Hello to all,

Welcome to the new edition of the SOLIDWORKS Support Monthly News!  This monthly news blog is co-authored by members of the SOLIDWORKS Technical Support teams worldwide.

Displacement Mapping in Visualize 2021

By Richie More

SOLIDWORKS Visualize facilitates addition of bump textures to appearances, enabling users to create realistic component visualization for the renders.

What’s New in SOLIDWORKS Visualize 2021 is the ability to add and control displacement of the bump textures to have even more realistic renders. Also, Displacement density can be controlled to create a complicated component surface within Visualize interface, without a need to create the same in CAD Environment.

Procedure to create Displacement Bump Maps.

Step 1– Open any project in Visualize 2021. Create primitives such as sphere, cube, etc.

Step 2-Navigate to Appearance > (Add any appearance over the Primitives)

Step 3-Edit the applied appearance, Texture > Bump. Add a bump as required.

Step 4- In the Texture Tab, Select the Bump > Modify the Type to Displacement.

Step 5- Select the Target Geometry in viewport over which appearance is already applied. In Texture Mapping tab, Add Displacement Density value > Apply to Geometry.

Notice that the Texture Displacement is mapped over the selected geometry.

Additional texture controls such as Invert texture, Depth, Tile, Rotation, etc. can be used to obtain a varied Displacement Output.

How to reset to the preferred column set for a user in SOLIDWORKS PDM 2021

By Tor Iveroth

In SOLIDWORKS PDM 2021, you can centrally administer column sets for many operations in a file vault.

A column set that you define as a ‘Preferred’ column set will become active the first time a user accesses the vault. After that, once the user logs in and is assigned the preferred column set, the active column set settings are stored in the user’s ‘HKEY_Current_User’ registry hive.

The registry store changes made by the user in the active column set, such as modifying the position or sizes of the columns displayed.  The registry also tracks which column set is active for each operation type.

There is currently no option to force a particular column set to reset back to an administrator defined column set once the registry value is created for the user. Please refer to enhancement SPR 1187104 for this functionality.

The following example shows how a preferred column set for ‘Contains’ works.

1. You create a new column set for Contains and set it as the preferred column set to a user group.

2. When user accesses the vault for the first time, the preferred column set is used.

3. The active column set will be stored in the user’s registry under:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\SolidWorks\Applications\PDMWorks Enterprise\RefDlg\ContainsDlg

4. The column set information is stored per vault and user.

5. From now on, the selected column set and the local user modifications are retained in this registry key.  If a different column set for the same operation type is set as preferred, it will not override the previously used column set for the user.

If you wish to reset to the preferred column set, or clear the user modifications back to their defaults, do as follows:

1. Exit SOLIDWORKS PDM from the tray icon.
   

2. Open the registry editor and delete the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\SolidWorks\Applications\PDMWorks Enterprise\RefDlg\ContainsDlg

3. When the user browse into the vault view again, the preferred column set is used and set as active.

The different column set types will store the column details in a similar structure per vault and user, but under different registry sections.

<registry_path>\<vaultname>\<username>\<column_set_ID>

To reset the user back to the default (or preferred) column set, follow the steps outlined above and delete the “<username>” hive under appropriate registry key based on this table. Alternatively, delete the whole “<registry_path>” hive to reset column sets for all vaults and users on the system.

Noteworthy Solutions from the SOLIDWORKS Knowledge Base

Why does interference detection in the SOLIDWORKS® 2021 SP1 – SP3 software take longer than SOLIDWORKS 2020 depending on the model?

A general hotfix is available for this critical issue in the SOLIDWORKS® 2021 SP3.  To resolve this issue, download and run the hotfix file attached to Solution ID: S-079075

Why does RealView not work on a workstation with the NVIDIA® ‘T’ or ‘RTX®’ series graphics cards?
NVIDIA® has released a number of new graphics cards, which no longer uses the Quadro® brand for these cards. This change means that the naming convention for the drivers prevents RealView from working with those cards To get more information, see Solution Id: S-079120

When a SOLIDWORKS® PDM task host or Web2 IIS server runs on VMware®, why does SLDWORKS.exe not close, PDM tasks hang ‘In Process’, and Web2 eDrawings® previews continuously show ‘File conversion in progress’?
The following problems can occur on VMware® Workstation and on VMware ESXi™ with certain versions of the ‘VMware SVGA 3D’ display adapter driver. To get more information, see Solution Id: S-079071

In a SOLIDWORKS® Simulation 2D ‘Axisymmetric’ simplification study, what are the considerations when defining loads or fixtures on edges or vertices that are coincident with the axis of symmetry?

To define a 2D ‘Axisymmetric’ simplification study, you must select an axis of symmetry. The software applies an inherent boundary condition to this axis to enforce axisymmetry. For more information, see Solution ID: S-078968

That’s it for this month. Thanks for reading this edition of SOLIDWORKS Support News. If you need additional help with these issues or any others, please contact your SOLIDWORKS Value Added Reseller.

Comments and suggestions are always welcome. You can enter them below.