Entries Tagged 'CAD Industry News' ↓

Ben Eadie of SolidMentor recently filmed an episode with Patrick Norton at Revision3.com showing off his home built laser scanner.  Click the image above to check out the episode!

Congrats to Ben for making his first appearance on Revision3!

No, SolidWorks 2009 has NOT exploded.  But it has now “officially” burst onto the scene this week with SolidWorks posting their SolidWorks 2009 Launch site and Industry Magazines putting out stories.

The SolidWorks 2009 Launch site is action packed with at least 10 different videos posted on new features and behind the scenes happenings.  There’s also 5 new Whitepapers (which I have had NO time to read yet) posted.

In case you haven’t heard, there’s a NEW CAD magazine out called Develop3D.  CAD Industry veterans Al Dean and Martyn Day (among others) are the driving force behind it.  Their latest issue for July/August 2008 has an article on SolidWorks 2009 authored by the “slightly eccentric” Josh Mings of SolidSmack.  Go to the Develop3D site and subscribe for FREE.

Another industry publication that’s got an article on SolidWorks 2009 is the Canadian based Design Engineering magazine.  Ben Eadie of SolidMentor penned their SolidWorks 2009 Review.  Thanks for the link Ben!

Wait…there’s MORE!  Rob Rodriguez posted a GREAT interview with the 3 time SolidWorks Beta Contest winner and multiple time PhotoWorks Contest winner Lin Shaodun.  Lin has not just “eeked out” wins in the Beta Contest.  He usually wins by a LARGE margin.  Congratulations to Lin for winning the contest (AGAIN) this year and to Rob for posting the interview.

Stay tuned….more to come!

It’s time now for the third installment of my series of reviews on 3dvia.  In case you missed it, make sure you check out my first and second reviews.

This review will focus on 3dvia Shape which is one of several software applications that are part of the 3dvia site.  When you see 3dvia Shape in action (video on the 3dvia Shape page) it definitely reminds you of Google SketchUp.  I am by no means an expert user at either piece of software and will not go into the details of the differences between the two, but I think it is pretty obvious they use similar methods to construct geometry in their workspaces.

3dvia Shape is a FREE application that is available for download.  The client software does require a connection to the 3dvia site.  You are asked for a user name and password as soon as the application opens.  As far as I could tell it is required since closing the login window ends the application before it even starts.  Once you log in you are presented with an application window offering a "5 minute" tutorial building a house.  The tutorial does a good job of getting you familiar the functions of the software.  If you download 3dvia Shape, I definitely recommend checking it out. 

The user interface of 3dvia Shape is visually very appealing.  The name of each feature appears when your mouse hovers over most of the toolbar buttons.  Also included is a "tips" section at the top of the screen which shows useful information based on the stages of construction the user is at. 

Basic geometry can be created either using rectangles, circles, arcs, or lines.  You can sketch on the "floor" plane or planar faces of your existing model.  Dimensions, which can be set to both Metric and US, are automatically displayed while you are manipulating the geometry but disappear once movement stops.  Shapes are "extruded" or "cut" by using the "Push n Pull" tool.   The Manipulate tool allows you to grab model or sketch faces, vertices, and edges for movement.  "Triads" appear when this tool is activated which help control the direction of each movement.  Without the use of these controls, a shape can quickly move in unintended directions.  3dvia Shape also includes a fairly extensive amount of textures available via the "Paint" tool so you can make your models look more realistic. 

There is no "Save" button in 3dvia Shape.  Instead there is a publish button which stores your model on the 3dvia web site under "My 3dvia".  Models stored there are listed as "private" unless you choose to share it.  If you do not wish to publish a model but would like to save it locally you can close the software and select the "Later" option in the dialog box that appears prior to the software closing.  The model will be available for opening the next time you start the software. 

3dvia Shape is a probably a good tool for someone who has never used 3D modeling software in the past.  Experienced 3D CAD users (particularly those used to parametric modeling) might find it a bit frustrating due to the different modeling methods required to create some shapes and the limited tools to make precise changes.  Overall I found that the tools did exactly what they were supposed to do and could see how many 3dvia users have been able to create some very impressive models.  This application does seem to be geared more towards creating architectural structures but a quick look at the 3dvia Library shows many non-architectural models that users have created. 

As a free tool 3dvia Shape certainly delivers on putting the power of 3D in the hands of more users.  

I’ve put it off writing about this subject matter for quite some time now but with the recent announcement of yet another CAD company touting Direct Modeling, CAD 2.0, Non-History based modeling, or whatever other industry term that is out there, I thought the time was right.

Siemens announcement yesterday no doubt shook some foundations around the CAD Industry.  I’ve read articles or posts that range from “This is THE next big thing” to “It’s old news”.  So which one is it?  Or does the answer lie between the lines somewhere.  Here is my take on it.  Is Direct Modeling the next big thing?  Simply put…No.  It HAS been around for some time.  Is it an important feature set that should be looked at by all CAD companies?  YES.

Matt was correct yesterday when he said that SolidWorks has had some direct modeling functionality for some time now.  A combination of the Move Face command and Instant3D does cover many of the topics we all saw in the video yesterday.  Are those features developed to the level they should be?  No.  The Move Face command is very capable but there is no access to it via the Instant3D tools.  Its success can be very dependent on what faces you select (In particular when there are fillets present).  It is still a great tool for making tweaks and adjustments down the tree without having to understand the design intent of the sketches or worry about child dependencies.  As Josh pointed out, Instant3D does require the feature history to be there in order to make changes to a model quickly.

Even with these existing features, I would still like to see additional capabilities and improved UI functions built into SolidWorks that allows more direct editing of imported models (which of course have NO history).  You can do quite a bit with the tools they have now, but they need to be more powerful, easier to use, (especially for less experienced users) & should require LESS steps.

Will History Based Modeling be a thing of the past?

I do not agree with those who say that Direct Modeling will replace history based modeling.  I believe that combining the two methods in the correct manner IS the best solution I have seen.  I can’t tell you exactly what the correct manner will be but I’m sure the next 12 months will give us all much more insight.  We all saw some pretty impressive things yesterday but there really wasn’t much in the way of an explanation on how the direct edits were shown in the tree itself.  (Actually there was a quick view of a feature tree that shows a “Direct Edit9″ feature about 7:22 into the video.)  With that said, I really like the approach that SolidWorks and Siemens is taking with this.

As with many things in the industry, time will tell.  I do think there is something to the fact that 2 of the 4 major MCAD players have now quickly adopted some sort of marketing stance in direct modeling.  The coming months will be interesting to say the least.

Those are my thoughts….I welcome yours.

Well, its time for Chapter 2 in my definition search of 3dvia.  In case you missed it, make sure you catch the first installment of my posts on 3dvia.

This time out we are going to look into the Community and Studio sections of the site.  The Community area can be accessed by clicking on the “Community” tab at the top of the main page.  Simply put, this area is all about the registered users of the site.  You can choose to display all 3D model contributors or all users of the site.  The default list displayed is all 3D model contributors.  So far 441 users have contributed models to the site.  There is a filter pull down menu that you can use to display the users by total number of models, comments on models, models rating, and ratings on models.  Selecting the “All Users” page reveals that there are 12,169 registered users of 3dvia.  This list can be filtered by date last updated, activity, creation date, comments contribution, and name.

Selecting the “Groups” area at the top of the page takes you to the next section of the Community area.  This displays a list of groups that have been established by the users of the site.  There looks to be around 50 groups that currently exist.  The range of groups are pretty diverse.  You can find groups on airplanes, sailing, chairs, computers, avatars, & houses just to name a few.  It appears that users can become members of the various groups with the simple click of a button onscreen.  Discussions can also be created on each group home page.

The next area to look at on the Community part of the site is the “3D Tutorials” page.  Most of the tutorials shown deal with 3dvia Shape, which we will cover later.  On this part of the site I only could view three tutorials but additional content is posted in the next area that we will explore which is the “3DVIA Blog” section.  Many of the Blog entries are posted by BostonDave who runs product marketing for 3dvia.  There are also other contributors to this Blog.  There is a lot of good information here.  I was able to get a better feel for the origins of the site by checking the Blog Archive.

Does the Community aspect of the site end here?  Not quite.  Most of you I’m sure have heard of Facebook.  Maybe you have heard of it but don’t know much about it.  I’ll give you the short definition.  It is a social networking site that allows users to share links, videos, photos, & more.  What does it have to do with 3dvia?  The answer is an application called 3DCollage written by 3dvia that allows users to overlay 3D models from the 3dvia model gallery on top of your favorite pictures.  They call these pictures “3D mashups” and they can be published to your Facebook profile.  Since I have a Facebook account, I HAD to try it out.  The result was a picture of me hanging out with my buddies Patrick and Gary.  (My 8 year old thought this was hilarious.)  Even though I am NOT very experienced with Facebook, setting this image up using 3DCollage was surprisingly easy.  The only knock I had on it was there was only one direction of model rotation supported.  (This is why Gary is climbing up my sleeve and not sitting on my shoulder.)

The Studio area of the site ended up being the most “fun” in the review thus far.  This is a showcase of fully interactive 3D exp-experiences (games) built by users and community partners.  If you have a 3D game, you can submit it to this area of the site.  All in all there are 10 different 3D “games” posted.  All of the applications appear to use the 3D Life Player from Virtools (A Dassault Systemes company).  I didn’t get to play with all of them but I thought the Rollarcoaster Experience was quite fun!  I do wish that more of the featured experiences had an option to be played in English.  This is a problem I ran into with the Versailles 3D and The Toyota Auris Ice Experience.

That is all for this installment.  The next post will talk about the software that is a part of the 3dvia site.

Stay tuned…..more to come!

If you frequent ANY CAD or 3D related web sites these days you can’t help but have run across 3dvia somewhere.  I’m sure many of you have been wondering like I have what its all about.  I’ll take you along with me as I begin to find out for myself just what exactly 3Dvia is.  Over the next couple of weeks I will post my findings as I explore the different areas of the site.

OK…you still with me?  Good.  Let’s get started with the answer to the question raised in the title of this post.  What is it?  Straight from the FAQ page on the 3dvia site, it is defined as “The newest of the 6 Dassault Systèmes brands. Its mission is democratizing the usage of 3D so that everybody can use it in its everyday life, either at work or at home, through the web. Our objective is to give you the power of 3D“.  There are many other interesting tidbits on the FAQ page that I’ll leave for you to check out.  This is certainly a bold and aggressive statement.  Once you start to peel away the layers and view the many areas of the site, I becomes pretty obvious that that is exactly what Dassault is trying to do.

I have MANY questions about the site and as I explore more parts of it some of those questions are beginning to be quickly answered.  Rather than list all the questions up front, I’ll try to address them as I go along in checking out each area of the site.

I figured if I was going to really give the site a go, I should register.  So what exactly am I registering for?  First and foremost, registration is FREE.  Registering will allow you to upload models to the site along with providing a place for you to create a profile that can be viewed by other users.  This brings in account the Community aspect of the site which I will get into more a little later.

One of the first things you will probably notice when you go to the 3dvia homepage is that you can download and upload 3D models to the site.  You can also view the Top Users and a log showing Recent Activity.  Lets dive into the 3D models area first.  You can access the Model area by clicking on the “Top Models” header or click on the “Search” tab across the top of the page.

At first glance you will notice that most of the file formats that these models are available in are .3ds and .3dxml formats.  These formats are mesh based models which leads me to my first question that is beginning to be answered.  Who is the 3D model library for and what types of files can be uploaded?  A quick look at the FAQ page answers this question (Click on the figure to the left for a larger view).  One of the questions I immediately had was how this site compares to 3D ContentCentral?  It seems pretty obvious once you get into it that the 3dvia Model Gallery is more along the lines of Google’s 3D Warehouse. (It looks like Google SketchUp can write out .dae files which is supported and appears often in the 3dvia gallery.)   3D ContentCentral is still going to be the best place where you want to look for useable models that can be opened directly into SolidWorks.

Unfortunately your options for opening some of the cool models posted on 3dvia into SolidWorks are going to be limited.  Especially if you don’t have ScanTo3D which allows you to open .3ds files.  That is not exactly what I was after in looking at this but the addition of the .3dxml format to ScanTo3D would be nice for SolidWorks 2009 (Anyone from SolidWorks catch that?)

You can switch between two different players to view the models in the gallery.  One is the 3DXML Player which is a free download and the other is a 3D Life player from Virtools.  Both seem to work just fine on my machine.  It seems to be a comparable experience for you SolidWorks users who are used to working with E-Drawings.  Since I had registered, I couldn’t resist temptation to upload a model of my own to the site.  I selected a model of the cartoon character Patrick Star that I have had for almost 5 years now as the test file.  (It is available in SolidWorks format on 3D Content Central)  I saved the model as a .3DXML file out of SolidWorks. (I should also note that HOOPS, IGES, STEP, & STL files could be written out of SolidWorks for upload as well but out of concern for keeping the model colors correct and the abundance of support, I chose 3DXML.) This was the first time I had ever attempted this so I downloaded the 3DXML player to see what the model looked like.  Everything looked good aside from it orienting the model a bit differently compared to my native ISO view.  The upload was smooth and Patrick is now posted in the Model Gallery.  I must say that Patrick looks much smoother when you view him on the 3dvia site vs the 3D preview on 3D Content Central.

I’ve only scratched the surface of this site and there is much more to cover.  Next time we will explore the Community aspects of the site and venture into some of the MANY 3dvia software packages.  There are some software packages that have deeper roots into SolidWorks.

Stay tuned…..more to come!

If you have been frequenting some of the SolidWorks Blogs here lately, you can’t help but find a link back to Roopinder Tara’s CAD Insider Blog where he has been discussing the differences between the Bloggers and the members of the CAD Press.  If for some reason you’ve been living under a rock like Patrick Starfish, you should check it out.  The posts and comments left have been some of the most enjoyable Blog reading I have done in quite some time.

I’ll add a little flavor of my own to the subject.  I was fortunate enough to have been invited to SolidWorks World the last two years as a member of the press.  Both years I have met numerous members of the CAD press and I must say that each and every person I have spoken with has been very courteous and genuinly interested to hear about what I do as a Blogger.  Some of them I have even mentioned by name in my Blog posts.  The history of the CAD industry has always intrigued me and I’ve heard some really interesting stuff from some of the veterans of the CAD Press.

The way I see it you probably get more detailed technical information from the Bloggers.  With the CAD Press you get some of the technical details along with perspectives on how these new features or announcements stand in the CAD industry as a whole.  I really think the two groups complement each other very well and result in some very interesting reading!

Stay tuned….more to come!

Autodesk has sued the Open Design Alliance over the 2007 .DWG file format.  AECNews has a good article with details.

Rob Rodriguez has started an interesting discussion related to this talking about data exchange in the CAD World.  Check out Rob’s post by clicking here.

What does this mean for all the companies that are members of the ODA?  I guess only time will tell…..