Solidworks and its curves

[Jii Dee]

I've been playing around with solidworks for a few days now. On the whole i've found it fairly intuitive but then again i have some tutorials to work through and it feels very similar to sketchup, which im pretty proficiant at.
The reason why i decided to try solidworks though is because i wasn't happy with the way Sketchup creates curves. Sketchup just doesn't like non-flat surfaces. Its another of those products that simulates a curve by using a series of lines, and if i'm going to cnc stuff then i don't want a bunch of straight line cuts on my circular sections! i want true curves damn it! So i figured i'd give Solidworks a go.
However i'm finding that solidworks too seems to form curves in this fashion.
Is it just me? or is this a default setting and theres some button i need to press somewhere to enable true mathematical curves?
Now that i think about it, is it even necessary to model in that fashion? I haven't gotten anywhere near any Cam proggies yet but i think i've seen mentioned on the forums that CAM software can either treat curves as a series of incremental x/y steps(moving x+1 then y+1 then x+2, then y+2 type of thing)or as a "true" curve.
Obviously i has to be preferable to make as accurate a part as you can in the cad stage but could one get away with letting the cam smooth out your straight-lined curve into something more fluid?, and if so how do i increase the number of lines solidworks will use to make a curve. Its simple enough to do in sketchup but as i've said; anything remotely complex in terms of curved surfaces and its limitations become obvious.

Sorry if i haven't explained this adequately as i'm not quite up on all the proper cad/cam lingo...that and its 2am, at least thats my excuse.

[JIMMY]

Solidworks will be able to give you everything you need. You probably have your quality set to low on your settings. If your quality is set to low it will look like you have a bunch of straight lines instead of a true are. Solidworks is more than capable of giving you a true arc.

[unterhaus]

the way Solidworks renders gives the impression of a batch of lines. But what it does internally is store the parameters of the curves. What you see is a rendering using a fairly fast and not photorealistic renderer. I assume you've found splines. I haven't worked my way up to 3D surfaces yet, my work hasn't ever really required them. If you ever build a large assembly with relations between parts, you'll be able to see that the whole thing is parametric, the lines are generated from more abstract geometry.

I recently did a project where I really wanted the output to look good, and I also didn't have time to work with renderworks (? or whatever their rendering product is called). The output of the main program itself really stinks appearance-wise, unless you are incredibly careful with the way you turn the part. I was very disappointed with that, it sure would be nice to be able to hit an option to the effect of "make this thing look photorealistic" without jumping through hoops.

The thing is, when you are working with the program, the rendering they do is really more than good enough, it's just that it isn't real looking. The easy way to get a good drawing is to go to line art, but that isn't what I wanted.

[Jii Dee]

This is good to know. i guess i'll charge on with the tutorials. Thanks.