Rendering Software for Solidworks

Bunkspeed and Keyshot are the offspring of when Hypershot split in twain a few years ago and are more or less the same product (I haven’t used the SW16 integrated version of Bunkspeed, but from their site it doesn’t look like it’s changed much, if at all, in terms of quality.) If you need better quality than either of those, look at Vray or Maxwell. There is a lot more time involved in creating materials and lighting environments, and you’ll have to import your SW models into another program (for a long time I ran everything through Vray for Rhino), but the potential for photoreal renderings is much higher.

My personal opinion is that Bunkspeed and Hypershot offer the best combination of speed and quality. When I ran Vray I would end up with some stunning renderings, but the amount of time I had to spend tweaking my materials and environments made it too cumbersome for regular studio work. I can get a dozen 7-out-of-10 renderings from Bunkpseed in the time it takes me to get one 9-out-of-10 from Vray.