Designing in SOLIDWORKS: Tutorial 3

Part 1: Rendering your F1 in Schools Car

In the previous tutorial, we taught you how to design a complete F1 in Schools car.
Now, were going to teach you how to render or colour your car so that it looks completely painted
and finished as you would expect your finished car to finally look like.
To begin with, open up the F1 in Schools car body file that you created during the previous tutorial.

Now, for rendering or colouring the

car to the desired colour, we need
to use an inbuilt add-in utility of
SolidWorks which is the
Photoview 360 utility.

First, on the SolidWorks main menu

at the top, go to Tools > Add-Ins.

Now select the check-box next to

Photoview 360

This will add Render Tools to your CommandManager.

Click on the Preview Window button to open a preview window which will display the final
rendering of the car with all the lighting effects and paint finishes in real-time.
Now, on the CommandManager, click on the Edit Appearance button.
In the property manager, click on the type of selection you want to make.
If you want to paint the entire car with one color, select part.
If you want to paint individual faces with different colours, select face.
If you want to paint individual surfaces with different colours, select surface.
If you want to paint individual bodies with different colours, select body.
If you want to paint individual features with different colours, select feature.
After this, select the areas that you wish to colour with one colour and select the
colour in the property manager and finally click on the green check mark in the
Property Manager.
Note: Unless you are painting the enitre body with one colour, you will have to select and apply each
colour separately.
See what the rendering looks like in the final preview window:

The colours above were applied in three stages:

1. Red coloured features (leaving all the other areas unselected)
2. Yello coloured features
3. White Dome
Any idea what the colour scheme of this car was inspired from?!

Part 2: Applying Decals on your F1 in Schools Car

Now, your car is fully painted and looks ready to race.
But before you do that, you will have to put up your
and your sponsors logos on the car. To do this,
SolidWorks also provides a Decal option in the
PhotoView 360 Add-in.
Simply select the edit decal option in the Render
Tools tab on the CommandManager.
Now, click on any part of the car body to define the
part on which the decal is to be applied.
Now, click on the browse button on the
PropertyManager and select an image file that you
want to use as a decal on your car.

As soon as you select the decal, SolidWorks will by default spread it across the entire car body.

To reposition your decal, in the PropertyManager, go to the

Mapping tab.
Under the mapping tab, in the mapping section, select the
mapping type as projection but change the direction of the
projection from the current view to the desired plane.
For example, if you want the logo to be visible from the top of
the car, select the ZX plane but if you want it visible from the
side, select the XY plane.

Now, resize your logo using the resizing handles in the corners of the rectangle around the decal.

To rotate the decal, simply click and hold on the yellow dot in the centre of the rectangle and move
your mouse.

Alternatively, you can simply put values for dimensions and orientation angle in the
PropertyManager window under the Size/Orientation section.

Once you are satisfied with the position of your decal, click on the green check mark in the
PropertyManager window to show the final render of the decal.