Adding Physics to Make Rendering Realistic
One of the greatest challenges in rendering is to simulate the actual condition in real life – gravity, contact, friction and motion, etc. With SOLIDWORKS Visualize Professional, it is no longer a problem because we can use physical simulation to assign physical properties to imported 3D bodies. We can set up our renderings and animations according to their interactions like in real life. No more guessing.
There are two types of physic simulations in Visualize: Driving vehicle and Object interaction.
For simulation of driving vehicles, choose Vehicle as simulation type and set up the vehicle using the Vehicle Wizard below.
There are 2 modes of setup: Automatic and Manual. Automatic mode will auto-assign the correct wheel parts. if needed you can check steps 1-3 and manually correct.
After the vehicle is setup, we can control the vehicle using key actions as shown. 
We can also use the Simulation Manager to start, stop and record the movement for our rendering.
Another type of physic simulation is object interaction. We mainly use that for natural arrangement or placement and the prevention of object intersection.
In this case, other than vehicle, we choose Static or Dynamic for the Simulation Type.
Static represents the object which cannot move but other objects can collide with it.
Dynamic represents the object that will move according to the simulation, like gravity.
Next we need to choose the Collider Geometry which determines the accuracy of the geometry for collisions.
Bounding Box is less accurate but is faster to simulate and can be applied to simple geometry like the sink below
Mesh is for complex geometry like the cups below to prevent bad results like intersection.
Lastly, there are 3 Physical Properties that we can use to abject the speed, resistance or the rebound of the object.
Once the setup is done, we can activate the Toggle Physics to obtain the result like below.
One very useful tool for natural placement or arrangement is Shake We can add an extra swing to obtain more results or hold the click on Shake longer for a larger shake.
Let’s try the Physics and rendering just like in the real life!
Written by Marco Yam, Intelligent CAD/CAM Technology Ltd.
Source: Fig1. https://help.solidworks.com/2019/english/Visualize/c_combining_simple_and_complex_vehicle_simulations.htm