First, I would like to thank everyone for participating in the SolidWorks 2012 beta program.  Your participation and feedback goes a long way towards helping us develop our products to best suit your needs.

Some of you have raised questions regarding the changes to PhotoView 360 in SolidWorks 2012.  Looking at the official what’s new document for SolidWorks 2012 there are no enhancements listed for PhotoView 360.  Rest assured that this does not paint an accurate picture of our efforts with PhotoView 360 over the last year.

PhotoView 360 for SolidWorks 2011 was a very unique release as it represented a dramatic change to our photorealistic rendering offerings inside SolidWorks. With this in mind we were able to deviate significantly from our traditional development process and implement new functionality in the SolidWorks 2011 service packs. Normally we would have to wait for the next major release (in this case SolidWorks 2012) to bring new functionality to our users.

Those that participated in last year’s beta program will undoubtedly remember that in the Beta 1 release of SolidWorks 2011, users were not able to preview render in the SolidWorks graphics window. As a direct result of the SolidWorks 2011 Beta participant feedback, we implemented the Integrated Preview in the Beta 3 release of PhotoView 360 allowing users to preview render in the graphics window. Originally the Integrated Preview was a SolidWorks 2012 project. We took advantage of our unique position with PhotoView 360 for SolidWorks 2011 and implemented that functionality before the first service pack of SolidWorks 2011.

This was just the first of many SolidWorks 2012 projects that were implemented in SolidWorks 2011 service packs. Along with addressing quality issues (which is the traditional purpose of a service pack) the following functional enhancements were released in SolidWorks 2011 service packs:

• Direct Caustics were added in SP1 of SolidWorks 2011. Also, along with many performance and appearance quality improvements, the integrated preview was updated to allow users to lock it to a specified pane in a split window in SP1 of SolidWorks 2011.  For details, see my post for SP1: https://forum.solidworks.com/message/191523#191523
  

• Significant improvements to the performance of viewing dynamic model changes (pan/zoom/rotate) in the preview window. See Ron Bates’s SP3 posting: https://forum.solidworks.com/thread/42111
  

• “Render Under Mouse” to allow the user to indicate a region of the preview that will be refined first by hovering the mouse over the desired area. See Ron Bates’s SP4 posting: https://forum.solidworks.com/thread/44287
  

Note the following enhancements are coming in Beta 2 of SolidWorks 2012 (and may appear in a future service pack of SolidWorks 2011):

1. In SolidWorks 2012 Beta 2, look for new appearances such as:
   
   1. New glass appearances:
      
      1.    Thick, Frosted…
         
         
   2. Solid color appearances
      
      
   3. Gemstones
      

1. In SolidWorks 2012 Beta 2, look for new scene background controls that allow you to maintain the aspect ratio of a background image.
   

Look for future beta postings from Ron Bates or myself regarding the new background image controls and the new appearances in 2012.

Hopefully this gives you better picture of what is new in PhotoView 360 since last year’s beta program. Remember, adding new functionality to a service pack (which is traditionally meant to address quality issues) is rare for us at SolidWorks but we found it necessary to meet the needs of PhotoView 360 users.

Again, thank you for your participation in the SolidWorks 2012 beta program.

Marlon Banta

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