Models - Advanced Subtab

You can apply various advanced options. For example, you can edit and rebuild normal vectors, set preview options, and apply baked lighting.

Options

Corner Radius Adds a visual fillet or radius to parts with hard edges for visualization purposes. The edge produces a more realistic highlight without requiring a modeled radius.
Symmetry (Available when a part is selected.) Mirrors the selected object across the specified axis. This is useful for symmetric objects because you can import half the object (half the number of triangles) and instance their symmetric data. Specify an axis of symmetry:

None

X

Y

Z

Custom

Part/Normals Control

(Only available if a part is selected.)

Options in this section let you edit and rebuild the normal vectors on the selected part.

This process often solves flipped normals and badly formed normals that are common in SketchUp files and lesser quality data.

Rebuild Normals Rebuilds and optimizes the entire part mesh, destroying and recreating all normals in the process.
Select one of the following modes:

Faceted

Rebuilds normals with hard edges between the polygons. Set the Angle to choose how sharp of an edge to maintain.

Smooth

Rebuilds normals with a blended joint between polygons, yielding a softer surface description.
Rebuild Normals destroys texture coordinates, removing any custom texture mapping that may have been imported. This mapping is visible if you select UV mode in the Texture section of the Appearance tab.
Repair Normals Tries to repair existing normals without modifying the original vertices.

The Faceted and Smooth modes do not have any affect when you select Repair Normals. The result is always smooth.

Texture coordinates are not affected.
Select Part to Split Lets you extract individual surfaces from the part for greater flexibility with appearance assignment or animation.

Preview Options

These settings only take effect when the Viewport mode is set to Preview and a model is selected.

The following options are available in both SOLIDWORKS Visualize Standard and SOLIDWORKS Visualize Professional.

Enable Floor Shadows Shows/hides floor shadows that are generated in real time from the HDR environment image. You can control the intensity of the shadows with Shadow Intensity in the Scenes tab of the Palette.
Show Wireframe Shows/hides the tessellated polygons in the selected part or model. Wireframe is a shading method in which a grid of lines represents the basic contours of the underlying model. This mode helps you see faces and surfaces that are hidden by overlying geometry.

The following options are available only in SOLIDWORKS Visualize Professional:

Reflect Other Models The selected model reflects other models in the scene, with some impact to performance.
Reflect in Other Models The selected model is reflected in all other models in the scene. This option complements the Reflect Other Models option.
Visibility Controls the directional culling (selective removal from rendering) of one side (front or back) of the selected part mesh.
How culling is performed depends on how the normals are aligned in the part.

All

Culls nothing.

Clockwise

Usually culls the backside of the mesh.

Counter Clockwise

Usually culls the front side of the mesh

Baked Lighting

Available only in SOLIDWORKS Visualize Professional.

Available only when a root, group, or part is selected.

While in Preview render mode, you can still see most objects with high-quality lighting baked in.

To use baked lighting:

  1. Click Selection Tool > Part .
  2. Select the parts to be realistically lit.
  3. Use Vertex or Texture lighting to bake raytraced lighting into the selected parts.
Enable Baked Lighting Shows/hides baked lighting without removing it from the selected parts.
Vertex Calculates ambient occlusion and applies the results to each vertex in the selected parts. This technique works well for high-polygon models. Options:

Accurate

Uses the color, intensity, and direction of light from the HDR environment image for accurate results.

Approximate

Calculates baked lighting based on the occlusion of other parts and objects in the scene.
Texture Calculates ambient occlusion and applies the results to a texture, which is then mapped onto the selected parts. This technique works for simple geometry only. Options:

Normal/High

Normal generates a baked texture of 256x256 pixel resolution. High generates a baked texture of 1024x1024.

Accurate/Approximate

Accurate uses a more accurate but slower algorithm. Approximate uses a faster but less accurate algorithm.
Approximate Shadow Intensity Controls the intensity of generated shadows if you selected Approximate.
Remove Baked Lighting Removes baked lighting from selected parts.

Tessellation

(Available only when you select a part in a model that was imported from geometry that needs tessellation.)

Lets you retessellate the selected part.

Select the part to retessellate, set the tessellation value, and click Re-Tessellate.

If you select a part that was in a model imported from pre- tessellated geometry, such as .obj, Tessellation is not available.
To retessellate a part when the original model (before import) is no longer in the same relative location to the SOLIDWORKS Visualize project file, use the Original Source option to relocate and reimport the model.

Any NURBS-based original CAD files can be retessellated. Polygonal CAD files cannot be retessellated. File extensions that support tessellation:

.sat .CATPart .par
.sab .iam .asm
.asat .x_t .psm
.asab .xmt_txt .stp
.model .x_b .step
.exp .xmt_bin .wire
.session .prt .iges or .igs