NOVEDGE blog

Another RhinoJungle Successful Contest!

We want to thank everybody who designed banners and cast their vote

After the successful poll contest on RhinoJungle in May, we were excited to run another contest. If you are among the few who don't know yet, RhinoJungle is a free online community for Rhino 3D users and enthusiasts. The results of the poll gave us great inspiration for that new contest, since quite some of the RhinoJungle members didn't actually like the banner that was on top of RhinoJungle ;-). So a new contest was born: design a new banner!

For 2 weeks, members of the jungle could submit their designs. Six members took the time and effort, and gave it a shot by submitting several designs to us. One of the members even submitted 10 (!) different designs. After this submission period, it was time for everybody out there in the jungle to vote on their favorite banner. We found references to the voting page on Facebook and Twitter, and this resulted in a lot of votes, wow!

there was one winner: Kevin Stead from Scotland

It was great to see that a lot of different banners got votes, but there was also clearly one winner: Kevin Stead from Scotland, member of RhinoJungle since the very beginning (March 2009). His banner got by far the most votes, almost 40%, and is a great representation of RhinoJungle, with all the logos, a screen shot of Rhino and a mysterious jungle on the right hand side. Kevin will receive a copy of Ron K.C. Cheng book "Inside Rhinoceros 4" kindly offered by the author. You can see Kevin's banner on the top of every RhinoJungle page. The other banners are still visible online on the RhinoJungle contest results page.

Kevin will receive a copy of Ron K.C. Cheng book "Inside Rhinoceros 4"

We want to thank everybody who designed banners and cast their vote. You made this contest another success in the jungle, and inspires us to run contests on a regular basis! So check out the jungle (sign up if you haven't done so yet) and stay tuned for all the excited things that are happening in the jungle where all the Rhino animals live!

Mirjam Hart

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

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

V-Ray and T-Splines Webinar for Rhino 3D Addicts!

What makes Rhino 3D so special? The power of the NURBS modeling commands? The affordable price? The strong and supportive community? The kindness and generosity of the McNeel team? Or the powerful set of plugins available to expand the Rhino 3D in every conceivable direction?

These plugins make Rhino 3D the optimal solution for an incredible diversity of vertical markets

I guess the answer is that all of these factors contribute tremendous value to Rhino users. In my opinion what pushes the popularity of Rhino to the next level is the variety and quality of plug-ins. These tools, created by advanced users as well as by professional software developers, make Rhino the optimal solution for an incredible diversity of vertical markets. You can be an architect, jewelry designer, or a shoe designer -- just to name a few -- and the Rhino "family" has a professional, high quality, affordable solution for you.

The Rhino platform also supports plug-ins intended to improve horizontal features, shared by all Rhino users, such as modeling and rendering. Among these horizontal plug-ins T-Splines and V-Ray are extremely popular.

• T-Spline for Rhino is a powerful extension to the modeling engine of Rhino that can simplify the creation of rich and sophisticated shapes while preserving 100% compatibility with the Rhino platform.
• V-Ray for Rhino is a fast and powerful rendering system able to produce amazingly photorealistic images of 3D Rhino models.

On June 23, 2009 between 1:30 PM and 2:30 PM EDT you will have the opportunity to see how T-Splines and V-Ray can work together to improve your Rhino 3D. This instructional webinar will feature two exceptional experts:

• Matthew Sederberg, CEO and founder of T-Splines (Matt's profile on RhinoJungle)
• Fernando Rentas, 3D Visual Artist and V-Ray Trainer (Fernando's profile on RhinoJungle)

I recommend registering as soon as possible through this page.

Franco Folini

What does the Poll on RhinoJungle Tell Us?

In 25 days, 30% of the members took the poll on RhinoJungle and we welcomed many new members.

Thanks you, and welcome!

We support RhinoJungle as a place where you can interact with other Rhino users and to find answers to your questions

To us, this poll has been a great success. We are happy with the response rate and we got some great feedback about how we can improve the community and what you value the most in this jungle. Some of the feature requests are easy to implement (like a gallery where you can post pictures of your work), some are a bit harder (like a different language). But with everything we do, we need your help! We host this community for you, our members, to offer you a place where you can interact with other Rhino users and as an informative resource to find answers to your questions.

One benefit of the many feature requests is this: you can do it yourself! Here are some examples from the poll:

• A product comparison section: several members would like to have the opportunity to compare products to help them decide which one they would like to use, or which product suits their needs best. I would say that the forum section could be an excellent way to do this. You can start a topic if you have a question about which product would be the best for you or if you want to write a review about a product. On the website of Novedge we also compare products, but we compare purely on technical specifications, since we don't want to favor one product over the other. For example, take a look at the Flamingo product page (Scroll down at that page or look at the screen shot I added to this blog post.)
• WiP/Final work section: as a designer, you like to show your work to other people. Through their feedback and comments they can give you inspiration or help with problems you may have encountered. So why not post your picture in the gallery and write something about it in the Me & My Work forum?
• More users and more participation: Did I already tell you can do it yourself? ;-) Invite your friends, colleagues, family, neighbors, or whoever you know who may be interested, and spread the word. Don't have a Rhino-related question at the moment? Start a social talk-topic and tell us about the great weekend you had, or a jobs-topic and tell us about the job opening at your company, or let everybody know you are looking for a job. It's all possible! Whether as a blog or a forum topic, or even as a video, we welcome all.

These are just some examples of things users would like to see at RhinoJungle. Unfortunately, there are also some things we cannot change ourselves, as we depend on Ning (the webhost of this community), like cropping pictures after you've uploaded them, using uploaded pictures as profile pictures, or letting the chat bar flash when there is any chat activity.

One last thing I want to mention about the poll: the header. We know, we're not perfect. But I strongly advise you to keep a close eye on the jungle, there has been perhaps a murmurr of something in 2 weeks or so that has something to do with a new header and a contest. Ooh, did I say too much?

Mirjam Hart

Explore SpaceClaim with a Free Webinar Next Wednesday

SpaceClaim is offering a Free webinar on Wednesday June 10, 2009 between 12:00pm  and 12:30pm EDT (Register Here). The online interactive live demo will explore the features of SpaceClaim targeting Industrial Designers and Product Stylists.
SpaceClaim is a next generation, new approach to CAD systems, and in my opinion it is very important to sign up for this webinar in order to experience its power and flexibility. Only by seeing with your own eyes how quickly and easily a SpaceClaim user can generate new complex shapes can you start to appreciate the difference SpaceClaim can make in your own design process as a standalone application or integrated with the popular Rhino 4.0.

The webinar will explore the features of SpaceClaim targeting Industrial Designers and Product Stylists

This webinar will show us how SpaceClaim Style, the more affordable of the SpaceClaim family of products, can accelerate product concept ideation by providing incredibly fast, flexible tools to create, edit, and validate design concepts.
My recommendation: invest half an hour of your time and join SpaceClaim on June 10, 2009 at 12pm EDT. You will not regret it! To see for yourself what other users are saying about SpaceClaim, join the SpaceClaiming online user community.

Franco Folini

The Story Behind the Rhino3D Book

Since March 2009, Novedge has been giving away a free copy of the book Working with Rhinoceros 4.0 for every purchase of a new license of Rhino 4.0. The book is a beginner's user guide for learning Rhino 4.0 written by the Dutch designer Michiel van der Kley (website). Since I am Dutch myself, I was interested in learning more about Mr. Van Der Kley, so I asked him if he could write an article about his work and his new book. From the start the book has been very successful and we thought we'd share Michiel's story with its audience.

Mirjam Hart

I started as what was then called, a "self-producing designer" in the eighties of the last century, without any real computer skills. At that time it came down to making proper drawings of my designs, trying to find solutions for construction, and then building the thing myself. After a few years I was introduced by a colleague into the 3D world so to speak, with a DOS version of a program called 3dstudio4. I could not believe my eyes. Things that took me days were done in an hour. I desperately wanted to have the same skills, so I worked with that program, and bought almost every book there was to make sure I got to the bottom of the program. In the beginning I didn’t understand much of it, but in a year from that day I was able to produce pretty pictures and designs with the computer. Most of my colleagues thought I was going mad, not touching wood, hammering nails or whatever it was I did first.

the [3D] software helped me to broaden my world

The software helped me to broaden my world, it made me take the first steps into the world of producers and into the high-end design market.

There was one thing though. I was not able to draw exactly what I wanted for two reasons:

1. My design language tended more and more towards an organic style and it seemed the program I had was not suitable for that kind of job.
2. In order to get things done through the program, it felt as if you had to get into the head of the engineers and programmers that made the program, or else you would fail, and their logic steps weren’t the same as mine.

I tried to find another program that would fit my needs better, and to make a long story short, Rhino was the absolute winner.

I was so happy once I found out that the program actually worked the way I thought a program should have to work. To give a simple example: draw two funny shaped lines and let the program fill the space in between with a surface. Most Rhino users will think that that is not at all special, but believe me, exactly this kind of simplicity is lacking in most other programs I have tried.

After my great enthusiasm, I was puzzled by the fact that most of my colleagues were heavily seduced by or in the 3ds Max community, thinking that Rhino was just another attempt to yet another 3D program that could not come near this all-in-one program.

Rhino was the definite knock-out for product design and sculpting

For some parts of the industry, 3ds Max is maybe the best, I don’t know. And it is not that I think it’s a bad program (far from it) but Rhino was the definite knock-out for product design and sculpting in my belief, so I thought I had to try and convince all my colleagues.

In the end, after serious debate with other designers and sculptures that got the light, I decided to write a book, a kind of user guide. I live in Holland, where not everyone reads English and there was no Dutch book available then.

I started to write 6 chapters in Dutch, then stopped because it is quite a thing to do. After three years I picked it up again, rewriting the first 6 chapters and finishing the rest. I published the book myself. With the help of the McNeel community it drew a lot of attention, and the people from McNeel encouraged me to make an English version of the book as well. So I did.

That’s the book you can buy now.

I still use Rhino in almost every perspective

I still use Rhino in almost every perspective. As a quick sketchbook to get a grip on my preliminary ideas, to make the most convincing renderings, and to work things out, so they can be produced by the furniture industry. My work now is being produced by several leading furniture companies from Holland and abroad, amongst them Artifort, Arco, and even in my latest experience, a series of lights for Unseen Products. The lights are being produced in Nepal with a local paper, called Lokta paper. The paper is glued together with a special kind of glue in Nepal, placed in molds that are drawn and constructed in Rhino, CNC-milled in Holland, and shipped to Nepal. A real east-meets-west experience.

Michiel van der Kley

Rhino and the New SpaceClaim Style: The Perfect Couple

Sometimes, when a combination has the right ingredients, great performers are paired with other great performers, and the result is outstanding. The whole becomes greater then the sum of its parts.

The newly released SpaceClaim Style makes such a powerful combination when paired with Rhino. Rhino and SpaceClaim Style are not only excellent on their own; they are perfectly compatible and complement each other ideally. These are the key fundamental elements of a power couple. Let’s analyze them in more detail.

Compatible – not only can Rhino and SpaceClaim Style read and write .3dm files without any data loss, but they are both direct modeling systems. This means that they are compatible at the semantic level, not just at the (required) data level. This is different from parametric systems that are still highly incompatible. Geometry data can be transferred reliably but all the parametric modeling history is lost and different systems use different operators to generate the same geometry (the semantic dichotomy). Rhino and SpaceClaim on the other hand have moved the design intelligence into the software and away from the data - making it thankfully very easy for the user to manipulate the same data with different systems.

Complementary – while being impressive products on their own Rhino and SpaceClaim tend to excel at different types of modeling. Rhino is best at free form modeling and SpaceClaim is best at solid modeling of parts and assemblies. Once used in combination the two systems can tackle more challenging design tasks because the user can chose the best system for the problem at hand and seamlessly switch between the two. For example, SpaceClaim offers a free Rhino plug-in that provides a button within Rhino allowing for easy import and export of Rhino data with SpaceClaim.

Industrial designers looking for a strong solid and assembly modeling tool will find SpaceClaim Style perfectly suited for their needs and will not find themselves entangled in the complexity of parametric systems. Mechanical designers looking for high quality Class A surface modeling will find Rhino a seamless addition to SpaceClaim’s capabilities.

If you are a user of either Rhino or SpaceClaim I believe you owe it to yourself to try this combination. And if you are using neither one, well, I think you should try them both to see for yourself what they can do for you.

Cristiano Sacchi

Novedge in the World of Social Media

On March 2nd, Skittles shook the world by changing its homepage to a big social media playground; when navigating to skittles.com you found yourself in a stream of Twitter messages with the tag #skittles. For 24 hours this was a big hit, but there was no filter, and also abusive tweets from pranksters about the company and its products turned up at the homepage of Skittles. The following day, the homepage was redirected to the fanpage of Skittles on Facebook, with almost 600,000 fans. Via the menu option 'chatter' you could still enter the Twitter stream. Today (March 4th) the homepage of Skittles is redirected to the Wikipedia page about Skittles.

Many people expressed their opinion about this campaign; some called it a genius and innovative move (although risky), others called it an utter failure, 'the worst thing to ever happen to social media branding'. But the fact is that Skittles got huge media attention during these days, everybody talks, tweets, and blogs about it (including us).

Incorporating social media in companies is a hot topic nowadays. This doesn't mean that when you'll navigate to our website next week, you'll end up at Facebook or Twitter, but it is very interesting to see all the developments in this field! How far are companies going to attract people with the use of social media channels and to have them interact with each other and the company? What is the best channel to interact with your (potential) customers? There are so many options to choose from, just think of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Friendfeed, LinkedIn, (corporate) blogs, communities. So you subscribe to (some of) these channels, and then what?

Novedge is exploring the mysterious but wonderful world of social media too by launching a big campaign.

Novedge is exploring the mysterious but wonderful world of social media too by launching a big campaign. Novedge has a page at Facebook and LinkedIn, our news source Pulse already has 141 (and counting!) followers at Twitter as @_Pulse_, and our community SpaceClaiming has 580 members. And of course, we have this blog :-). But besides that, Novedge is also starting a new community, called RhinoJungle (with its own Facebook page). This community is set up especially for the users and fans of Rhino and all Robert McNeel products. With facilitating these communities, Novedge wants to offer an extra service to our customers, to create a platform for sharing ideas, questions and 3d-work.

With this adventure Novedge aims for more direct communication, growth of members of our communities and a growth in followers on Twitter. We believe that the world of social media is boundless.

Mirjam Hart

For more information on this topic, take a look at this foldier sPression, an online collection of the Novedge social media activities.