Develop3D - Technology for the Product Lifecycle

Mac-tastic mod tablet

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Holmes) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:21:00 +0000

2009 is going to see designers and software providers getting serious about using Macs; from the latest goings on at Macworld, those serious about jumping the rush have a shiny new toy to add to their list.

This high-performance tablet computer, running Mac OS X, is the latest announcement from Mac-modders Axiotron.The Modbook Pro tablet is available now for pre-order, uses the 15.4" unibody MacBook Pro as its base system.

Introduced at the expo with the help of Apple co-founder and Axiotron board member Steve Wozniak, the Modbook Pro will sport a black luster finish and aluminum construction. Its Synergy Touch screen supports both touch and pen input simultaneously, a feature Axiomatic says is not available on any other tablet, as well as 512 levels of pen pressure sensitivity.

The unit almost exactly matches the MacBook Pro's feature set, including Ethernet, two USB 2.0 ports, and Bluetooth, with up to a 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo processor and the NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT processor.

The tablet come complete with Autodesk Sketchbook Express 2009, with the option to upgrade to Sketchbook Pro, offering a litany of features ideal for Modbook users, including a streamlined tool palette, and the ability to email work without the need to leave the program.

The Modbook Pro starts at $4,999 for the new 2.4GHz Apple MacBook Pro base system, yet for customers who want to convert hardware they already own, the Modservice Pro option starts at $3,049.

Its nearly here: Objectified

noreply@blogger.com (al dean) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 22:19:00 +0000

We blogged about this while they were still filming it and I got all excited but the final movie is nearly here.

Come on, anything that features Naoko Fukasawa's wall mounted CD player for Muji as the opening shot and includes Dieter Rams sketching, Jonny Ive (when did he drop the jonathan?), and Marc Newson, for its trailer has got to be worth seeing.

www.objectifiedfilm.com

Healey Marque to be reborn with V5

noreply@blogger.com (al dean) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 10:32:00 +0000

According to Applied, UK Dassault Systemes Partner, the Healey 3000 Sports Car is to be re-born and built in the UK with the help of CATIA V5. HFI Automotive, an Anglo-American Consortium of engineers and investors has purchased the Dassault Systemes Catia V5 for use in the design and development of their new Healey 3000 sports car.

News on the latest developments with this seems to stop in late 2007, but according Applied, Healey Automobile Consultants (HAC), owners of the British sports cars brand "Healey", was purchased by HFI back in 2006. HAC was originally founded in 1955 by Donald and Geoffrey Healey. HFI's development of the new Healey 3000 is advancing with plans for their manufacturing base to be in the UK.

More details at AutoExpress and AutoCognition.

Something to think about...

noreply@blogger.com (al dean) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 20:25:00 +0000

I had the pleasure to have a meet-up with the guys at Protolabs (or Protomold or First Cut) over in Telford today. Not too long of a drive, a friendly and knowledgable team and they have a rocking service if youre looking for machined prototypes or injection moulded components.

On the way back, I drove through Ironbridge, a small village in Shropshire that, for those of us involved in design and manufacturing, holds a pretty big key to how we got here and it got me thinking. Consider this, next time you're up against a challenge, a client has asked for what seems impossible or higher improbably.

Early in the 16th century, a gentleman turned up in a smaller villiage down the valley called Coalbrookdale. A gentleman by the name of Abraham Darby I and took over an existing iron forge. Forging iron was an inaccurate, non-repeatable process and the quality of the product produced was not what you or I would expect. And somewhat dangerous - the forge Darby took over blew up a few years before he arrival). What Darby did was look at the process (which previously used charcoal), use da different material for smelting (coke), developed the Blast Furnace and refined the method until it reached pretty much what we have today. You would think that kick starting the Industrial Revolution would be enough for his family.

About 80 years later, his grandson, Abraham Darby III, undertook the job of building a bridge across the valley in which his family's business worked, a bridge designed by a local architect (who would never see it completed). What was unique about this bridge was that it took his grandfather's new process (now three generations old) to new scales and new heights. Building a cast iron bridge, simply hadn't been done before, so everything, from casting moulds, to joints (many mimic joints typically found in carpentry as these were well established) had to be developed from scratch. Few of us will be lucky to work on projects that will still be active, working and so impressively current in 200 years time.

So next time you're looking at your workload, looking at a new challenge that comes in and it seems tough; think back. Think back to a time when innovation actually mean true, honest-to-god, innovation. When you had to make things up from scratch to move forward, when advances were discussed in generations and history was made.

If you're ever in the area, visit ironbridge or the various museums (Blists Hill, and the Museum of Iron) around there. For anyone with an engineering interest, its the hot bed of so much that it can't fail to be fascinating.

PS: Interesting thing: SolidWorks have a fantastic PR lady by the name of Darby Johnson - yup, she's related. Synchronicity - its a wonderful thing.

vuuch.com: Applying social media to product development?

noreply@blogger.com (al dean) — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 23:38:00 +0000

It started with a blog comment. A name pops up you know. Guy that used to be CEO of one of the most interesting 3D tech companies in a while. They sold to Dassault last year. He disappeared shortly there after. Then he pops up again. This should be interesting.

Chris Williams was CEO of Seemage for a stint as they sold to Dassault some time ago: that product got reassessed in the DS portfolio, and is now sold through both the SolidWorks and Catia channels as 3DVIA Composer. Job Done. So what's he up to next?

The answer is Vuuch.com. What is it? I had no clue, so I did a little digging. It turns out that its a new organisation at the very embryonic stages of developing a service. What does that service do? Well, I'll tell you.

Look at the Social Media landscape. Facebook, Twitter, Brightkite, all this stuff. It didn't take long for someone to figure out that similar things can be used within the Product Development community (and I don't just mean LinkedIn) - someone had to build a service that would take those core concepts and apply them to the 3D-based professional realm. Sort of.

What social media, particularly something like Twitter, is all about is: Communication. Informal communication (that's my take on things anyway). If you get into it (I'm on there, as are a lot of other 3D alpha geeks) and use it for something other than simply uni-directional broadcasting (which is pretty common), then it quickly becomes clear that the simplicity of the service makes informal, non-linear conversation a very effective communication method. You have a conversation with someone, in small 140 character chunks, other people can see that and jump in. Sure, they could add a lot more, but the devil is in the details.. or lack thereof. So, WTF has that got to do with CAD.

Design is a team effort. Full stop. People work on a product, converse, communicate, adapt and refine. how is that communication done? In person, by phone, by email, by data management or PD... no. Wait. let's stop there. At the very formative stages of design, PDM gets in the way.

What if there was something less rigid, less formal, less time consuming that would enable discussion around a dataset, a part, an assembly, that you could just... use?

This is what vuuch.com is trying to build. Integrated into your CAD app (current documentation shows a working Pro/E plugin) that give you tools to connect to the vuuch.com server, link to a part, add discussions, comments and such. Then, whenever anyone else works with that data, that same data is available, can be swapped between team members. Because its a web-service, non-CAD users can work on with it too. Essentially, it allows a conversation to happen, without too many barriers.

It's super early days for both the company and service but they have the potential to do something interesting here. Let's see where it goes. I've got a few ideas for things they need to build into this, to make it more community led as a means to reach more people, but these are smart guys. If you're interested, they're looking for testers. Go on, you know you want to.

Other things to read:
Mark Burhop @ Siemens PLM on Microblogging in two parts one and two
Oleg Shilovitsky @ SmarTeam covers the subject a lot at the Daily PLM Think Tank
Chris @ Vuuch talks about it a lot (of course)

ART-VPS Shaderlight demo

noreply@blogger.com (al dean) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 14:26:00 +0000

This is pretty cool. ARTVPS (which stands for Advanced Render Technology - Virtual Photography Solutions - snappy eh?) has been active in the rendering and visualization business for years with its RenderDrive, Pure cards and RayBox products. These worked with 3dsmax and Maya to use custom hardware (using an ART-VPS design ray tracing chipset) to accelerate the ray tracing calculation times to mere fractions of what they would be with a standard workstation. And with some tweaks that the company also added to the host applications (such as really usable depth of field), the images that could be produced were breathtaking.

Of course, today multi-core machines, and rapidly advancing graphics card tech means that those hardware acceleration solutions have become a little dedundant. ShaderLight is ART-VPS' next core technology. As you'll see its integrated into 3dsmax, but the company has plans elsewhere. Now, its video time:

Watch and learn. See how the scene doesn't all recalc massively when you play with materials/textures and light sources - now that's slick and appears to be an interesting step on from standard progressive rendering. With Bunkspeed, Luxology and now ARTVPS back in the game, perhaps 2009 is going to be year where rendering finally gets easy.

ALSO: This looked cool too - FryRender Swap for swapping out materials in real time.

Autodesk to acquire Algor

noreply@blogger.com (al dean) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 16:14:00 +0000

News has just broken (the press release isn't even on either parties' web-site's as yet), that Autodesk is to acquire simulation specialists Algor for approximately $34 million with a view to expanding the rapidly growing base of technology to fulfill the Digital Prototyping vision. What does this bring to the deal that previous acquisitions of Solid Dynamics (Motion simulation), Moldflow (Mold filling analysis) and Plassotech (Static FEA) in recent years? The answer is multiphysics, mechanical event simulation* and fluid flow.

According to the release postsed on the Yahoo Biz, "Upon completion of the acquisition, Autodesk's current intent is to integrate Algor into its Manufacturing Solutions business unit and to continue developing and selling Algor's core product line. Autodesk plans to continue developing the Algor products with an open approach, allowing direct data exchange between Algor products and multiple computer aided design software offerings." The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009.

The worlds of FEA, CFD and other simulation technologies are rapidly merging and becoming, at least in the view of the vendors, much more integrated. While user adoption varies between industry sector, its clear that this is THE big thing for the next few years and expect to see other acquisitions from other vendors as work is done to bring simulation in closer contact with the design process.

* I hadn't come across this term before, but it seems it "combines large-scale motion and stress analysis and includes linear and nonlinear material models. The combination of motion and stress analysis considering full inertial effects enables engineers to see motion and its results, such as impact, buckling and permanent deformation."

Al Dean brings the noise to Novedge

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Corke) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 19:52:00 +0000

DEVELOP3D's very own Al Dean makes a guest appearance on the informative Novedge blog today. If you look beyond the incredibly scary picture of Al (he's not that terrifying in real life, honest), you'll find an in-depth interview carried out by Franco Folini where Al explains the rationale behind DEVELOP3D (the magazine) how we integrate online and offline content and why you'll never ever see him in a pair of white wellington boots and thermal underwear again.

Even though I've heard some of the stories before, it's certainly a fascinating read. The boy's got passion.

www.novedge.com

Z Corp 650: Test build

noreply@blogger.com (al dean) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 11:35:00 +0000

One of the best things about this job is that we get to test drive all of the latest bits of technology and for me, there's nothing more satisfying than sending off some data to an rapid prototyping vendor and waiting for that FedEx box to arrive back in the mail. if you're going to write about these machines, then surely you need to try them out, see what they can do - right?*

Anyway, today brought me a test assembly build from Z Corp, over in MA. The Z 650 is the company's high-end machine, bigger build chamber (@254 x 381 x 203 mm), fastest printing (2 to 4 layers a minute - layer size being between 0.089–0.102 mm ) and it'll build in full colour at 600 x 540 dpi. The machine also sees a new black binder introduced, so for those working with darker colours, less ink is used as it doesn't have to make up that black from the others. It also introduces the integrated clean up station that debuted with the 410 last year, so mess is reduced greatly.

So, here's what its like receiving a rapid prototype in the mail:

#1: Start in SolidWorks, create the model. you then output the data to either STL if you're working with a colourless RP process (pretty much everything else other than Z Corp). With Z Corp, it supports colour, so use it, and to do that, you need a VRML (.wrl) file. Waiting a while and then you get excited, you get the email notification that your part is being dispatched..

#2: Box arrives with glee on your behalf, absolute horror on the behalf of your significant other (if you work at home - and do excuse the state of the kitchen).

#3: This thing looks sweet. Build is very stable, finished nicely (Z Corp have been working with us long enough to know not to mess with the results - unlike some other vendors).

#4: This thing maxes out the Z650's build chamber in length, so shows what it's capable of in terms of size - this is around 13.5-14" high.

#5: Details are nicely replicated, you'd have very little finishing to do with this model before a presentation with a client. With the colour Zprints, you have to be careful with too much aggressive finishing as the coloured binder is only printed on a few mms thick 'into' the material.

But what about the colours? I was pretty surprised. Look at the first image - Black, White, Red. Not this. I spent some time going through the assembly file to remove the colour that existed on the model (as have been built), using the Appearances funcitonality in SolidWorks (itself not an easy task). Go the model in a nice state and exported the VRML file and sendspace'd it off to Z Corp - who duly built the model and sent it back. I'm in touch with the SolidWorks guys to find out what's going on with this and I'll post an update here when I get some feedback.

But if it proves anything, it proves two things:

a) the Z Corp 640 Z printer is an incredible peice of kit and can generate stunning vivid coloured models at a scale that's increasingly in demend in a very wide spread of industries (including architecture in a big way).

b) it proves that user error is inevitable. I thought I'd have know after all these years to double check the geometry I'm sending out, that it's what's needed at the other end and suits my purposes. You live and learn I guess. I thought I was going to get back a slick looking model in three colours. I got back a brightly coloured model that looks pretty cool on my desk, but doesn't quite match up with expectations in terms of appearance. That said, they do match Greg's shiny/horrid new trainers.

January's Develop3D will feature an indepth of the Z650 - so stay tuned or register if you haven't already.

*OK, so not all magazine's do it - they should...

SolidJott.com: SolidWorks Social Support Mechanism

noreply@blogger.com (al dean) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 01:25:00 +0000

A couple of issues ago, I talked about how the death of the printed manual perhaps stifles the learning process for complex 3D modelling systems (yes, they are still complex). As part of that, we talked about how those informal learning methods, those that fit into the working day, give you the insider knowledge, the tips and tricks that take you from being an average user to expert in no time at all. Alongside manuals, the other big one is peer support. When you have a group of users working in the same system, knowledge gets shared, tips and hints shouted across the office, by email even.

Now, think about that in the context of today's hyper-connected world, where people are connected together: whether it's facebook, twitter, linkedin. Is there potential for the world of technical software and 3D CAD in particular, to take advantage of the social media revolution? You see it everywhere, people helping each other out with problems, with software issues and beyond, whether behind closed doors on vendor support forums, user groups. But can this be brought into the interface to keep you focussed on the group at hand, stop you from twitching for that alt-tab keycombo?

Ben Eadie, professional Canadian, world record holder, video star and creator of solidmentor.com has just launched an interesting service, called SolidJott.com. It follows a very simple premise. Connect up SolidWorks users, provide a method for users to ask questions about issues they can't figure out and other users answer them or give a few hints. The premise is simple and from what can be seen, pretty effective. What's really interesting is that Ben's just released an add-in for SolidWorks that gives access to this resource from with the navigation pane of SolidWorks. There are plans for a few extra tools, such as tools that will capture a screenshot and post it on the site, as well as pack and go your data for passing around problems. The whole thing is pretty nice and its interesting seeing how Ben's developing it in very quick reaction to users requests and issues.

The work to integrate it into the SolidWorks UI is fascinating, but what really interests me is how this formalises a lot of the things that go on outside of a vendor's control. Yes, many users have support contracts with resellers, but there are many that don't; whether that's students or professionals that simply can't justify the support/maintenance costs. There's also the fact that its often quicker to get a response in this way than going through a reseller. There are support forums run by SolidWorks, but again, this is a much more informal thing - quick questions, quick answers. Best way I've thought of describing it is a social support mechanism for SolidWorks, without the group therapy and 12 steps; and it's fascinating.

www.solidjott.com

Lenovo W700DS - industrial design on the go

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Corke) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 17:49:00 +0000

Mobile workstations are all the same. They've all got the same processors, same graphics, same memory and hard drives, right?

Wrong. This latest one from Lenovo is different. As you'll see from the pic, it's got a 10-inch colour display which pulls out from the main 17-inch screen; it also has a built in 128 x 80mm Wacom digitizer (and pen) and an integrated Pantone colour calibrator.

This is surely every industrial designer's idea of mobile heaven - the ability to sketch out your designs on a colour accurate screen, and have all of your tool palettes set off to the side so you've got 17-inches of uninterrupted design space is pretty darn compelling. It's also a powerful beast, so things don't have to slow down when you start to formalise your design in 3D.

It looks like Santa will be bringing me one for Christmas (but unlike a puppy this will be just for Christmas as I have to give it back) so we'll be taking a closer look at Lenovo's W700 and a host of other mobile workstations in the January print/PDF edition of DEVELOP3D.

www.lenovo.com

Code it, Cut it, Ship It - Now that's ROI

noreply@blogger.com (al dean) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 23:22:00 +0000

I spent today at Delcam's HQ just a few miles from where I live (which is a distinct pleasure, there's no jetlag involved in travelling to Small Heath, Birmingham) and we went through the latest releases of both PowerMill and FeatureCAM, both CAM /NC programing products, but two very different systems, aimed at pretty different spectrums of the user community. But what struck me while going through the updates, is that CAM, often in stark constrat to 3D CAD, provides a more easily identifiable return on investment for adoption of new releases.

Take the latest releases of your workhorse CAD system. Yes, there's some new things in there. In some major packages, there have been some pretty revolutionary updates to core technology this year. That said, ask yourself, over the last, say three years, what has each release actually brought to you as a user and your company? Can you get your job done more quickly, to a better quality, to a higher degree of accuracy - to any great extent or are you still using the tools as you did 3 years ago? I'm guess it would be very hard to quantify such things in such explicit terms.

CAM, on the other hand, differs. And differs Greatly.

CAM is all about speed and quality. Speed in terms of programming the part from your client (either an internal customer or an external client) and getting the NC code ready to upload to the machine controller. the quicker you do it, the quicker you can start cutting material. When it comes to the actual NC code, the more efficient it is, the greater the surface finish you can achieve off the machine tool (which reduces hand finishing) and the quicker the job is done, out the door and on its way to the client. The more profitable your business is. If a machine shop isn't cutting metal, it's loosing money - its as cut-throat as that.

CAM is key to doing that correctly. if you cut metal, to a higher quality in a shorter space of time, its worth the investment - particularly if you can squeeze more out of your machine tool investment, which typically greatly out weight the cost of the maintenance. Take the following example:

#1: This is a perfect example showing a reasonably complex simultaneous 5-axis toolpath - you can see from the video that the table and head movement are erratic. That means cutter loading is inconsistent, there are dramatic changes speed and feed and the whole thing adds up to poor quality surface finish..

#2: This video shows the same toolpath with Azimuth smoothing applied (as found in PowerMill9). You can see that the application of the new smoothing algorithms has a dramatic effect on the tool-path and machine movement - and that will always result in a better surface finish. When you're dealing with machining, that's worth its weight in gold.

If you are a PowerMill customer, then you get this upgrade if you're on maintenance. if you use 5 axis, then your machine will last longer (due to reduced stress), your cutters will last longer and you'll get a higher quality part, in a shorter space of time. Now THAT is Return on Investment.

T-Splines 2.0: coming soon

noreply@blogger.com (al dean) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 20:10:00 +0000

Matt, CEO of T-Splines, just posted up this video, showing the next rev of the company's ultra impressive T-Splines application that builds directly into both Rhino and Maya. If you're not familiar with it, it brings sub-divisional modelling tech to those two applications. I'm not familiar with the Maya implementation, but the Rhino work is incredible. If you're looking to develop organice forms, but with precise control, then this is worth checking out.

Meanwhile in Germany... All new RP contender

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Holmes) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 15:50:00 +0000

Enough of the fancy talk from Las Vegas, the real news was coming from frosty Frankfurt where new rapid manufacturing contender Huntsman Advanced Materials unveiled the Digitalis.

The heavy piece of kit won the Euromold Gold Award 2008, a fact attributed to the team work behind the project as we were constantly reminded throughout the press briefing. What this level of grafting by the boys in Basel has achieved apart from a rather unglamorous statuette is some impressive new technology; primarily the MicroLightSwitch UV exposure system.

This new technology focusses 40,000 points of UV light from the micro-mechanical shutter system over radiation-curable resin, giving a broader spectrum of applications for rapid manufacturing, and giving benchmarks of over twice the speed on other RM/RP machines (the clearest explanation being that 40,000 points of light are better than one laser).

Huntsman already produce over 9,000 products around the world and believe there's still space to squeeze into the RP/RM market with a machine of their own, possibly a risky strategy considering the downturn of finances recently. Five years in the making might be the reason why they've chosen the midst of a recession for the release, and it's our guess that it is why it's here with only one resin as a standalone model. Engineers at the launch were quick to add that other resins, including colour, would be a definite addition, as would another machine launch next year.

As for the competition, a few faces could be seen amongst the crowd at the launch, but everyone else did their best to ignore the machine's presence - with some blatantly unfazed by the news. Regardless of their views, it will be interesting to see where the uptake will come from.

AU2008 Day 2: Notso Live*

noreply@blogger.com (al dean) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:25:00 +0000

It seems people just love watching badly recorded videos of technology products. So here's some more for you - be warned, these are the worst of the bunch in terms of motion-sickness-inducing-quality, but there's some good content there.

#1: Autodesk has been planning some form of mould design tool for many many years. Things got accelerated in the last two years that should see some interesting things coming out. Firstly, the plastics parts design tool, which feature the same core technology developed by ImpactXoft's founder, Attilio Rimoldi that was perhaps best known as Functional Design in the Catia world. This lets you create intelligent components which maintain design intent in terms of thin walls for injection moulded parts, no matter how you build the feature set that describe that geometry. Alongside this, the dev team has built a pretty full looking set of mould design tools, that runs the gamut of core/cavity design, mould stack creation, gates, runners, slides etc as well as that all important documentation. What's interesting is that this has been on Alpha test in China for quite some time, having the corners knocked off it and from vaguely recollected discussions last year, the idea was to prove it out in China before releasing it globally - looks like its coming...

#2: Showcase + Inventor: Showcase is an intriguing product. It's currently used mostly in the Automotive industry, but the potential (read: if they lower the price) is massive across a much wider spread of the 3D using spectrum. It looks like a rendering/visualisation tool. Which is correct. You can set-up the scenes, assign materials, take advantage of HDR images for scenery set-up. But the real value is in the way that you can create presentations (in terms of camera movements around your object) to focus on points of a design (saved as Snapshots), alternatives for colour schemes. With that additional functionality, it moves beyond rendering and enables design review, presentation and exploration. It seems like Autodesk are prepping an Inventor integration (presumably standalone) that lets that user community jump all over this stuff and use it. What's also interesting is that the there's recently been the addition of 'real-time' rendering too (leveraging tech from the Opticore aquisition) that adds progressive rendering ala PhotoView360 and HyperShot et al.

AND FINALLY...

A few photos from AU2008 and the Design Matters showcase of products developed using Autodesk products - this is one of my favourite parts of any user event. You connect much more with the technology when you see what its used for. Oh and the last one is from Autodesk Labs - Multitouch + Mudbox

Series of detail parts from the Shelby Cobra GT500

Sweet Architectural Model - San Francisco's Cathedral of Light

Hollow body Surfboard from 42 Surfboards: Built using sustainably harvested wood and designed in Inventor.

These two show the Super Bee concept car by Chrysler. It was a lovely concept model, but I don't think you can beat the original Coronet Super Bee.

Love that they reused the same iconic graphic

This is pretty cool - HP TouchSmart machine + Autodesk Mudbox. This machine is $1600 + has fully functional touchscreen interaction capability.

* I left AU this morning and I'm now firmly ensconced in Exton, Pennsylvania, seeing the Femap team at Siemens PLM

Live from AU2008: Day 2: WOW

noreply@blogger.com (al dean) — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:57:00 +0000

Yesterday I showed you some pics from the keynote sessions at Autodesk University. Today I've got some really grainy, shakey* videos of the new technology that the company showed off during the Manufacturing specific Keynote this very morning.

#1: This stuff looks absolutely incredible. Honestly. I sat there, open mouthed, in shear, awe of what this product looks to be shaping up into. It hasn't got a name, there's no confirmed release date. But this HAS to come to market. Things to look out for are the slick sketching interface for concept work, the way curves are accurate, how you can set up mirror planes, deform portions of sketches. The refinement interface method for curve sketching is amazing as is how it interprets view, your input and creates 3D networks. And the last point. It's running on a Mac. Natively. I think Autodesk just made the best decision they've made in many many years.

#2: Next up is the 'possible' future Inventor user interface. Things to look out for are the new UI, the direct editing of geometry, the marking/radial menus. Things are shaping up nicely from first looks. There's going to be a tech preview available soon - more details @ www.inventorfusion.com

#3: Finally, some forthcoming technology for creating Technical Illustrations and Publications directly within Inventor. Natively in the interface, no external applications, set-up explodes, all that good stuff and create the view/presentation style you want. Then publish it, either statically as images or digitally and interactively.

*come on, I've been in Las Vegas since Sunday peeps

AU2008: Future Tech and the next Inventor UI?

noreply@blogger.com (al dean) — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 02:27:00 +0000

Experts, Like you - AU2008's strap line - loving the branding scheme.

Autodesk are hosting their huge, annual user event at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas this week. As with all such events, things kick off with Keynotes from the executives and a special guest. For AU2008, this meant CEO Carl Bass, CTO (that's Chief Technical Officer to you, punk) took the stage with Tom Kelley, General Manager of IDEO. Kelley gave a very foreshorten speech based on his book, "the Ten Faces of Innovation", combined with Bass' empassioned whistlestop tour through how Autodesk products are being used to enable innovative design, meant that Jeff Kowalski took the stage to show off some of the future technology that the company is working on. Among the many things shown, a few things lept out.

For those Inventor users out there, a chunk of modelling technology was shown that 'might' be the future look and feel of Inventor - the video shown was cropped out so you can't tell what the application was, but it's pretty clear where this is headed.

What we can see here is a stripped back ui, a feature tree that's integrated into the modelling window and some telling geometry manipulation. Whether its Direct Editing, Sync Tech, the 3D design world is going ape for the ability to directly manipulate geometry - this shows this working inside an Autodesk product - an intriguing thought.

Here you can see Marking Menu (something that Alias mastered years ago) being used to extend the operations available at the cursor, on the model and ready to go when you need them.

Secondly, Kowalski offering the thought that we should not think about what we can do with the computing technology now available (which he stated is currently being vastly unused due to legacy code issues across the IT industry). This image shows a concept of having a multi-core workstation or perahps across a cloud, running multiple simulation analyses. What's displayed appears to be a chart showing results from design optimisation runs, displayed as a strength vs. weight chart, with live previews of FEA results.

The last was something I thought was very cool indeed. It showed a very sparse sketching interface, with tools that interpret your inputs to create not only explicit sketch strokes, but also to create smooth splines. That's impressive alone, but the demo went further to show how that same workflow and data could then be flipped into a 3D environment and the same sketching-style inputs could be used to generate surfaces (we don't have an image of that just yet). Looks a lot like this:

ILoveSketch from Seok-Hyung Bae on Vimeo.

Final thing isn't particularly new (SolidWorks did it a while ago), and the idea of online rapid prototype order certainly isn't, but Autodesk has signed up with Z Corp (who in turn have created the Zprint service in partnership with QuickParts.com) and Stratasys (presumably using its RedEye bureau to enable print and delivery)to offer a direct link between AutoCAD and Rapid Prototyping service providers. Available from a File/Menu pick, the tools convert your 3D AutoCAD data to STL and communicate it with the chosen vendor.

This whole bike was built on Stratasys's FDM machines

Details are sketchy at the moment, but its due to be delivered with the next Bonus Pack (the goodies provided to Subscription customers). No word yet of whether or not this is going to roll out to Inventor and Revit, but its a smart move, for both Autodesk and the service providers involved.

NOTE: Autodesk went to great lengths to ensure that we all understood that what's shown here is based on technology in development and maybe not even make it to final products and that attendees shouldn't base purchasing decisions on the back of what was shown. And you should do the same.

But having watched this, it would be a damn shame if it doesn't.

Modelling moves into the mainstream

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Holmes) — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 11:20:00 +0000

Online open 3D print site Shapeways has been around for a few months now, but has now added its own Creator engine, allowing anyone to go online to design, model and print.

The latest step towards making 3D design more mainstream, Shapeways, the offspring of Philips Research sponsoring bills itself as 'the next generation of consumer co-creation'. It joins a number of sites, including the impressive laser-cutting based Ponoko, that offer anyone the chance to grab their mouse and create anything onscreen to be built and shipped to them.

CMO of Shapeway Jochem de Boer, said:"In today's world, consumers are universally less and less satisfied with the choice that the usual shops offer. Instead, they are looking for ways to reflect their personal identity in the objects that they choose to have around them."

The sites gallery shows this clearly, with the greatest uptake beginning to produce seasonal items; Christmas Tree decorations, Nativity scene candle holders and snowmen ornaments hoard the pages and fill the niche of the personal gift, with the benefit of having someone else make it and having a 10-day shipping period.

3D design battled out to the death*

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Holmes) — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 10:39:00 +0000

I might be missing out on the weather, the casinos, the showgirls and something called Autodesk University in Las Vegas next week, but the AU Design Slam by the guys behind Cut&Paste is something I'd really have loved to have seen.

The live on-stage design competition is going to be the first to feature 3D design, with teams hacking out designs against the clock using Autodesk Maya, AliasStudio, SketchBook Pro, and Revit Architecture software.

20 minute rounds mean competitors are pushed to use their wits and showmanship to entertain the crowds as their progress is projected in real-time onto massive screens.

In an interview in the build-up to AU, Cut&Paste executive director John Fiorelli, said: "It's a live battle between industrial designers and between architects, it's very similar to the digital design series we do for graphic designers around the world. We're working with Autodesk University to bring it to industrial design and architecture for the first time this year.

"The idea is to do in 3D what we do in 2D: Give people a chance to see what the creative process is like; give people a chance to see what industrial designers and architects do in real-time," explained John. "In essence the show is pretty straightforward. We put designers on stage, we give them a theme or a brief and they create work alive in front of your very eyes on LCD projectors. You can watch every brushstroke, every mistake, every scratch-out, every revision, and it gives you the chance to see what people do using Autodesk tools."

The design briefs are issued to contestants a week or so in advance to allow for concepts to begin developing, but organisers throw in extra elements just before the battle begins, adding a bit more spice to the events.

In case you're wondering where I'll be while the rest of the D3D team apply their factor 30, bare their pale flesh, and delve into the 3D battles in Vegas; I'll be reporting back from deepest-winter Frankfurt. Chilling.

*might not constitute actual death

Autodesk does Apple...

noreply@blogger.com (al dean) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 15:45:00 +0000

It seems like its a good day for looking at how different organizations are spreading the word. If these are old, my apologies, but I hadn't come across them before. if imitation is the sincerest of
flattery then Autodesk just LOVE Apple.

"here's red. or not so red"

Here's how Hyphen Design use Showcase:

How DS could learn from SolidWorks

noreply@blogger.com (al dean) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:58:00 +0000

The comparison between the post below and this one couldn't be greater. I was just looking to see if the Discovery Channel had confirmed a UK air date for its new Prototype This show when I came across this little nugget (its via AOL, because the Discovery Channel web-site is doing wonky things with video at the moment - the original discovery channel link).

I don't know if SolidWorks pay for the position of the product in these shows, I kind of hope not. But, when all is said and done, it doesn't matter if they did. What matters is that it's through shows like this that we're going to build the next generation of designers, of engineers. It has to be shown to be the fascinating, challenging career that it is. The passion that the majority of people involved in developing products feel has to be communicated and the way to do that is through inspiration and yup, the plain old fact that it has to look cool.

PS: there's a good one on 3D printing..

Catia V6R2009x: it does stuff

noreply@blogger.com (al dean) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 12:03:00 +0000

Design team interaction is something that DS are taking to new levels.

Dassault Systemes has launched Catia V6R2009x at its annual European Catia Forum event at Disneyland Paris. As ever, the press release is an absolute doozie. When you spend your time reading these things, getting anything from DS is always a joy. Why? Because the company's shear inability to actually tell you what they mean is always fascinating thing to work with. Take this paragraph:

As with the previous release of V6, Release 2009x is designed to extend the value of customers' existing PLM assets. Dassault Systemes continues to develop and make available transition scenarios for its varied user base, including customers with mixed DS and non-DS applications. Support for collaborative design scenarios between V4/V5 and V6 enables gradual adoption of V6 for an OEM and its supply chain. Further, DS plans additional releases of its popular V5 line of solutions, such as the recently announced V5R19, whose functionality enhancements are synchronized with and available in V6R2009x.

What I think they're trying to say is:

With V6R2009x, you can do more with your data. If you're using V4 or V6, then there are tools to move data to V6 (the use of transition is telling - it means its a one way move, not bi-directional). If you mix and match data (such as Catia and something else), then this is also possible. They're not going to discontinue V5 and have a new release out now called V5R19.

Dassault have some truly breathtaking technology and products, and as you dig into the web-site that details all the advances made in the R2009x release of V6, that becomes more and more apparent.

The real time rendering looks incredible, the ability to work interactively on your live data, with geographically dispersed design teams, to inspect data visual and gain a meaningful idea of how your product is progressing (using the 3Dlive tools) are all ahead of the game.

Why Dassault can't manage to communicate that in a simple press release baffles me. Baffles me entirely.

nVidia launches 4GB beast

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Corke) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:11:00 +0000

Nvidia has again upped the ante in the professional graphics sector with the launch of a new monster of a board, which is likely to set you back around £2,000.

With 4GB RAM, the ultra high-end Quadro FX 5800 has the biggest amount of memory on any graphics card, doubling the previous 2GB record held by AMD's ATI FireGL V8650. However, this amount of memory and the high-level performance that this card boasts, is only likely to appeal to a small proportion of users, with nVidia touting the medical imaging, oil and gas, and automotive styling sectors, as key markets. Additional interest is likely to come from high-end CAD and design visualisation users with products such as NX and 3ds Max, particularly if these companies need one or two top-end workstations to complement their mid-range machines.

Built using the nVidia's parallel CUDA architecture, the Quadro FX 5800 is also set to play a key role in the company's drive to move complex computational problems away from the CPU and onto the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit).

While nVidia has done much to promote this technology, which is specific to nVidia hardware, little progress has been made in the mainstream CAE sector, with the majority of developments coming in the more niche areas of science and finance.

One development that should help bring CUDA more into the mainstream, is the launch of nVidia's new Quadro CX card, which is a dedicated graphics accelerator for Adobe Creative Suite 4. With the Quadro CX, CUDA is used to encode H.264 videos in Adobe Premiere at what is claimed to be lightning-fast speeds. The card also powers real time image manipulation in Photoshop for the first time, though this feature is actually supported by all OpenGL 2.0 compliant graphics cards.

While the £1,000+ price tag is likely to put off all but the most power hungry users of Creative Suite, nVidia Quadro supplier, PNY, told DEVELOP3D that this card would also deliver excellent performance in 3D CAD/DCC applications. This could make it an attractive proposition for design visualisation specialists who use Photoshop and Premiere alongside products such as 3ds Max.

At the other end of the spectrum, nVidia's Quadro business is also concentrating on the lower end of the market with the launch of the Quadro FX 470, the company's first integrated professional motherboard GPU, and Quadro FX 370 Low Profile (LP), an entry-level Quadro graphics board for small form factor systems. While Nvidia has not yet signed up any of the major workstation OEMs for the Quadro FX 370 LP and Quadro FX 470, specialist workstation manufacturer CAD2 told DEVELOP3D that it was currently investigating the new technologies and hoped to be able to offer small form factor workstations in the New Year.

www.nvidia.com