3DVia Composer anyone?

[TekART]

Anyone out there have experience with 3DViaComposer. It is a output tool for Solidworks that gives the ability to output technical illustrations, exploded views, renderings, etc.

[clint]

I would love to hear more about that. In my experience the only thing that comes close to doing that is Right Hemisphere and it's real damn expensive.

[TekART]

Your right about that. EXPENSIVE! That is ONE of the reasons I'm not a big fan. I have co-workers who think this is the easy button to illustration and on time delivery. I know better.

[MichaelH_in_PA]

Our senior writer/Future Tech Pubs Boss really liked it when he tried it out before I joined the company. He's wanting to use it to move from paper manuals to some kind of tablet based manual, with animations and interactive exploded assemblies.

I'll have to DL the demo and try it out. If anyone else has used it, and has any comments I would love to hear them.

[Rahul KULKARNI]

I had used 3D via composer for creation of a key frame animation. The model we used was a CATIA model. The animation came out pretty good, but was in no way closer to Right Hemisphere's Deep Exploration software. Right Hemisphere allows more control over the model and animation I feel.
Another thing that I came across was when we extracted the models into vectors for creating illustrations. Both, 3DVia and Right Hemisphere gave a polyline kind of vector with multiple line widths . We needed exact vectors as I was gonna finish the illustration in IsoDraw. So we did not go with either of them and ended up getting CATIA as it gives the best vector from a 3D model.

[MichaelH_in_PA]

Aww! I see, we are also going to Catia. (finally leaving Solid Edge behind, and are currently using IsoDraw. So it sounds like 3DVia may be problematic for what we want to do, same as you. I'm thinking my boss may want to do both though. Does anyone use Catia for animations, or model/parts Catalog uses?

[JuanCal123]

Im an Computer Graphic Generalist and have done Technical Illustrations for the Aerospace industry and My advice is, if you want to advance your career and take on some real cool projects that you strat learning 3D programs, in the past 4 years Ive used Right Hemispahere which is now owned by SAP and currently using 3DVia composer combined with Adobe Illustrator. with this background under your arms you can stand to make close to 6 figures if you market yourself well.
But yes D is the future and Technical writers don't like me, the small group I work in with now don't like me as mucha nd have a little fear because I could do all the trainning and OMM documents FCm IPB in 3DVia composer and create line art with Adobe illustrator.
you can also create HTML interactive content which Ive proposed for the small company I work for now but the budget they have is small now so the Technical writes have convinced the managers theres no need for this, which is how they have been able to keep their jobs. Sometimes progress takes a while because some people can't keep up with change.

But yes I would learn some 3D via If I were you, once you create the views you need you export them as EPS files and import them into Adobe Illustrators and you can add callouts there

[MichaelH_in_PA]

I am getting training for 2-week training on Catia, and then 3 days on 3DVia Composer. I am looking forward to both, and will report back on how it goes. (we are curretnly using Solid Edge, IsoDraw)

[JuanCal123]

oh nice trainning for CATIA is a great opportunity, I haven't been that lucky. When I was in San Diego during some downtime I was lucky enought that the community college I was going to held one Solidworks course and even then the professor there said that the course was on a thin line barely hanging in. So I was lucky enough to take two sememster of the same course. and boy I tell u its made me that much more marketable. What I have noticed though in the Aerospace industry they use a lot of CATIA which is unfortunet for me. Im so happy for you.
if you have time ask for them to train you a little on Surface modeling you'll be a champ and maybe thank yourself you did learn some of that, cause you have much more opportunities and better pay.

well hope to hear your updates. Im currently trying to dable into a new rendering system that sopposedly is easy to use and will make hard surface models photorealistic. Im quite excited, Ive put ina ticket here at work for IT to download the trial Version, cause they wont buy anything unless theres a reason for it. I have to create some good images and then Ill show it and see if the company I work for wants to buy it just wanted to share.


well I can't wait to hear about you CATIA studies

[JuanCal123]

CATIA is great for creating models that are for PLM production and manufacturing so your set animation not so much, but when you export from CATIA and import to 3DVia Composer animation becomes that much easier and better. you can also create TEchnical Illustration LIne art.
you set