Leveraging the Full Power of 3D Product Design Renderings

“A picture is worth a thousand words.” 

In terms of communication, visuals are always more powerful than words. It’s a lesson taught in first-year film classes at universities to would-be Coppolas and Spielbergs. While film school students pay to learn how to create impactful “establishing shots” and compelling close-ups, the power of images is a lesson that is nonetheless clear to many of us through everyday life. 

Across pop culture, the power of images is clear. From 60-second major league sports ads to billboards in New York City’s Times Square, many of us intuitively understand the power of visuals to convey not only an “idea” but a powerful emotion. 

Whether it is a high-performance automobile navigating rain-soaked streets at night, or the fun and carefree lifestyle enjoyed by smartphone users dancing across the screen, visuals are the way that brands convince people to purchase. 

Accelerating Marketing 

In the workplace, visuals are no less important. Indeed, 90% of all human communication is visual, whether or not we realize it. 

Before a new and innovative product can come to market, product designers and engineers must run a gauntlet of internal approvals from critical stakeholders or even prospective customers. The ability to bring an idea to life often depends on their ability to convince those audiences of the merit of their new product design renderings.

Traditionally, this process of internal review and approval has been difficult and time-consuming. 

Designers and engineers often had to first take the time and expense of creating a full prototype of their design. These users often were required to then stage an expensive and time-consuming photoshoot to convincingly “show” their product in the real-world setting. This drawn-out process gave ample opportunity for naysayers and critics to kill ideas before they were ever brought to life. Why wait for a sunny day when you could create one yourself? 

The halls of many organizations are littered with the detritus of great ideas that were killed not due to lack of merit but due to the inability of product owners to “show” the compelling nature of their concept.

Photorealistic rendering of a spring-loaded camming device.

3D Rendering in Cloud-Native CAD 

Today, Onshape Render Studio Beta changes all of this. Now with the ability to create photorealistic rendered images right in Onshape, users can more quickly and efficiently create images that they can use to share and sell their ideas. They can even view their models in whatever space they are in and edit design simultaneously with the Onshape App’s AR View mode. With this capability, users can avoid the time and expense of a traditional prototyping process, instead of translating their CAD Drawings into life-like visuals directly in the Onshape platform.

Onshape Render Studio Beta allows designers and engineers to accelerate the product development process. With the ability to create photorealistic renderings of Onshape CAD designs, users can now place their product design renderings in realistic environments that enable them to review and refine elements of their design in real time. And while every designer or engineer hopes to create a “perfect” design from the outset, the more common reality is that perfection is a result of trial and error. 

The realistic-looking environments created by Render Studio Beta allow designers and engineers to visualize their design in a real-world environment, letting them make product design rendering modifications and changes, from materials to finish and color on the fly. 

3D rendering gives creators complete control over their environments, from light emissions to materials to color. With Onshape’s Environment Library, in particular, users can harness dynamic lighting and shadow effects to produce a sense of realism.

3D rendering of landing gear assembly.

For those designers and engineers who may have used a rendering process in the past, Onshape improves efficiency enormously. 

With Render Studio Beta, Onshape Professional and Enterprise users can take advantage of world-class rendering performance from any approved, web-connected device. With cloud-native Onshape, rendering capabilities are not dependent on the processing power of the workstation being used. No expensive, dedicated workstations or high-performance GPUs are ever needed. An additional benefit to that architecture is that users can multitask – beginning a rendering and then continuing with other work while the process is completed.

Photorealistic Models

Today, with the challenges of higher customer expectations and increased competition, leading companies need to find ways to accelerate time to market. Onshape Render Studio Beta improves the ability of designers and engineers to more quickly visualize their designs, optimize those designs and share concepts with key stakeholders. This ability to create photorealistic images lets users more quickly move ideas from concept to reality, letting users accelerate time to market and delight their customers. 

At its core, Onshape’s Render Studio provides a cost-effective solution for clients looking to reduce unnecessary expenditures.