NOVEDGE blog

Vectorworks Trial Download Now Available at Novedge

If you always wanted to try Nemetschek Vectorworks but never found a trial demo available I have great news for you: we now have the free trial available at Novedge!

we now have the free Vectorworks trial available at Novedge!

Vectorworks is a high quality professional design product very popular with architects, landscape designers, and interior designers. If you are in any of these professions I think you will really like what Vectorworks can do for you and the trial will be well worth your while.

You can download your free Vectorworks trial, Win version or Mac version, now!

Cristiano Sacchi

Interview with Lorenzo Puleo, CEO and Founder of Kinemac

Lorenzo Puleo is one of the many creative people who fell in love with Mac. However Lorenzo didn't stop at the user level as most Mac fans do, he went on to conceive a new product and created a company around it. That company shares the name of its main product and is called Kinemac (website).
Kinemac is an easy to use real time animation software for the Mac platform. It combines the ease-of-use typical of so many Mac applications with the power of a professional tool. Novedge is a proud reseller of Kinemac since 2008. I asked Lorenzo to share with us his story and vision. Here is the interview.

Lorenzo can you tell us a bit about yourself and your company?

my greatest dream: creating a 3D animation for the Mac users

I am originally architect migrated to the informatics in 1996. Kinemac is a company I have founded to realize my greatest dream: creating a 3D animation software for the Mac users community. And looking at the results, we succeeded.

The Mac platform is the favorite of creative people. Can you help us understand why?

Mac is not just a computer, it’s a lifestyle

Mac is not just a computer, it’s a lifestyle, a philosophy which perfectly joins math and art. Left brain and right brain think differently. Mac, introducing an intuitive approach to the schematic (but powerful) world of the math, merges them together. That, I suppose, is the secret of the success of the Mac platform in the creative area.

Video and animation are now mainstream on the Internet, an area inundated with amateurs. How much room is there for serious professionals?

to be a pro you need to study more than just being creative

I wouldn’t mix holy and profane. There is an amateurs’ world which could easily find a land on the internet. There is a professional world which daily needs professional tools and skilled artists. I think they speak different languages. I recall these lyrics from the US3 group: “Different rhythm, different people”. I think that professional works like this one from the Tronic Studio can never be put together with amateurs’ works. To be professional you need to study more than being just creative. Furthermore you need powerful tools too. Amateurs could be successful, make a lot of money and get famous too, but this doesn’t mean they are pro. Surely there are exceptions.

Who is your typical user of Kinemac? How does he or she use the program?

Kinemac is in between the consumer and the professional world

We gather users from the pro-sumer world. This means that Kinemac is in between the consumer and the professional world. While offering professional results it can be easily learnt and used by professional and non professional users. We have different profiles of users, we have beginners, single video-artists, small post-production companies, schools and universities, research labs and big companies as international TVs and post-production companies. We have conquered many big names in these last areas, but as you know well, we can’t mention any of them.

What is your strategy for raising awareness of your product and the benefits that come from using it?

Kinemac is one of the most popular 3D Real Time Animation software for MacOS X

We have spread the word of Kinemac in many ways, from exhibiting at the MacWorld SF to releasing articles, interviews, and tutorials. Lately we have granted our product in special bundles which have had a great impact on the Mac community. Today we can surely say that Kinemac is one of the most popular 3D Real Time Animation software for Mac OS X. And everybody loves it. As far as the educational world, we have successfully reached a great goal. We apply special discounts to schools and universities and in change, spontaneously, we get a lot of precious feedback which help us to improve our product in an impressive way.

The new generation browsers will implement video as a native type of data, in the the same way as images and text. What could be the impact of such an important change for video and animation producers and consumers?

Surely the demand of tools to produce video will grow largely. We expect to grow as well. And we are ready for the event. But the day the browsers will implement a standard 3D engine is still far. Let’s see what the future will bring.

What is the geographical distribution of your business and how different are the European and American markets?

we have clients all over the world

We mostly sell over the Internet, so we have clients all over the world. This is the way we look at the market: as one nation.
It could be surprising, but the clients have all the same requirements, no matter the country they live. And this sounds promising.

I would like to thank Lorenzo for taking the time to answer my questions. If you have any questions for Lorenzo or for Novedge, please leave a comment below and we will be glad to answer.

Franco Folini

Kinemac Video Tutorials
Kinemac products are available from Novedge

Who are the Rhino Users? A Poll on RhinoJungle Gives Us Some Answers

I'd like to share with you some more results from a recent poll we did on RhinoJungle, the online Rhino 3D users community. The results will give us a better picture not only of the RhinoJungle community, but also of the average Rhino users. I'm not going to throw a bunch of numbers to you, instead I'll put it in happy colored graphs.

According to the poll, the average member of the RhinoJungle community is a male in between 26-35 years old. He is a designer and he is using Rhino 3D and AutoCAD the most. He found the community through the Novedge website, and he appreciates the videos and forum the most. Unfortunately we don't know what kind of car he drives or if he has a Golden Retriever, but we're glad to know our members a little bit better. Do you recognize yourself in the description as given above? Here you can find all the results, so you can make up a profile yourself.

By the way, we are running a new contest on RhinoJungle! The poll wasn't only intended to know our members better, but even more to get feedback about the functioning of the community. Based on that, we're having a contest where you can design a new banner to replace the one we're displaying now on the top of each page of RhinoJungle website (apparently some of our members don't like that banner too much). The lucky guy or girl will win a copy of the book 'Inside Rhinoceros' by Ron K. C. Cheng and of course will get eternal glory on the community. So check out RhinoJungle.com, sign up if you're not a member yet and get out your creative skills!

Mirjam Hart

Rhino and Autodesk Inventor Are Becoming Good Friends

Rhino 3D is not the minor CAD system many CAD companies were used to think

The Rhino community could not be ignored anymore! Rhino 3D is not the minor CAD system many CAD companies were used to think. Over the years the community of Rhino users has become larger and more influential with several Rhino designers holding key positions inside design and manufacturing companies of all sizes. Ignoring Rhino and his users is not anymore an option, even for a large software manufacturer such as Autodesk.

Autodesk announcement recognizes the key role Rhino is playing in the mechanical, industrial, and architectural design

Indeed, just a couple of days ago Autodesk announced the release of a "beta version" (they like to call it "technology preview") for an Inventor plug-in to read the Rhino (.3dm) file format. Technically speaking this is not a major accomplishment. The Rhino file format is open and fully documented. The software to read 3dm files is provided free of charge on the openNURBS website. The Autodesk announcement recognizes the key role Rhino is playing in the mechanical, industrial, and architectural design. OpenNURBS (.3dm) is now a file format that CAD companies must be supported in order to retain existing customers or to acquire new ones. The new Inventor plug-in "technology preview" can be downloaded from the Novedge website. If you are an Inventor user you should definitely try it.

Autodesk page dedicated to the Rhino importer for Inventor says, "This technology preview gives you more flexibility when creating designs with vendor or customer data by allowing you to directly import Rhino files into Autodesk Inventor. This translator reads Rhino files(*.3dm) bringing solids, surfaces, wires, and points into Autodesk Inventor to be directly utilized while modeling. Being able to import directly from Rhino files eliminates the need to convert the Rhino data to make it usable in your projects."

the next step should be to return Rhino the favor by documenting the Inventor file format

Autodesk is making a step in the right direction by solving a real problem for his Inventor users. The next step should be to return Rhino the favor by documenting the Inventor file format or by providing an easy way to export an Inventor model as Rhino file, as suggested by Evan Yares on a comment to the Ralph Grabowski blog.

Franco Folini

Vectorworks 2009 Viewer Makes Architects' Life Easier!

in order to view and print a Vectorworks file you don't need a Vectorworks license

People at Nemetschek, the makers of Vectorworks, have a little secret I would like to reveal to you: in order to view a Vectorworks model or drawing you neither need to own a Vectorworks license, nor to convert your files into some data exchange format. You only need to download a copy of the free Vectorworks 2009 Viewer, and have it installed on your or your clients' computers.

you can easily set up a collaboration process without having to worry about budget constraints

The Vectorworks 2009 Viewer can open any file (.mcd and .vwx) created with several versions of your favorite CAD system including 9, 10, 11, 12, 2008, and obviously the latest 2009 (with all the enhancements of the Service Pack 4). Using this free tool you can easily set up a collaboration process with your clients without having to worry about budget constraints or loss of information due to data conversion. Simply send them your Vectorworks files with a link to the Vectorworks 2009 Viewer download to let them open, explore, and print your 3D models and 2D drawings.

Now that you know this little secret you can go on the Novedge website and download a copy of the Vectorworks 2009 Viewer for your PC or Mac. And the the best part is you are not bound to keep this secret. Tell all your colleagues about it!

Franco Folini

Interview with Al Whatmough, CEO and Founder of InspirTech

A few major trends are shaping the balance between classroom training and online/DVD self-training. The first trend is the gradual decrease of CAD system prices. It used to be normal to pay a few thousand dollars for a training class. It is now perceived as unfair to have to pay as much or even more for training as for a full CAD license. CAD systems are gradually getting easier to use and require less training. Another important trend affecting the way people use training is that CAD users love to almost instantly access training as they find a problem or an unknown feature. Online training as well DVDs are now available 24/7 to provide answers to problems as quickly as possible. One of the major players in the CAD training field is a company called InspirTech, which offers a good selection of training DVDs for SolidWorks and MasterCAM. I asked InspirTech's CEO Al Whatmough a few questions to find out more about this new and promising evolution in CAD training. Here is the interview.

Al can you tell us a bit about yourself and your company?

while teaching I found how much I enjoyed to motivate and reach each individual learner

By all means, I started my career as a machinist in a university machine shop where we made models of buildings and bridges for wind tunnel tests, as well as various lab setups for the university. While at the university, I became proficient designing models in SolidWorks and making them on CNC and rapid prototyping machines. Next, I moved on to teaching Design and Machine shop at the high school level, were I had the chance to inspire kids to use and embrace technology. While teaching I found how much I enjoyed finding ways to motivate and reach each individual learner. At that time I realized that structured training was lacking. So, I started InspirTech and began to author self-paced SolidWorks training that would guide users through the learning process.

CAD training is quickly moving from the classroom to the computer screen. What are the reasons for this shift and what is the impact on CAD end-users?

we all live very busy lives and learn at different rates- making self-paced learning more attractive

The shift is taking place for a lot of reasons, but I think the biggest reason is flexibility for the student. In a classroom environment a student is expected to be available at a certain time and learn at the same pace as the other students. The reality is, we all live very busy lives and learn at different rates- making self-paced learning more attractive. Additionally, with recorded training you can bring the experts to every student. That being said, nothing will ever completely replace the value of having a person there for motivation and coaching. So, I can see a solution where classrooms make more use of structured video based training like ours.

Do you think technical books and DVDs will disappear as the current generation of CAD users is replaced by a younger generation more comfortable with online training?

DVD’s will move to videos hosted in the clouds

Books will definitely evolve into a more digital form; DVD’s will move to videos hosted in the clouds. Although, in both cases there will always be a need for training in both video and written form. But yes, in time I do definitely think that all training content will be hosted online where it can be instantly updated behind the scenes and accessed from anywhere with an internet connection.

The separation between training and help files is getting more blurry every day. Is interactive training replacing the traditional help files or the other way around?

training and help files serve to entirely different purposes

When interactive training gets blurred with a help file, I would argue that it is not interactive training at all, but rather a “video based help file”. Training and help files serve to entirely different purposes. Help files are in place for a user to have a searchable index to find specific answers to how to use a specific tool. Interactive training, on the other hand, is in place to help users learn skills that they may not even know that they need to know. That being said, searchable training could potentially remove the need for help files all together.

Training DVDs are a static resource and like a book cannot be updated, only replaced. Do you see a future where online training becomes a sort of shared resource that hosts not only lessons prepared and updated by trainers but also end-user contributions?

when it comes to training, I think that making them shared resources will only make the learning process more confusing

Yes, by all means. Technology is taking us in the direction of a far more collaborative world where files are hosted in the clouds. So, I do see help files becoming a “shared resource” in models similar to Wikipedia. However, when it comes to training, I think that making them shared resources will only make the learning process more confusing. The purpose and necessity for training is to take the flood and wealth of knowledge and boil it down to something that a new user can understand. Now that same flood of knowledge is a limitless resource to a veteran user, but could be poison to a new user who doesn’t know where to start and in what direction to continue on.

Let’s envision a sort of ideal CAD world, where there are easy-to-use CAD systems and perfect product documentation. In such a world do we still need training products like yours?

the need for quality training will never go away

The theme for all these questions has been to clarify the difference between documentation (help files) and structured training. In a world where software is easier to use, the need for help files may be reduced. However, the need for quality training will never go away. To say there wasn’t a need for training in CAD Systems would be like saying, “Everybody knows how to pick up a pencil, so we don’t need to teach writing anymore”.

I would like to thank Al for taking the time to answer my questions. If you have any questions for Al or for Novedge, please leave a comment below and we will be glad to answer.

Franco Folini

InspirTech Sample Video InspirTech products are available from Novedge

Novedge Story on SolidWorks: Heard!

I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed on Lou Gallo’s on-demand radio show. We talked about Novedge, social media and the last COFES event in Scottsdale, AZ. It was really a lot of fun to talk to Lou about what we do. He always has intelligent and relevant questions and I really like his style.

If you want to know more about what we do here at Novedge and how we do it I encourage you to listen to Lou’s podcast.

Cristiano Sacchi

V-Ray RT Can Change the Way We Design

The Moore Law is supplying us with an incredible and ever growing amount of computer power. There is so much computer power, in fact, that most of the time we use only a small fraction of what is available on our workstation. Why not use some of this unused power to improve our design and rendering processes? This is the idea behind the new V-Ray RT for 3ds Max, where RT means Real Time (more info on the Chaos Group website). The concept is simple: while you work as usual in 3ds Max (or in the future it could be Rhino 3D or Cinema4D) an application running in the background generates a high quality rendering of your current 3ds Max view. Move your point of view and the rendering will start a new image, pause for a second, and the rendered image will catch up with an incredible photorealistic quality. To get a better idea of how it works, I recommend watching this 10 minute video created by Peter Guthrie, an Architectural Illustrator/Computer Graphics artist based in London.

Enjoy!

Franco Folini

V-Ray RT Video V-Ray products are available from Novedge

Web Browsers Flirt with 3D

Is the web ready to adopt plugin-less 3D and advanced 2D?

Are web browsers ready for a new wave of 3D and vector-based 2D content (plugin-less)? Is the web ready to adopt 3D and advanced 2D with the same enthusiasm it recently adopted videos? Those were the questions discussed yesterday evening in Cupertino at the Apple headquarters by a group of tech enthusiasts attending a presentation organized by the Silicon Valley chapter of the ACM SIGGRAPH. The official topic of the event was "Browser Standards from 2D to 3D."

there is not a fully recognized 3D standard for the web

Vladimir Vukicevic (blog), a Firefox technical lead, went through the recent evolution of web browsers and described all the important improvements and enhancements generated by a more competitive environment where FireFox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, and Google Chrome are competing for market share. In the long list of new capabilities of the current generation 3D was clearly absent, as we all know. Vladimir explained that there is not a fully recognized 3D standard for the web. Browser developers within the Khronos Group are getting close to a final decision on how to approach 3D features. The struggle is between providing a complete set of 3D APIs (at a level comparable to OpenGL), and keeping everything as simple as possible in order to attract the largest number of web developers. Currently the optimal solution seems for the browser to expose a complete 3D API while allowing advanced developers to build on top of it a layer of software (or library) providing higher level access to less technical web developers (more info here).

who do we expect will be the first to jump on the new 3D opportunities?

In a year from now we may be witnessing the diffusion of 3D capable web browsers (starting from Firefox 3.5) and hopefully the appearance of the first 3D web applications not requiring a plug-in. Who do we expect will be the first to jump on the new 3D opportunities? New CAD systems running from the cloud on the browser? Simple 3D widgets integrated into traditional webpages? New applications able to exploit the 3D capabilities of the browser? Server based CAD viewers? New 3D searching tools? Online 3D games?

What is your opinion?

Franco Folini

Interview with Matthew Sederberg, CEO and Founder of T-Splines

One of my recurring complaints about surface modeling is the intrinsic complexity of existing modeling systems. Even if the level of user friendliness of these systems has improved, sooner or later every user needs to invest some time to understand how the underlying geometry works and to accept the limitations that come with each modeling strategy. T-Splines are certainly one of the most important innovations in this field, but mostly important, the technological benefits of the T-Splines geometry make life easier for the user and the modeling activities faster and more enjoyable. The recent release of T-Splines 2.0 for Rhino shows the huge potential of this new technology. On top of this, T-Splines are fully compatible with existing NURBS modeling systems such as Rhino and Maya. Let's have Matthew Sederberg (blog), the son of the T-Splines inventor and CEO of the T-Splines company (website), help us to understand better what I like to call NURBS 2.0.

Matt can you tell us a bit about yourself and your professional activities?

[T-Splines] has received funding from the US Navy for its work in innovative surface modeling technologies

Hi Franco, and thanks for the interview. I started T-Splines, Inc. while still in college at Brigham Young University (Provo, UT) in 2004. The company hatched slowly for the first couple of years as our founding team graduated, but we've been growing strong ever since our first commercial industrial design product release in 2007. T-Splines has been the recipient of an NSF SBIR grant, a Utah Center of Excellence grant and has received funding from the US Navy for its work in innovative surface modeling technologies. The company is based in Provo, Utah where I also live with my wife. When I'm not working, I enjoy playing tennis with my wife.

T-Splines is not only a company, it's also a new way to handle a surface's geometry. Can you tell us when it was invented, by whom, and how it became a product?

The T-Splines technology was introduced in 2003 by Dr. Tom Sederberg, my dad

The T-Splines technology was introduced as a SIGGRAPH paper in 2003 by Dr. Tom Sederberg (my dad). Previous to inventing T-Splines, he had spent his career doing research in computer graphics, including inventing free-form deformation and doing extensive research with NURBS. We were very excited about the potential of T-Splines to significantly improve design processes, and since the CAD industry is usually slow to adopt academic research into commercial products, my dad and I decided to commercialize the T-Splines technology ourselves. For an even more focused commercialization, instead of writing an entire program, we wrote plugins: our first product, a plugin for Maya, was released in 2005, and T-Splines for Rhino was released in 2007. T-Splines 2.0 for Rhino was released in May 2009 and is a very significant enhancement.

What are the benefits of using the T-Splines system compared to using a standard NURBS modeling system? Are there any disadvantages?

a large percentage of NURBS control points are superfluous

NURBS are the basis for almost every commercial CAD software on the market today. However, NURBS do have several limitations as compared to T-Splines:

1. A non-uniform rational b-spline Surface or NURBS surface is defined by a set of control points which lie, topologically, in a rectangular grid. This means that, in practice, a large percentage of NURBS control points are superfluous in that they contain no significant geometric information, but merely are needed to satisfy the topological constraint. In a typical complex surface model, 40-50% of the NURBS control points are superfluous. In contrast, a T-Spline’s control grid is allowed to have partial rows of control points. A partial row of control points terminates in a T-Point, hence the name T-Splines. Minimizing control points makes it easier to create models, control surface smoothness, and speed up editing time.
2. As a direct result of the ability to create partial rows of control points within a single surface, the user can now create a surface with varying level of detail only where required. Refinement, the process of adding new control points to a control mesh without changing the surface, is an important basic operation used by designers. A limitation of NURBS is that refinement requires the insertion of an entire row of control points, increasing the density of the mesh across the entire surface. T-Points enable T-Splines to be locally refineable. Support for local detail in a single surface makes it easier to model complex shapes and create smooth watertight models.
3. With T-Splines, non-rectangular surfaces can be constructed using star points, also called poles or extraordinary points. This overcomes another fundamental NURBS limitation: In NURBS surface modeling, constructing a complex shape with varying detail, curvature or smoothness requires many individual rectangular patches. Maintaining continuity and smoothness across these patch surfaces is a significant challenge. Star points also enable modeling techniques such as extrusion, face deletion, and merging of surfaces that greatly increase design freedom for the user. Star points are used today in subdivision surface modeling, which is popular in animation, but T-Splines introduces them to industrial design in a NURBS-compatible format for the first time.

star points enable modeling techniques [...] that greatly increase design freedom for the user

As far as disadvantages for T-Splines, there are definitely some operations (such as exact fillets) where I would recommend NURBS over T-Splines. Also, where your design is primarily a prismatic part with mostly planar or cylindrical surfaces, a standard NURBS modeler is a better option. Today, T-Splines is an excellent choice for organic free-form designs and they are a great complement to existing NURBS modeling techniques. In the future, we expect to overcome the remaining limitations and T-Splines will have the potential to completely replace NURBS in modeling applications.

Based on your experience who are the users who can benefit the most from T-Splines?

our customers are industrial designers, architects, and jewelry designers

Most of our customers today are industrial designers, architects, and jewelry designers. T-Splines is also used in marine design and toy design. The sweet spot for T-Splines is for modeling organic designs, where the designer would like explore shape variations by pushing and pulling on the surface, and where staying compatible with NURBS for downstream applications or manufacturing is required.

In my opinion surface modelers have always suffered from an intrinsic complexity -- that of exposing too much of the underlying data structure and algorithms. How close are we to a truly user-friendly surface modeling system?

we've created a simpler interface by allowing users to select faces and edges and move them around

Great question. The benefit of surface modelers is that they give a high level of control over the surface being created, and this control often conflicts with simplicity. With the just-released T-Splines 2.0 for Rhino, we've created a simpler interface by allowing users to select faces and edges and move them around, Sketch-up style. We also let the user toggle on and off precision tools such as tangency handles, and have introduced a manipulator that can be used to intuitively rotate, scale, and move objects.

You choose to offer T-Splines as a plug-in for existing modeling systems rather than creating your own standalone application. What convinced you to go for this option?

converting any T-Spline to NURBS is a push-button operation, as is converting any untrimmed NURBS to T-Splines

The T-Splines technology is not the first alternative surface technology to be invented; however, T-Splines stands apart in its compatibility with NURBS. Converting any T-Spline to NURBS surfaces is a push-button operation, as is converting any untrimmed NURBS to T-Splines. Consequently, we decided to lower the barrier for designers to use T-Splines in conjunction with NURBS by placing T-Splines right into NURBS modelers. This also allows us to focus our resources on developing unique T-splines functions instead of rewriting NURBS routines.

I would like to thank Matt for taking the time to answer my questions. If you have any questions for Matt or for Novedge, please leave a comment below and we will be glad to answer.

Franco Folini