Limit on # of Lights

Why is there a limit on the # of lights that you can have on at anyone point in time in a Part/Assembly file? Is there a work around in SW or am I to export it to say Lightwave or 3DS and start in that direction?

T.I.A.

Reply to
Arthur Y-S
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Good question. Why!?

In Rhino and LightWave and most likely 3DSMAX, you can have unlimited light sources.

More subscription $ and next release promises.... = more revenue!!

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Arthur Y-S wrote:

Reply to
Paul Salvador

I was told at SolidWorks World (when I asked this question) that the light limit is directly related to an open GL limitation. Sounded like a round about answer to me.

Reply to
Rob Rodriguez

Yep, forgot about OpenGL being limited to showing only 8 light sources "at once", so that answers Arthurs question.

But, why does SW limit themselves to only 8 lights sources?

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Rob Rodriguez wrote:

Reply to
Paul Salvador

Because!!! OpenGL sounds cool. ;^)

Corey

Reply to
Corey Scheich

Yes, SWX should change to Phigs! Phigs Rulez!!!!!!

Reply to
Brian Bahr

So tell em again why we are using open GL, and not what some of those other programs are using to get more than 8 lights? I mean I am sure that SW must have a good reason for going that route

Reply to
Arthur Y-S

Brain,

Don't think it's ported to windows. In fact, the last time I even used a system with Phigs was in 1994. It was an RS6000 running AIX (yuk). I remember installing Gra-Phigs on these IBM boxes, took up allot of disk space.

Does anyone even use it anymore ???

Mark

Reply to
MM

the PHIGS standard was never updated to include texture mapping among other modern features that it is missing. I belive its been replaced with the equally worthless PEX on most X servers. GL is used because it runs on everything now, *NIX, win32, macintrash, etc...

-=BAHR=-

Reply to
Brian Bahr

-PREEMPTIVE RESPONSE-

I do realize PEX is actualy short for (P)HIGS (E)xtension to mit-(X) so that PHIGS is PEX, I just didnt think about it before posting :)

Reply to
Brian Bahr

-PREEMPTIVE RESPONSE-

I do realize PEX is actualy short for (P)HIGS (E)xtension to mit-(X) so that PHIGS is PEX, I just didnt think about it before posting :)

Reply to
Brian Bahr

OpenGL is open API so it is not directly related to any operating system or any hardware (graphics cards). Using OpenGL in your software is free. OS and graphic card suppliers are free to decide whether or not to support OpenGL API. One could say that OpenGL is a kind of agreement; if you write your application using OpenGL, your application *should* work on most hardware platforms. (As we SW users well know, some graphics cards do not support OpenGL well, ie. their OpenGL implementation is poor.)

By using OpenGL it should be *lot* easier to port the application to different operating systems (like Linux) and hardware platforms (like cell phones :-P). For example, if SW would use DirectX instead, there would be absolutely no hope for seeing SW in Linux in the future, since DirectX is Wyndowz stuff. Now it is at least theoretically possible, yet unlikely.

-h-

Reply to
Heikki Leivo

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