pic: Visible AM Shifter

[Tom Ore]

I used machined steel for the gears, blue tinted glass for the plates, black glossy plastic for the encoder, some parts were chrome. I use white glossy plastic for the walls, celing and floor. They have lots of material choices that look good. (One thing I found was that too much shiny stuff doesn't work - I tried chrome plating on everything once and it just didn't look good.)

Getting the lighting to look good is probably the trickiest part. Run some draft renders to get it close but you'll probably have to do a few high quality renders to get what you want.

I haven't use Solidworks so I can't comment on it's rendering capabilities. However, it is easy to import step files into Creo to try rendering. I've heard that PTC is going to release the next version to FIRST soon so you may want to wait for that.

I built the chain model myself - it was a bit of manual work. PTC has a UDF for chains available but I haven't tried it yet.

EDIT: Also, the gear teeth were modelled using the spreadsheet I posted a few months back. (I discovered a minor bug that keeps it from working correctly - everyone who downloaded it must have been too polite to complain.)