Rendering on a Mac?
I have windows 7 running with bootcamp on my mac where I use SolidWorks 2011. I am often mac OS X however. Is there any way to make renderings on my mac side of my computer that is fairly easy and does not cost money? I have just started using PV360 in solid works and I like the way it works. I would just like to have the option of making a rendering without rebooting my computer every time.
4 Answers
As I experienced, most of the rendering applications are tessellating the CAD models. So you could do it yourself by exporting your models as a *.STL file and then render them in Blender. Well it has no drag and drop functions for materials and making a good looking render in seconds button, like those render applications (like Maxwell, Keyshot, Bunkspeed,...) but it's free ;) and is relatively easy [= just my opinion] to learn. Blenders Cycles can make use of your GPU via CUDA (nVidia cards) or OpenCL (ATI cards) - you could reduce rendering times by using the graphics card build into you Mac. If you want to use Blender only for rendering, you can learn it very fast and there are also some very good tutorials out there ;)
keyshot has a mac version... works well and is easy to use
If rebooting is a problem, you can always try using Parallels which runs a separate virtual computer on your mac os. Having a lot of RAM is necessary, however. If you don't want to take that route, use Keyshot - its simple and takes any format you throw at it... there is also Maxwell Render Studio if you want to have some photorealistic renders.
