Help finding a tool from tutorial.

Hey all, I've finally gotten around to starting my tutorials found on the help menu in the program. I'm making good progress but every once in a while I find that certain tools aren't where the tutorial describes them to be, or the description of the tool's location isn't concise enough. I know I'm going to come across more instances where I can't find the tool I'm looking for but I figured this is a good start for the first one as the search bar in the program didn't seem to want to strictly search the features of the program but the internet instead.

What I'm looking for is the 'RealView Graphics' in the 'View Settings' tool bar.
http://i.imgur.com/Fwkkatv.png

Here I've circled the only key I've found to be called 'View Settings' which does NOT contain the 'RealView Graphics' Option.
http://i.imgur.com/fLFTka5.png

So, am I just missing something as far as the way to get to this tool or does it not exist on the student version? Overall, it's probably not a feature I'd use much, but I genuinely want to learn and be proficient with this software.

Thanks!

Hi,
Your "View Settings" menu should look something like this:
http://eaaforums.org/images/attach/jpg.gif
If the menu does not include "RealView Graphics" or the icon is greyed out, then your hardware probably does not support the OPENGL required by SolidWorks, in which case I apologize for being the bearer of the bad news:(

Jeffrey

Thanks Jeff, I'll have to take a look at my program. I believe that is the exact icon that I looked at and could not find Realview.

In the mean-time. did you take a regular print screen to be able to capture the drop down menu there?

Ok I took a look and found this.
http://i.imgur.com/RcDwkqa.jpg

So I finally did find the tool but it doesn't look available, you can also see that my icons in the build environment screen are even a little different than yours. I looked up my GTX 770 card on Nvidia's website, and it says it supports OPENGL 4.3, I don't know what version Solidworks 2016 requires, but I bet it's a later one although I only built this tower in 2015. I did find through this online help menu that even going that way, I don't have the option to turn it on.

I would like to find out why it's not registering that I have moderately performing graphics processing on this computer, but I guess it's not a huge deal. Thanks for pointing me to OPENGL.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by NDT_RV4

.... In the mean-time. did you take a regular print screen to be able to capture the drop down menu there?

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Sure - but my drop-down menu is a little different from yours, probably because I'm running SW 2013.
BTW - if it's really important to you to have chrome-nickel parts looking exactly like chrome-nickel parts, then you can use the SW software rendering tool PhotoView 360. Look under Help>PhotoView for instructions on how to use it, and make sure you have the Add-in activated (Tools>Add-Ins). It works very well but it takes a long time for each rendering, so I very seldom use it - the last time I did was about 100 years ago so I don't even remember how to use it.

I'll give Photoview a look. This is awesome stuff Jeff, thanks a lot!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by NDT_RV4

So, am I just missing something as far as the way to get to this tool or does it not exist on the student version?

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From the looks of your screenshots, I'm guessing you are running 2015 or 2016 version? If so, the rendering capabilities have been removed from solidworks SDK editions in these years versions. The SEK edition still has it though, but unfortunately that is not what we as EAA members have access to. Supposedly "Visualize" is available for student use, but good luck getting anybody to answer on that one, I have been waiting over a month for someone to get back to me about that.

Also, on the note of tutorials, the built in stuff is great, but I really have to say the youtube videos by Tim Callinan are phenomenal!
https://www.youtube.com/user/timcallinan