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Regarding your first comment: You are absolutely correct. Surfacing is really not talked about enough. I deal with surfacing quite often in my work and feel that articles talking about surfacing techniques or features need to be REALLY detailed to make sense to most users. The reason you haven’t seen much from me on this is a lack of time to produce it. I’m hoping to get some stuff out there soon that would be helpful.

I have some great news for you. Matt Lombard is currently working on a Surfacing Book for SolidWorks. With Matt’s experience in surfacing and the success of the SolidWorks 2007 Bible, it is sure to be a hit. As far as I know, this will be the first Surfacing Book for SolidWorks ever written. Stay tuned to Matt’s Blog http://dezignstuff.com/blog/ for more on the book in the future.

I’m not so sure I agree with your comment that Rhino, VX, and others “crushes” SolidWorks surfacing capabilities. I think the packages in question generate most of their surfaces in similar fashions as SolidWorks (Loft, Sweep, Boundary, Patch, etc.) Where packages like Rhino offer more flexibility to me is in the ability to move controls points of a model on the fly to change the shape. This can be both very powerful and also very dangerous if you don’t move the right points. Nevertheless, it is something I would really like to see in SolidWorks one day. The lack of parametrics in Rhino and others as compared to SolidWorks is a subject that has really been talked about quite a bit in the industry lately. I’ll discuss some thoughts on that a little later. It obviously is a big difference between the packages and in some cases I believe can be better.

From your second post: The jury is still out on how the purchase of ICEM by Dassault will affect SolidWorks. I personally wouldn’t expect to see much interaction between the two. I think I remember hearing that ICEM is a pretty expensive package. Now will some of the technology make its way into new SolidWorks features? Time will tell.

Is CB Model Pro what SolidWorks needs in the form of surfacing tools? In short, I don’t think so in its current form. I’ve asked the folks at SolidWorks if some of the technology in CB could be used in SolidWorks and the answer was “No” due to the differences in the way the internal math is generated. Will some of the modeling concepts make it? I would love to see it. What I really like about CB Model Pro is that you can radically change shapes with just a few mouse clicks. It would have to be implemented differently I think in a professional CAD tool. I may very well attempt to use CB Model Pro in the future for some concept work if the right project comes along.

You have posted some great comments. Keep them coming and thanks for reading.

Best Regards,

Ricky Jordan

Regarding your first comment: You are absolutely correct. Surfacing is really not talked about enough. I deal with surfacing quite often in my work and feel that articles talking about surfacing techniques or features need to be REALLY detailed to make sense to most users. The reason you haven't seen much from me on this is a lack of time to produce it. I'm hoping to get some stuff out there soon that would be helpful.

I have some great news for you. Matt Lombard is currently working on a Surfacing Book for SolidWorks. With Matt's experience in surfacing and the success of the SolidWorks 2007 Bible, it is sure to be a hit. As far as I know, this will be the first Surfacing Book for SolidWorks ever written. Stay tuned to Matt's Blog http://dezignstuff.com/blog/ for more on the book in the future.

I'm not so sure I agree with your comment that Rhino, VX, and others “crushes” SolidWorks surfacing capabilities. I think the packages in question generate most of their surfaces in similar fashions as SolidWorks (Loft, Sweep, Boundary, Patch, etc.) Where packages like Rhino offer more flexibility to me is in the ability to move controls points of a model on the fly to change the shape. This can be both very powerful and also very dangerous if you don't move the right points. Nevertheless, it is something I would really like to see in SolidWorks one day. The lack of parametrics in Rhino and others as compared to SolidWorks is a subject that has really been talked about quite a bit in the industry lately. I'll discuss some thoughts on that a little later. It obviously is a big difference between the packages and in some cases I believe can be better.

From your second post: The jury is still out on how the purchase of ICEM by Dassault will affect SolidWorks. I personally wouldn’t expect to see much interaction between the two. I think I remember hearing that ICEM is a pretty expensive package. Now will some of the technology make its way into new SolidWorks features? Time will tell.

Is CB Model Pro what SolidWorks needs in the form of surfacing tools? In short, I don’t think so in its current form. I’ve asked the folks at SolidWorks if some of the technology in CB could be used in SolidWorks and the answer was “No” due to the differences in the way the internal math is generated. Will some of the modeling concepts make it? I would love to see it. What I really like about CB Model Pro is that you can radically change shapes with just a few mouse clicks. It would have to be implemented differently I think in a professional CAD tool. I may very well attempt to use CB Model Pro in the future for some concept work if the right project comes along.

You have posted some great comments. Keep them coming and thanks for reading.

Best Regards,

Ricky Jordan

I see quite a few blogs out there on AutoCad/Alias and ICEM. I am sure that no part of ICEM will make its way into the SolidWorks platform! I am not sure that CB PRO is what SolidWorks needs in the form of surfacing tools? Personally, I would like to see SolidWorks buy somebody like Rhino (which they could buy for a song and a dance) and incorporate the product directly into SolidWorks. WOW! Would not that be nice? For now, we can just keeping wishing!

Doug

I see quite a few blogs out there on AutoCad/Alias and ICEM. I am sure that no part of ICEM will make its way into the SolidWorks platform! I am not sure that CB PRO is what SolidWorks needs in the form of surfacing tools? Personally, I would like to see SolidWorks buy somebody like Rhino (which they could buy for a song and a dance) and incorporate the product directly into SolidWorks. WOW! Would not that be nice? For now, we can just keeping wishing!

Doug

It seems that Surfacing is hardly ever spoken/written about? For some of us, surfacing capabilities are very important. I must say, SolidWorks has a long way to go on improving their surfacing capabilities. Look at Rhino, VX and others. Their surfacing “crushes” SolidWorks! Would like to hear more about surfacing and would be very interested in knowing what future plans SolidWorks has for surfacing?

Regards,

Doug

It seems that Surfacing is hardly ever spoken/written about? For some of us, surfacing capabilities are very important. I must say, SolidWorks has a long way to go on improving their surfacing capabilities. Look at Rhino, VX and others. Their surfacing “crushes” SolidWorks! Would like to hear more about surfacing and would be very interested in knowing what future plans SolidWorks has for surfacing?

Regards,

Doug