to from inventor?

[joshmings]

STEP or IGS should work. Make sure your output is set to Solids.

Did you give KeyShot a try too? definitely compare. That Inventor file will come in directly.

[dpsmith85]

What do you mean by "output is set to solids"?  That may be where I messed up.  From inventor I opened my assembly file went to save copy as, and chose a STEP file.  Is that all I needed to do?

Thanks again

[joshmings]

On the Save As dialog box, select options. I believe you'll have options for solids, surface, curves, sketches and parasolid version. if the latest version isn't working, go back one and give it a go.

[dpsmith85]

Joshmings,

I downloaded the demo version of keyshot and it looks like exactly what I've been looking for.  The only issue i'm having right now is with the time it takes to import a model.  I imported one of my larger assemblies (500 unique part) and it probably took around 20 minutes to import it.  Then keyshot crashed while I was working so I'm having to import it again.  Do you know of any way to speed this up or does it just take this long to load larger models?  Im on a xp 32 xenon processor with 4gb to blame so that could be partly the issue.

[brian.cranston]

I use KeyShot with Inventor as well.  I like it a lot.  A time of 20 Minutes for 500 unique parts doesn't sound too bad.  Depends, which XEON do you have? Do you have KeyShot v3?  KeyShot can open .IAM files directly or you can use STEP. I usually use STEP because my results weren't good thru KeyShot V2.  I'll do some testing with V3, maybe it's better. KeyShot will scale almost linear with cpu cores and likes Hyperthreading as well. I have a new dual socket six-core XEON box coming, can't wait to try some KeyShot renders- 24 threads at once!

-Brian Cranston

[joshmings]

Sounds like you're running out of memeory DP. 20 minutes isn't that long for a large assembly. You may want to reduce the tessellation quality under the advanced tab in the import dialog to produce a smaller file.