SolidWorks Users Crave Useful Add-In. Get Presentation Studio

by Josh on October 29, 2008 · Comments

solidworks presentation studio add-onThe thick wire mesh guarding us against the experimental research inside the SolidWorks Labs Studio nearly had to be re-enforced when a new program leaked out which allows SolidWorks users to create a quick portfolio-style .PDF of their 3D solid model.

Presentation Studio is an Add-in, a free add-in. Open a model, start a layout, select your options, type a little story about it and you get a snazzy looking PDF you can show that creepy guy at the supermarket. Here’s the details.


I’m likin’ me some presentation
First, Download it at SolidWorks Labs and install that sucka. Open SolidWorks, go to Tools, Add-ins and select the Presentation Studio checkbox.

solidworks presentation studio settings

You need to a part or assembly open. The Presentation Studio command show up as the last tab on the CommandManager (update: or right-click on the toolbars to turn the Layout toolbar on. Thanks Mike.). From either one of those you can select Layout to display the Presentation Studio Property Manager. The setting allow you to:

  • select from 4 different layouts
  • add a title, summary and description
  • select which views you want to include

solidworks presentation studio manager

After you’ve spent a few minutes doing all that, hit OK and a .PDF is created in the location you specified. Here’s an example of the above faucet.
solidworks presentation pdf

What Else?
You can view the 3D model directly in the document – rotate, zoom and pan or switch between the views you selected when you created it. The PDF file size may get pretty big with large models. This faucet PDF was right at 1MB.

Update: according to Brian McElyea Presentation Studio will not run on x64.

Overall, Presentation Studio is a a great free add-in for creating a very quick and perty presentation of your model. It’s not as comprehensive as something you get with Adobe Acrobat’s PDF Portfolio Tool in Version 9, but it’s better than some static images in an email.

What would you use it for?

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Tagged as: 3d presentation, pdf portfolio, soliworks presentation studio

  • Hi Josh,

    Do you know if it will let you use Custom Properties? I can't try it out yet, since I'm not ready to install 2009.

    Daniel
  • doesn't work from what I've tried. It's just plain ol' text.
  • tyler524
    I'm dissapointed. I downloaded it and went to install it and it wouldn't install. I then noticed it is only for Solidworks 2009. Now if I could only find some way to convince them that we need to renew our subscription.
  • Upgrading depends on a lot of factors for different companies. If your waiting for customers to upgrade first that a big setback. Otherwise, quite a few of the blogs have reviews of it that would give you some good ammo for convincing management, IT or your SolidWorks admin guy to go ahead with the upgrade.
  • tyler524
    Well we don't really have an IT department or anything of the such. We are a smaller company maybe 100-125 employees between here in the US and our other facility in France. There are only a handful of us working in the engineering department and only two of us use Solidworks. Our biggest problem at the moment is the fact that they had bought 2005 and then paid for the subscription for a couple years and then let it cancel. Now that it cancelled were looking at big fees to renew it. I keep trying to push the CEO and my engineering manager and hoping that its going to be a good christmas.
  • Oooo. Then for them to go to 09 it's something they are definitely going to have to see as cost savings or something that increases efficiency. You could do a report or presentation to show them. Keep pushing though. I htink for most companies it's going to be a benefit to move to 09.
  • Will
    tyler,
    Your not in NY are you???
    In fact -Upstate?

    The situation you describe sounds very fimilar to a company I visited a few months ago...
  • tyler524
    No, I am in Ohio. The worst part of the situation is the fact that they just switched to Solidworks in our French facility and we are trying to unify our engineering between the two companies. They just bought new systems and are running Solidworks 2009 in France while were in 2007 here so it makes sharing drawings extremely difficult.
  • Hmmmm, I can see this being a useful tool for generating content for equipment manuals based on what you have in the post Josh. You could create the fixed views of the points you need to have documented and if you missed something the person could view the model to see what was missed.
  • IT would be great for companies to include this on a CD/thumbdrive with user manuals and warranty info. I haven't seen or bought any products that provide a data on a cd beside software/hardware companies. what gives?!!
  • Josh,

    You don't need the Command Manager turned on to get the tool button. If you right click in any toolbar backround, there is a new toolbar called "Layout". That has the button you can add or place anywhere you like!
  • Thanks Mike, I turned on just about every toolbar looking for that thing. I was looking for Presentation Studio instead of Layout. duh. thanks!
  • ian
    Can you use any of the solidworks lab features in 2008?

    I'm in the process of upgrading our lab to '08 student ed. We're also gearing up for fundraising, so this plug in would be great for that!
  • I recall using some in 08, the blueprints now, but that may be independent of version. Have the students try them out!
  • The functionality of 3D PDF is amazing for customer communications. I am happy to see SWX extending the use of PDF. My only compliant is the save as 3D PDF and the use of presentation studio with moderately large assemblies crashes even my best station (in SWX2009). The VAR told me this is a known issue and is being addressed in a future service pack.
  • Aaron
    Hello,
    I've just downloaded and installed the Presentation add-in. Overall I really like this, and think it will be helpful for my organization. I am, however, having some problem seeing the preview of the different views at the bottom of the pdf. I'm using Adobe reader 9, and can see the previews of other sample .pdf's that I've downloaded, but anything I generated from SolidWorks just has blank buttons at the bottom. I've reinstalled, restarted, rebooted, and re-done everything I can think of. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.
    -Aaron
  • Mudslung
    I'm using Acrobat 9.0 Pro with the same results as Aaron, Blank Preview thumbnails at the bottom of the viewer. Guess someone got too excited about releasing this Crap before testing it. Or maybe we need some outer space graphics card like the (Limited) few that support Realview! Heres a nice feature Boys and Girls but the only way that you get to use it, is if your Mommy and Daddy pay BIG ASS Money!
  • I've got pro extended and the thumbnails look fine. it may be something that requires the full version, but if you have pro then, man, i dunno. PresStudio is beta, so I'm sure there's bugs in it. make sure your parts/assemblies are not in lightweight mode. maybe do a Ctrl-Q rebuild before creating the layout.
  • Mudslung
    Update... I figured out the "Thumbnail" problem. You must be able to use Realview, After "Modding" my G Force FX-5500 graphics card into a Quadro FX, I am now ABLE to use Realview and now I have Thumbnail images in Presentation Studio! I found the link to Modding a Graphics Card through this site, so if you want to do yours, just seek and yee shall find!

    Guess I don't have to ask "Mommy and Daddy" for BIG ASS Money now?

    Just wanted to share in case anyone is still having these issues..
  • man, super cool! I hadn't thought about that at all. Glad the soft-mod went well for you too. Isn't that just CRazY!
  • Mudslung
    Hay Josh,

    Yes... VERY Crazy indeed. What a Sweet find though, I really wanted to experience the Realview Effect, but with the Limited Support of cards I was unable to afford that luxury. Where theres a will... Theres a way. Never thought of "soft-modding" a Graphics card, Xbox Yes, but GRAPHIC CARD.... Man, I'm glad I found this site. And SolidWorks is not the only benefit as well. Now my Vray renders in Maya and Rhino are SUPERB, especially with networking 4 other Pc's here in the house.

    Patrick
    (Real name)
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