mac:design - Product Development Technology for the Mac Community

FreshFiber launch 3D printed iPhone cases

2009-11-04T20:57:00.002Z

I picked this up from the folks at Freedom of Creation (or FOC for short). A Dutch outfit called Fresh Fiber has just started producing iPhone cases using 3D printing technology. There's no information about what process they're using as yet, but I'll be investigating and get back to you.

Truly fascinating. The ability to create customised products, either by the consumer or to create limited edition runs (Freedom of Creation's Janne Kyttanen designed the one shown above) is something that the rapid prototyping/direct manufacturing/fabber community has talked about for many years - and it's finally starting to happen. Looking at the forms there are decorative models, but the one that captured my imagination was Kyttanen's design, which features a dual layer of shock absorption using forms that would be very difficult to mould in a single peice.

Here's a short interview with FreshFiber founder Christian Dijkhof, courtesy of shufflegazine.com

New SketchBookMobile: 1.1 a-go-go

2009-10-23T11:57:00.001+01:00

As ever, it looks like Josh beat us to the jump with this one, but its worth covering a little. Autodesk just pushed out the 1.1 release of SketchBookMobile and it addresses some of the issues with the initial release, namely, layer perservation (you can now push out a .PSD file out to Photoshop) and for me, the big one, importing landscape image (which is something I'd asked about when it launched) and brush preview when you're resizing them. It's available now on the App store. Josh also has a very handy comparison chart looking at other sketching apps for the iPhone.

Finally, here's a slick little vid* that shows a workflow with moving data from concept to 3D with SketchBookMobile and Inventor.

* nice video, but honestly. Where the hell are they getting this music from?

HyperShot '10: Part 2 - what's new?

2009-09-29T12:49:00.001+01:00

OK - I've been hanging onto this for too long - let's take a whistle stop tour through what's new and improved and in HyperShot 2.0 - or HyperShot '10 - for the Mac. Let's take a look at what's coming up.

HyperShot '10 Standard UI mode - everything is available on screen, at once.

HyperShot '10 full screen UI mode - this gives you the maximum working space, toolbars can be pinned or can be hidden.

The UI has been updated and rewritten to give you the full Mac experience. This means in either full screen or standard mode, you have access to all of your operations, commands and variables from a single place. Dialogs pop up, are movable and have that tidy little transparency thing (which in the case of rendering, works very nicely indeed).

Camera controls - new sliders make settings much easier to fine-tune - and get that image just as you want it.

Dialogs, aside from look and feel, have been revamped. Previous versions of HyperShot had manual value inputs, which in some cases, could be somewhat cryptic. HyperShot '10 sees these extended with sliders. While it may sound like a small change, the benefits when working with some aspects of the systems, will be much more intuitive and dynamic - the control and setting of depth of field springs irresistably to mind.

The materials libraries, HDR image library and options settings are now much more dynamic and acessible. When combined with a decent workstation, you're looking at realtime feedback when you tweak the settings.

Alongside the UI overhaul, there's a couple of things that lept out at me when working with the beta, so let's look at those. There's a new tool for helping you to define the composition of your scene. The first is camera grid. While most will work with Thirds (as shown below), you can also have it set to halves and quarters if that's your bag.

The other is the Ground Grid, this shows you where things lie in relation to others and the horizontal plane you're working with (as below) - note how the grid is shown through the model, which helps a great deal.

Managing data

There's been a lot of work done on how you work with data within HyperShot '10. the Mac version has always had the problem of a much poorer set of data translation tools (limited, pretty much to SketchUp, Rhino, OBJ). This release sees that extended with IGES and STEP, but as yet, no interoperability tools with SolidWorks or Pro/Engineer. There is hint in the Beta of 3xml file import, but Bunkspeed aren't commiting this for release as yet - time will tell on that one, but interoperability with both Catia and other systems that support the format would be handy (as well as allowing you to use content from 3dvia.com).

Alongside this, the system now works with that source data much more intelligently. Firstly, you have the ability to view and interact with the product structure from your CAD data, allowing you to organise your work and scene - which is particularly useful when you're working with large datasets and large part counts. Also, updates made to HDR files can be quickly fed through into the system, whether you're using Photoshop or a more specialised tool like HDR Studio.

Another massive update for many users will be that you can Update geometry source and the system will reload your geometry file and make the appropriate changes - it'll also maintain your material and texture settings, saving you a great deal of work when dealing with design change.

Greater interactivity

In terms of scene set-up there's a whole host of new tools. The new performance mode will switch off the more calc-heavy functions and give you a much more dynamic preview that you can pan/zoom/rotate with ease to get things into place. Interactivity is something that's become a key factor in this release across many areas. Objects can now be moved interactively, rather than using the somewhat cryptic input of values in previous versions. Materials and textures can be dragged and dropped directly onto parts, parts can be dragged into a scene. All in all, the system works as you would expect, rather than you having to work out how to do something.

Oh and the render queue looks much more usable, which is something that heavy users are going to find pretty compelling.

There will be all manner of coverage on the release coming up soon, but a good place to start is Phil Renato's blog, who takes a look through this release as well and gives his thoughts - philrenato.blogspot.com

3DVIA launches community app for iPhone

2009-09-22T21:06:00.000+01:00

Dassault's 3dvia group has finally released the iPhone app for interaction with the 3d-centric community portal, first demonstrated at DEVCON earlier this year. As hinted at in the demonstraton, the App gives users the ability to interact with the community aspects of the service, giving users a fully manipulable 3D model, search functions as well as all that good social media-related stuff (rating, commenting etc).

The multi-touch interface is exceptional (except a lack of landscape switch-a-roo goodness), with a single finger rotating the model, two fingers panning and the ninja-pinch for zoom in/out as you'd expect. You can search models on line (here's a LOT), view and comment on them. If you're rocking the iPhone 3GS, you can also use the built in camera to capture an image and integrate a model for a variety of purposes.

Here's a quick video on the basics of the App

I caught up with David Laubner, Director of Product Marketing for 3dvia online and the first question was the big one:

Why?
We must deliver our products and services where our users expect and want to have them. With the massive popularity of the iPhone, we need to make sure that we have an offering to suit this growing communities needs.

What purpose do you think the application will serve?
This first application for Dassault Systemes is primarily targeted at the existing 3DVIA.com user base of 120K+ users. It brings most of the functionality of the site right on to the iPhone including 3D model search and interactive 3D view. Users will have access to their own content and network allowing them to interact right on their phones.

It also include the 3DVIA Collage feature which allows users to combine most of the 15K+ models on the site with pictures from the iPhone. This application is both viral and practical at the same time. For designers and 3D artists, you can create environments on the fly for your work right on your phone. As shown in the "I Wonder" video, consumers can use it to visualize changes in the real world. A consumer looking to add furniture to their home could take a picture with their iPhone and position various 3D models of couches from our partner Mydeco.com until they find the right one.

The viral aspect of this feature is easy to see. Users are already using it just create funny pictures with some of the more artistic 3D models from the site.

Can you open 3dxml files that have been mailed to you?
Indirectly - the model would have to be uploaded to the 3DVIA.com site and then you can access it from your "my3DVIA" tab on the phone. Users can access their private models if they need to keep it out of the public view.

What are the differences between the iPhone and iPod Touch implementations
Primarily it is the lack of the camera on the touch blocking the use of the Collage feature. Additionally, it will only work on the 2G and not the earlier version.

3dvia Mobile is about providing access to content on 3dvia.com - a community web-site - so why charge users? it's not inline with the community ethic?

This was a strong debate for the group but it fits with some of our plans as we move forward and look to develop both the product offering and the business model. Our intent is to continue to develop the offerings on 3DVIA.com and always have a strong product at either free or very inexpensive price points.

Although the free period that we are offering right now will have a bit of a marketing boost, it is being offered to help support our key users that have been deeply engaged with the site for so long.

At the moment, the app is live on the Apple App Store and is free, but will eventually be chargable at $1.99 (estimated). While initially this seems like a throw away application, looking at the numbers within the community, the potential for closed session discussion and the ability to quickly share your models, you've got something intriguing.

You can upload data to 3Dvia.com via all manner of means and using a variety of formats including .3ds, .obj, .dae (collada), .kmz, .vrml, .3dxml, 3dm (rhino) - strangely no SolidWorks native export (but SWx does export 3dxml and collada). There's even a handy tutorial for uploading and ensuring the best data translation from Catia available here. There's a couple of blogs running that will be covering the app, so take a look here and the 3d perspectives blog here.

With the Autodesk SketchBook Mobile annoucement last week and now this, it looks like vendors are taking mobile devices seriously - performance on these devices is getting better, the interaction methods are increasingly intuitive - leaving the keyboard and mouse combo for dead when it comes to visualisation and manipulation of 3D data. Yes. The screen is small, but the potential if huge. Bring it on.

F**k the Napkin: SketchBook Mobile for iPhone

2009-09-16T15:59:00.010+01:00

Image Courtesy of Andrew Meehan, industrial designer

Tomorrow (if all goes according to plan), Autodesk will launch it's first commercial application for Apple's iPhone platform. Taking its technology based from the SketchBook products that have been Windows and Mac-based for sometime, the system strips things down to the basics and provides a mobile platform for sketching - using iPhone (or iPod Touch) multi-touch interactivity.

I had the pleasure of having this application (which has been in Beta for sometime) on my iPod during my recent travels and it's compelling indeed. Sketching is perhaps the one thing that connects designers, engineers and civilians - everyone doodles, sketches and draws - it's just that some are better than others. So let's take a look at what we're got to play with.

A quick download from the App Store and an install (the app will cost 2.99 in the US, 1.79 in the UK, 2.39 euro) later you're ready. Hit the Icon and up it loads. The system gives you a quick walk through of the key functions and shortcuts and interactivity (as well as their being a complete help system embedded in the tool). The interface is pretty transparent. You're presented with a full screen drawing surface. While the iPhone's display runs at 480x320 pixel, what you're actually look at is a 600x400 pixel drawing area. two fingered pinch gives you zoom, dragging those dual digits gives you pan, allowing you to work at the level and in the area you choose. Images can be brought in from the iPhone gallery and used as the basis for a sketch (or as I used it for, for mark up - making it a slick workflow tool) or you can dive in and start drawing.

The tools and options are all accessed through the small icon to the bottom of the screen, tap this once and a marking/radial menu pops up. This gives you the most commonly used commands. From the top and clockwise, you have pencil, airbrush, paint-brush, eraser. You then have the brush control (more on that shortly), layers (the system supports transparent layers - six for the iPhone 3GS but three for other variants - due to lower processor speed), the colour wheel (controlled using swatches or a colour wheel) and perhaps most interestingly for the technical/ID user, Symmetry.

Symmetry lets you build up both sides of a sketch quickly and easily, then you turn it off to add detail. Image courtesy of me (which is why it's crap)

Depending on your orientation (portrait or landscape), SketchBook Mobile will take readings from the iPhone sensors and assign symmetry centrally and vertically (if you have it in landscape, it'll run the axis of symmetry up the centre of the page). In the centre, you have the brush resize control - tapping, holding and dragging left/right will change the size of your brush, with a value readout.

Brush presets and control is first class and something often missing from other iphone drawing apps

In terms of brush options, there's a veritable feast of options, using the same brush engine as the desktop version of SketchBook Pro - you've got full control over size, width, transparency for pencil, brush, airbrush, different stroke type and texturing tools - there's also, of course, the flood fill command too.

The layers are a tool that's going to make life much easier, as we've already said, there's 3 available on the Ipod Touch while the 3GS gets 6. Even with 3, that's pretty usable and the ability to merge layers down gives you added flexibility and control. Multi-touch and multi-tap is used where sensible, the corners of the UI are 'hot' - for clearing a layer, fit to view, undo and redo (10 levels of both), while tap hold brings up a colour picker tool.

Alongside preset swatches, the colour wheel gives you full colour control.

All in all, the whole experience is pretty wonderful. There are other drawing applications out there for the iPhone, but this is a professional grade tool, layer control and symmetry bring the tools a design-led user might need and you're working on an image big enough for real communication, rather than a quick thumbnail.

There's a video tutorial coming shortly, but in the meantime, take a look at the Flickr page for the beta testers, download the application (come on, it's only 3 bucks - probably the cheapest Autodesk product out there) and have a bash.

Sketching is still the predominate method of communication all the way through the design process and while the moleskine and pen combo isn't going to go away and this isn't going to change the status quo, it is a nice indicator of where things might be headed. As Carl over at Core77.com said in his post on the app, "the tactile feedback that makes paper such an enduring medium is unchallenged here, though they've given it a good shot: there's some very good brush rendering technology that makes pencil strokes look like pencil strokes, and "synthetic touch sensitivity" to simulate the effects of increased pressure, despite the lack of true pressure-sensitivity in the iPhone screen."

Simple tools are often the best and while SketchBook Mobile has a few things missing (text would be handy, as would a sync app - you currently need to email or post images out), it's as near a complete set of sketching tools as anyone would need. The best thing is, it's cheap as chips, so if you're iPhoned up, then have a bash. And post your results on the Flickr group if you dare.

Just remember, if you do happen to be sketching Stonehenge, remember to put the correct dimensions on it.

Get it from the Apple Store

HyperShot '10 for Mac: Part I

2009-09-07T15:59:00.008+01:00

Model courtesy of Mark van der Quaak, dppb (www.dbbp.com).

I'll make no bones about it. I love rendering. From when I started in the world of 3D-based design, I used to dig into 3d Studio when it was a DOS product and horrendous to use. All the way through my professional career as a designer, it stayed with me and even when I moved into the world of publishing I found myself still engaged (and still do, to this day) in freelance gigs.

There's something engaging and addictive about taking staid, boring looking CAD geometry that's at the heart of the design process through to create photorealistic assets (be it imagery or animations) that shows the viewer exactly how that product is going to appear when manufactured.

The problem has, until very recently, been that rendering, both to set-up the scenes, materials, textures, lighting then processing that information, has a headache. to create truly photorealistic images takes time and skill to do, then, when you've got it about right, even with today's ultra powerful machines, took time to process - and when you consider that creating that imagery (whether it be static images or animations) was typically a highly iterative process of set-up, test render, tweak, render again, the whole thing took more time than it should have.

This, I'm glad to say, has changed in the last year or so. There are a number of applications launched onto the market that make this process much more efficient. Progressive rendering technology, whereby you don't have to wait for a render to complete before you get a good idea of what your project look, makes things easier. This, combined with technologies like HDR (High Dynamic Range) images that make lighting set-up much easier as well as multi-core processing workstations (progressive renderers are typically CPU driven). One of the leading lights of this movement has been Bunkspeed (www.bunkspeed.com), established a few years ago, to bring a core technology to market that enables the 3D user to create stunningly photorealistic imagery, without the headaches traditionally associated with the process and the flagship product in the company's portfolio is HyperShot.

HyperShot was launched two years ago and has been growing in popularity amongst many industry sectors and professions since. The core concept is that you connect to your CAD data, read it in, add materials, choose an environment (based on HDR images, which contain both scene information and a greater amount of information about lighting conditions within that scene than standard images) and watch the display update to show you what you're going to get. While it's heavily skewed towards the number of CPUs or core you have your workstation, even on the most modest of laptops, Hypershot gives you update speeds that are close enough to real-time.

Now, while HyperShot isn't a unique application in using this type of technology, the things I've always loved about it are two fold. Firstly, it's both Windows and Mac-based and has been since the very early releases and secondly, the interface is so sparse, typically driven by keyboard shortcuts and mouse interaction, rather than complex dialogs. This makes for a very intuitive working process and if I'm honest, it get very very addictive. HyperShot's been through a pretty rapid release cycle in the last two years and while the latest version, 1.9, has just been released, the last few months have also seen the Beta program for the next major release, HyperShot 2.0, get underway.

HyperShot 2.0?

Image courtesy of Peter Allen, Marketing Director at UC Santa Barbara.

I first got a peak at HyperShot for Mac's next major release at the PTC World user event last year and saw something that took my breath away. While many organisations are looking to 'go mac' of late, it's not often you find a 3D professional application that is atuned to the Mac way of things working and following the Cocoa UI guidelines closely. But this is what the Bunkspeed team has been working on and I can finally begin to lift the lid of what HyperShot 2.0, or as it's to be called, HyperShot '10 is going to bring to the Mac community. Before we do that, I wanted to get an insight into what Bunkspeed have planned, I got on the phone to Thomas Teger.

Thomas is the Director of Marketing and Strategic Planning at Bunkspeed (you'll guess that from the picture, right?) and one of those people I love running into at the various events - mostly because he's 19 feet tall and because he's German, can enjoy a drink without disappearing off to bed at 10pm. Thomas is a CAD industry veteran, having worked at both PTC and UGS (now Siemens PLM) and was influential in bringing both NX to the Mac and driving the development of a now defunct PTC product called Pro/Concept (also Mac-based). These days, he's one of the four provisional patent holders for HyperShot (together with Founder & CEO Philip Lunn, COO Anthony Duca, and Chief Scientist Dr. Henrik Wann Jensen), and the driving force behind any new development for HyperShot. His passion for the Mac and Apple products started in 1992 while writing his Master's Thesis on a PowerBook 170 at BMW AG in Munich, Germany.

Al Dean: Hey Thomas. Let's talk about HyperShot and the Mac. You've had a Mac native version of HyperShot pretty much since inception. Could you explain why you made that choice?
Thomas Teger: When I first saw the concepts of realtime raytracing that turned into HyperShot in early 2006 I knew that this had great potential in a number of markets. Since HyperShot breaks down the barriers of traditional raytracing, it opens up the door for many more people who would never been able to create a photographic image from 3D data. The Mac community is traditionally all about the creativity. Photographers, retouchers, marketing people - all Mac. This made it easy to decide to port HyperShot to the Mac. On top of it, HyperShot has been built on an incredible advanced, flexible, and state of the art architecture. "Porting" - if you want to call it that - to the Mac was basically "free". When we showed the concept of HyperShot in 2006 at the IDSA international conference in Austin, TX, we had both versions running side by side. It was awesome.

AD: How does the Mac user base stack up against the windows variant?
TT: Our Mac user base is at about 10% of our entire install base and growing strongly. More and more people are converting to the Mac, now that you can have dual boot capability. Students in particular are gravitating very strongly to the Mac, but also more and more design houses. Of course you know what the major obstacle is: the support of common CAD formats on the Mac. When we came out with the Mac version of HyperShot, we only offered support for OBJ. Quite limiting, isn't it? Today we are offering support for native Rhino and SketchUp, as well as OBJ, Collada, FBX, and 3ds.

AD: I've been playing with the HyperShot 2.0 Beta and the interface has been shifted to a Cocoa-based UI. It's looking slick. How much more work have you got to do before you take 2.0 to market?

Image courtesy of Carter Hickman Design (www.carterhickmandesigns.com)

TT: Thanks, Al. We worked long and hard on developing the interface that turns HyperShot into a true Mac application that will be appreciated and embraced by all Mac users out there. As you know we have started our beta program about 4 weeks ago. We started with a small team of 10 people representing various industries. With the improvements that we made over the past few weeks we are close to being feature complete, and the app is also very stable. Some folks like Carter Hickman for example are using v2 4 hours a day to do production work. He can't go back - you saw his comments. Same with Peter Allen from UC Santa Barbara. The biggest hurdle right now is to make sure that everything works with Snow Leopard. And then there is some more cleanup required, bug fixes and UI polish for the most part. We are close! The official name will be HyperShot '10 to match the rest of our product line. Following the Apple lead here ... iPhoto '09, iLife '09, iWork '09 - you get the picture ;-).

AD: One thing that's kind of irritating is that the Mac platform has much fewer translation options that the Windows version (predominatelty, the SolidWorks and Pro/E connectors are missing). Could you give me an explanation of why they don't work on the mac platform?
TT: Agreed - as mentioned above this is a big reason for the adoption rate still being small is the lack of support for traditional CAD formats. We are getting many requests for support of additional file formats. IGES, STEP, and SolidWorks are the top requests, followed by the support for AliasStudio Tools. I am happy to announce that we will support IGES and STEP in version 2. I am personally rather disappointed that SolidWorks is not releasing the API for eDrawings on the Mac. It is so close. This would solve my, or better the users problem. I've asked repeatedly for it, but the answer was always "sorry, not available". On the other hand we allow people to run HyperShot on the Windows side with the same license, as long as it is installed on the machine. So if you have SolidWorks or Pro/E installed on the Windows side, install HyperShot and the plugin (free on our website) and then import your CAD files into HyperShot and save out the .bip file. And then continue to work on the Mac side. Works great.

AD: Any plans to bring HyperMove or HyperDrive to the Mac
TT: Plans - yes, time frame - no. We are carefully evaluating the needs and market requirements here.

AD: Have you got a feeling for any performance difference between Windows and Mac? Anything to be gained?
TT: Since HyperShot is 100% CPU based you are getting identical performance on either platform in realtime. I found though that the final rendering is about 10% faster on Mac OS X compared to Windows Vista 64bit. Even though the realtime performance is identical on Windows and Mac OS X, it still "looks and feels" better on the Mac. There is just something about the Mac - it is hard to describe.

AD: Is the Snow Leopard release giving you any headaches?
TT: I've been running Snow Leopard since the day after it came out and have not experienced any problems with the current version of HyperShot. I have a few customers that are reporting some issues, so I will need to figure out what is going on. We are experiencing some unexplainable things with HyperShot '10 that work great under Leopard but fail under Snow Leopard. That is now our major focus until the release - make sure that everything is working flawlessly under both Leopard and Snow Leopard. Tiger, by the way, will no longer be supported.

AD: I've heard (mostly from your competitors, I'll admit) all manner of rumours about Bunkspeed. Do you want to clear those up and talk about the company's performance in the last few years and how you're doing in the market place?
TT: Absolutely, Al. Bunkspeed is stronger than ever. The fact is that Bunkspeed is 100% self funded and profitable since year two of its inception (Bunkspeed was founded in 2002 by Philip Lunn, CEO of Bunkspeed). HyperShot has been incredibly successful since its introduction in June of 2007. To date we have close to 2,000 customers that are using HyperShot on a daily basis. We started out really strong in Industrial Design, and are now tapping more into Engineering, and of course marketing. We are very successful in "building the bridge" from design and engineering all the way into marketing. Despite economic downturn, our year to date revenues are up compared to last year. As companies are cutting cost, they still order more software from us to help with that process. We certainly made some internal adjustments earlier in the year to make sure we focus on areas that promise growth. We are still a small company, so we must be careful on how we spend our money and where to ensure maximum return on investment. Rumors where of course fueled by the fact that we didn't have a presence at Siggraph this year, since we had a fairly large previous two years. We carefully evaluated the situation. Fact is that many companies cut down on "unnecessary" expenses and would not send any representatives, and trade show attendance was the first one to be cut. Also, Siggraph for us has been a branding event more so than a revenue generator. We felt that our brand has been well established in the industries we are going after - ID, Engineering, and Marketing. This was another reason for us to sit this one out. We are continuing to focus on being present at other events that cater to our markets we are going after such as user conferences and IDSA conferences (Industrial Designers Society of America). Being part of the PTC User conference this year for example opened up many doors to new accounts. As I said before, Bunkspeed is stronger than ever and poised for some serious growth.

Later this week, I'm going to give you a sneak peak into what's coming up in the next release, so stay tuned.

Autodesk Extends Mac Support to Bootcamp

2009-08-06T14:42:00.004+01:00

With many rumours now linking Autodesk product development with Apple OSX ports, the company has created a web page to guide Mac users best-run Autodesk applications on their Intel-based Macintosh computers.

There are two levels of supported software: Mac compatible (native) and BootCamp-compatible. On first glance it's pretty obvious that much of Autodesk's OSX compatible software has come from acquisitions along the way; Alias Design, ImageModeler, Maya, Stitcher Unlimited and Mudbox to name but a few. However, Autodesk now offers support to users trying to run Inventor, AutoCAD, Max Design and the Revit suite running 32-bit Windows under BootCamp.

For those non-Mac users amongst our readers, Apple's switch to Intel processors enables Macintoshes to run either Leopard OSX (a UNIX-based operating system) or Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 using an boot utility called BootCamp.

There are Windows emulation tools for the Mac, namely VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop, which enable Windows and OSX to run simultaneously. These are not supported directly by Autodesk although bloggers such as Autodesk's Shaan Hurley has had some success in running AutoCAD software under emulation.

It's a small but important statement by Autodesk. The company is now serious about Apple and looks set to develop more native CAD applications for this growing platform. Insiders at Autodesk have told me that AutoCAD for OSX is actively being considered, while Inventor for OSX would be a challenge but not impossible. The high percentage of Macs with students in Universities is being taken a lead indicator that there will be increased popularity of the platform in coming years, at the expense of Windows-based workstations.

Autodesk on its Mac Manoeuvres

2009-06-29T21:33:00.002+01:00

So, we've had a little chat with Paul Brown at Siemens about why the company has ported its NX product to the Mac, so I thought it only fair to have a chat with Autodesk about the same. In the last year, the company has ported a number of its Media and Entertainment applications across, such as Mudbox and Stitcher, but its the last few months that saw a much bigger move made to bring Alias Design to the Mac platform, so I caught up with Thomas Heermann, senior product line manager for Industrial Design.

What made Autodesk make the move to the Mac platform? The acceptance of and the market share of Apple hardware among creative professionals.

Why now?
Availability of high performance Apple hardware leveraging the Intel chip set and Nvidia high end graphic cards support.

Any figures or ideas in terms of market share amongst the professional market (I’m specifically interested in the product development market). We have not encountered statistics surrounding the product development market as a whole. But based on our data, and talking to a lot of customers over the years, we believe roughly 30% of creative professionals prefer the Mac platform over Windows.

Any plans for a more engineering/design type tool (ala Inventor) for the Mac platform?
We are continuously evaluating the hardware and software operating systems our customers are using and plan to use. While we can’t discuss specific future plans, as you have seen through recent visits with Autodesk and at Autodesk University, we are experimenting with different design and engineering technologies for the Mac platform.

I’m assuming that Mac hardware will be fully certified by Autodesk in some manner. Yes?
We have updated the Alias Qualification charts to include qualified hardware specifications. We provide system requirements for the Mac to run Alias and other software, but we are not certifying hardware at this point.

Also related to that do you think it’ll be possible to have the same for those users looking to run Inventor under Bootcamp.
As with all officially supported platforms, if we choose to expand official support to Boot Camp we would include system requirements.

Any plans for a viewing tool (ala Design Review) for the Mac platform? Some sort of Inventor/DWG viewer. SolidWorks have their eDrawings viewer for Mac.
Freewheel (freewheel.autodesk.com) is a free web service solution to view and share 2D and 3D design – all without the need to download or install any software – that lets Mac users review designs created using many of our software applications.

Are plans afoot to move Alias Design to a fully Cocoa-based user interface?
We continue to monitor user preferences on this.

Alias Design (and the other Alias variants) retain the familiar Alias user interface and experience rather than adopting an Mac-native UI style.

Plans to integrate fuller support for multi-touch?
Adding a tablet to Alias provides greater benefits especially for Sketching. Multi touch came along very nicely over the years. We are monitoring this technology closely and evaluate how it will provide value to our customers.

Any other Mac related news we should know about?
No other news at this time.

We're just working our way through relearning Alias Design as it's been a good 12 years since I used it last professionally, so once I'm through and up to speed, look out for a run down on how the system works and what it can do.

Dassault to Launch 3Dvia iPhone App

2009-06-24T14:52:00.000+01:00

#2: At the recent DEVCON event at Dassault Systemes unvieled a forthcoming application for the iPhone that allows users to connect to the 3d data respository, view data and manipulate it in 3D. There's also an interesting looking feature which takes a photo from the phone's camera and allows you to position that part or product within that photo (which is semi automated because of the iPhone orientation awareness and the fixed focal length of the camera). While it might sound a little gimmicky, what I found most interesting is that almost every vendor I've been talking to has iPhone ambitions and while this isn't the first 3D and product development related app or iPhone tool from a traditionally CAD focussed vendor, you can bet your bottom dollar, it's not going to be the last. Word has it that this app should ship on the App Store by the end of the month once Apple has approved it (which is apparently the major challenge for anyone developing iPhone apps).

RCA Student makes Toaster from Scratch

2009-06-22T15:59:00.000+01:00

Photo Credit: Daniel Alexander

Loving this press release and while it has bugger all to do with anything Apple or Mac related, I'm pretty much going to republish it verbatim.

A design student at the Royal College of Art in London has made a toaster - literally from the ground up. Thomas Thwaites has travelled to mines across the country to get the raw materials for his toaster. Processing these raw materials at home, (for example he smelted iron ore in a microwave), he has produced a 'kind of half-baked, handmade pastiche' of a toaster you can buy in Argos for less than five pounds (for those non-UK readers, Argos is like walmart, except everything is hidden underground and accessed via a combination of small slips of paper, small pens and trolls that guard the booty). Thwaites' toaster has cost 1187.54 ounds and has taken him on a 9 month quest around Great Britain. The project web-site is here http://www.thetoasterproject.org/

Why?

The project is a reaction to the idea that it's possible or desirable to be self-sufficient, but also to the view that having more stuff, more cheaply is better. "The steel parts in a shop bought toaster probably came from rock mined in Australia. Now they're on my kitchen worktop - for the price of less than an hour’s work. Quite amazing," says Thwaites.

"The real cost of objects is hidden. You wouldn't want iron smelted or plastics being melted in your back garden, trust me. Though my neighbours have been quite nice about it," he continues. "It seems the need to buy more stuff to save our economy and the need to buy less to save our environment are on a collision course. So, we either have to value what we've got a lot more, or spend as much time and effort taking things apart and disposing of them as we do putting them together."

As well as visiting disused mines in the Forest of Dean, England, the Knoydart Peninsula in Scotland and the Isle of Anglesey in Wales, he has consulted experts in mining, oil drilling and recycling (as well as a drunken deer stalker) to turn his vision of a making a toaster from scratch into a reality.

Photo Credit: Daniel Alexander

However, the practicalities of the project came as quite a shock when he realised that he'd need to find and process nearly 100 materials to make a true likeness of the Argos Value Range toaster he used as his model. Thwaites' toaster uses just five materials; iron (for the grill), copper (for the pins of the plug and the wires), plastic (for the casing, plug and wire insulation), nickel (for the heating elements) and mica (around which the heating element is wound).

Step 2:Smelting Iron Ore in a Leafblower Furnace from Thomas Thwaites on Vimeo.

Steve Furlonger, the former Head of Sculpture at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, and Director of Windsor Workshops, described Thwaites' project as "disguised information", adding, "Under his toaster making project he is saying profound things, of a different order. The 'failures' he encounters, during his toaster making, point to the success of his real message; that we have become disconnected from how our world is supported and sustained."

Thwaites completed the project as part of his MA in Design Interactions from the RCA and will be displaying his toaster (and making toast with it) at the RCA Show Two, the College's annual graduate showcase for new designers from 26 June. He is also working on a short film and book which documents the toaster project in full.

The Toaster Project will be displayed at RCA Show Two, Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London SW7 2EU - 26 June - 5 July, 11am - 8pm daily (closed 3 July, closes at 5pm on 30 June, 1 July, 5 July) - admission is free.

Step 2, Attempt 2: Smelting Iron Ore in a Microwave from Thomas Thwaites on Vimeo.

Simply wonderful eh? I think while this is an interesting and from my perspective, very amusing story, there's a salutary lesson here about consumption of materials and sustainability. I'm just not entirely sure I know what it is.

Final Word from Dassault on Catia + OSX

2009-06-17T10:57:00.003+01:00

After much speculation, the final word from Dassault with regards Catia on Mac OSX and it's:

"There needs to be a business case. We are examining a variety of options, but there are not yet any plan for delivering CATIA on OSX."

Jacques Leveille-Nizerolle, CEO CATIA, Dassault Systemes.

Oh well. So to make up for it. Here's a gratuitous video of Catia's Imagine and Shape. Not coming to OSX. But which is pretty bloody wicked anyway.

Siemens NX on OS X is a-go-go

2009-06-15T21:49:00.008+01:00

So those eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that there's been a lot of discussion of Siemens PLM launching its long awaited NX system on the OS X platform. According to some of the press release "NX is used by leading companies around the globe to design and manufacture some of the world’s most innovative and sophisticated products. Its wide adoption throughout the global manufacturing industry is due in part to its ability to support a wide range of operating environments – including Windows, UNIX and Linux – in a heterogeneous or single operating system deployment." I've been playing with the system for a couple of months, but I wanted to find out a little more about the plans for the system on an on-going basis, so got in touch with Paul Brown, senior director of NX Marketing, Siemens PLM Software.

MacDesign: What functionality will be included and excluded from NX on Mac OS X?
NX on Mac OS X features virtually all of the CAD and CAM functionality in NX 6 along with synchronous technology. This includes all feature and free form modeling, rendering, drafting, assemblies, routing, sheet metal, turning, milling and much more.
The primary functionality not available with NX on Mac OS X is the CAE suite of tools. This is based on initial market demand expectations as well a number of required third party applications that are currently not available on Mac OS X. In addition, some specialty applications such as Mold Wizard and Progressive Die Wizard have not yet been fully tested in this environment. We will continue to monitor and evaluate the business case for these items.

MacDesign: Any insight on development plans for OSX in terms of synchronising platform and OS releases - will there be an OSX lag? NX 6.0.3 is being released and made immediately available on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux simultaneously. The plan is to maintain this synchronous platform release schedule, however, there will be one exception to this before it fully takes effect.

While the next major release of NX for all platforms will be NX 7.5, we are planning an interim release that will be targeted at delivering more Synchronous Technology functionality. This interim release will be limited to the Windows platform. With the NX 7.5 release we will resume shipping concurrently on all platforms.

MacDesign: Any plans to move to a fully cocoa/aqua based user interface rather than using X11/Motif?

Siemens NX runs using X11 to enable the interface and cross platform (as pretty much the same code is used across Mac and Linux) - on the mac front, it does require some tweeking of windows and cursor priorities to get it to work effectively.

We have several customers who use multiple platforms mixing Windows and Linux hardware to suit their needs. To ensure all customers can maximize their productivity our goal is to maintain a common user interface. We will continue to monitor our user community and adjust our strategy if necessary based on the best interest of our customers and our business.

MacDesign: Any other OSX planned releases? Native JT viewer that sort of thing? We have not announced any other plans at this time.

MacDesign: Any insight on user interest would be good too. Size of beta community?
We have experienced strong interest from our beta user community as well as others outside of that community with an interest in the Mac OS X environment.

MacDesign: Lastly. Why now?
Delivering NX on Mac OS X has been an important part of our strategy to give customers their broadest choice of platforms. We have been conducting extensive development and testing to ensure that the product met our standards for performance and quality before it was released. The timing of NX 6.0.3 for the other platforms we support made this a sensible choice to be the launch platform for NX on Mac OS X.

There's some interesting debate going on around this subject all over the place - things have got a little bit heated over at SolidSmack.com (with our old buddy Joe Moak from Formlovesfunction.com wading in at the end with the most reasoned response yet). From my perspective, there's two key things on of late. Vendors are porting older code, that's much easier (typically with a Unix-based) to port to the Apple platform to gain some market share. Then there are new vendors jumping to the space. Gut feeling tells this is something that's going to grow and we'll see more and more in the coming months and year.

Oh and some video joy for ya too.

SolidWorks + iPhone 101

2009-05-13T17:02:00.003+01:00

The evil-mastermind that is Josh Mings at SolidSmack.com has just posted a rather delightfully concise and in-depth tutorial on how to model up an iPhone case in SolidWorks. Check it out here.

How Suhr Guitars is creating music with the Mac

2009-05-06T23:26:00.006+01:00

After taking a mooch around the Mac Pro web-site, I came across this rather interesting story in the Profile's section - on Suhr Guitars. Having paid his dues as a Senior Master Builder at the Fender Custom Shop, John Suhr opened up his own small factory building custom guitars to order in 1997. Partnering up with Steve Smith whose background is in CNC programming, John finally had total control over the entire process of building the ideal electric guitars and basses and with the company building building 150 custom instruments on a monthly basis, things are looking good. According to the story, "Everyone at Suhr Guitars agrees: the Mac has enabled them to advance the business in ways they never considered in the past."

Of course, the story discusses where the Macs are used, what software they run, but aside from a few mentions of CNC machining and a mention of Eagle PCB design (which runs not only OSX and Windows, but also Linux) there was no mention of the hardcore design tools we're really interested in.

So, to find out how they are driving product development, I shot the company over some questions to find out what the deal was, are they using their macs and windows-based design software? Well, I got a pretty rapid response from John Suhr, Founder of the company, who set the record straight.

Unfortunately some of my 3D programs I use on a daily basis are resisting getting with the program on the OSX platform. Such as Solidworks..... I do run Solidworks on my Macs with no problems but find the only reliable way is using boot camp and Windows XP. You also have to "fool" the graphics card to take advantage of "Real View" but that is more of a luxury anyway.
My other main 3D program is Rhino3D which is my go to program to get things done quickly. Rhino3D does have a Mac version in beta which functions very well so far but they are looking at another year for an official release. For Printed circuit board design for our electronics I use "Eagle 5.6" which is available in all operating systems, I wish more software companies would think this direction. I used to use Vellum on the Mac years ago when I worked at Fender Musical.
For business we use Filemaker heavily for all CRM, invoicing etc.
Being all Macs now for the internet, it has easily saved me 5 hours a week dealing with software and operating system problems.
Anything I can do to help spread the word and make these companies like SolidWorks realize they really need to get with the program, or many people like me will look elsewhere.
Thanks

John Suhr

There you go. I think we're starting to see something of a trend here, right? Particularly with SolidWorks. Last thing I want to do is turn this is a crusade, but having spent the last few months going over and over this issue with a great many people, there's a gut feeling that just adding or working out the issues with regards certifying Apple hardware, running Bootcamp, or working with the graphics vendors, makes huge sense. As John says, RealView is nice to have but "more of a luxury anyway".

Is Dassault Systems' Catia V6 coming to OS X?

2009-04-22T11:09:00.005+01:00

News out of the Catia Operators Exchange, currently taking place in Seattle, is that Catia V6 might be ported to the OS X platform. Neil Littell, posts that V6 will run on Ubuntu and OSX. According to a quick Google, Neil is the Product Lifecycle Management Coordinator for the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems (CAVS) at Mississippi State University. I've asked Dassault Systemes for more details on this and will post them as soon as I get 'em. In the meantime, here's a little video of Imagine & Shape. UPDATE - SEE NEXT POST

LG, CROWDspring and Autodesk partner for the future of personal mobile communication competition

2009-04-21T20:54:00.001+01:00

LG Mobile Phones, crowdSPRING and Autodesk have announced a new competition to define the future of personal mobile communication. While it's just for US residents (18 and over), you can have a chance to design your vision of the next revolutionary LG mobile phone and compete for more than whopping $80,000 in awards, $20,000 for the top prize, $10,000 and $5,000 for second and third, then 40 prizes of a grand for the runners up.

According to the particpation web-site, the LG are looking to "Predict what's next." and want to know what you, the designer, thinks mobile phones should look like in "2, 5, or 10 years?" as the web-site says, they're not looking for a "long list of specs or phone ideas that already exist," but rather new concepts or big ideas - but you do have to incorporate the LG logo must be included somewhere.

Entries will in judged on the basis of Need Fulfillment/Market Potential, Creativity/Originality/Innovation as the to leading criteria, then feasibility and Polish/Appeal. Submissions may be "illustrated or rendered in any format - hand sketches, digital drawings, or renderings – rendering tool used will not affect judging process. You may submit as many entries as you like." Autodesk are sponsoring the event and providing a 15 day trial of SketchBook Pro to anyone that enters here. If you're a twitter user, then you can follow it at @LGcompetition

SolidWorks, OS X, Bootcamp and the Certification Quandary

2009-04-15T23:25:00.014+01:00

SolidWorks and Mac. There's something that's been discussed a lot on various forums and boards over the years, but as yet, there's nothing coming except eDrawings as we've already covered. There's been some pretty inaccurate reporting and inevitable smackdown ) then the petition started by Dominik Hoffman starts to resurface and apparently, its got over 4,000 signatures. For those unaware, the petition intro letter reads:

To: SolidWorks Corporation

With Apple continuing to deliver screaming-fast hardware in their G4 line of computers and the new Mac OS X's Unix underpinnings, the Macintosh would be an excellent platform for the SolidWorks 3D CAD system. By porting SolidWorks to Mac OS X, SolidWorks could truly make their flagship "The Standard in 3D Modeling Software" in eliminating its single-platform limitation. SolidWorks could quickly capture the No. 1 marketshare for Mac OS X based CAD systems. SolidWorks and Mac OS X share a common "Ease-of-Use" philosophy, without surrendering power, which would make them a perfect match.

As a user of Mac OS and/or SolidWorks on Windows I would like to make known to SolidWorks Corporation my great interest in seeing SolidWorks on Mac OS X.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

What's interesting is that many of the signatories are students (remember that fact for later) but there's also a bit of meat in terms of commerical user comment. William J. Underwood at Tesla Motors, who felt that "A lot of us are Mac users, forced into PC by nature of available apps and Nazi IT managers!" Elsewhere, David L. Stalling, KC BioMedix commented that "Having Soliworks running natively on the iMAC would greatly aid our medical device development. Make it happen." Final one that grabbed me was Alex Wood at Ishida (an organization with over 200 seats of SolidWorks), commented that "The only thing keeping me on a Windows PC is Solidworks, i'd swap tomorrow if Solidworks was made compatible with OS X"

I shot a few questions over to SolidWorks about their Mac plans, if any and got some interesting answers from Shaun Murphy, CAD product manager at SolidWorks.

Are there any plans to extend your range of Mac offerings?

Shaun Murphy: Not at the present time. We continually monitor our customer base to gauge the level of Mac usage and at the present time there is no pressing need.

I did wonder why it was dimissed quite so easily, so I asked if Murphy could expand a little on the reasons why not. His reply was:

Shaun Murphy: Support for an operating system is a major undertaking for a CAD company due to the legacy support implications. There has to be a demonstrated need for the new operating system by the company’s customer base. Our current research indicates that support for the Mac operating system is not at a level that makes business sense, less than half of one percent of our installed base.

Shaun Murphy: We will continue to monitor this situation and respond to any movements by our installed base to increased support of the Mac platform. If enough of our users want Mac support SolidWorks will provide it.

Are there any resources available for those looking to run SolidWorks under Bootcamp?

Shaun Murphy: Running SolidWorks on a Mac using Bootcamp is not a supported option. Once Bootcamp becomes a supported option resources will be made available.

I get that it's a huge undertaking to port to OS X. SolidWorks' Windows history doesn't help at all (its easier to move unix-based code across - as Siemens has done with NX) but this last one confused me. Bootcamp lets you dual boot a Mac and running Vista or XP pretty nicely and the latest generation of hardware is pretty speedy and powerful. So why no support?

Help?: Lou Gallo over at SolidWorks HEaRD has a few things you should know about. Firstly, he's been covering SolidWorks + Mac for a good long while (here's a link to a good podcast that discusses the pro's and cons). The other thing he's done is put together a guide to patching your graphics driver (when running bootcamp) that will replace your drivers with 'professional' card drivers and let you use all that RealView goodness to its fullest extent.

RealView: it don't work on Bootcamp - unless you get down with Lou's patch instructions.

So, SolidWorks runs fine on Bootcamp, the latest chipsets are up to the job (even if RealView doesn't 'officially' work) and the machines are blazing fast. So why is SolidWorks holding back on certifying the hardware?

Questions and thoughts: What this raises for me is perhaps the whole problem with perceptions. With the release of Bootcamp and the Intel/Nvidia based machines, Apple's hardware is pretty competitive these days and we'll be carrying out some tests to see just how fast these machines run in the next month or so.

But alongside this, there are teams within many organizations that want to go Mac, but because one or two tools are Windows-native, they can't - and SolidWorks is a perfect example. Take the design teams at Trek. Mechanical design is all done using SolidWorks, but if you read this interesting story on the Apple web-site, you'll find that the graphics-based Design team uses mac exclusively. Surely there should be the potential for some consolidation. Single source hardware, the ability to use both OS X and Bootcamp - but that's being held back by SolidWorks and its seeming reluctance to certify SolidWorks for running on Bootcamp.

But I think there's also some short sightedness; particular in the lack of resources for those looking to run SolidWorks using Bootcamp. While the company's research indicates that OS X represents less than half of one percent of their installed base, I'd predict they're going to see that rise in the next few years. Why?

Remember all those students that signed the petition? That's a key thing for me. Informal research we've done and from conversations with other vendors jumping into this space, it's clear that while the desire for OSX or even just Bootcamp support isn't big in today's market, it certainly is going to be in the future - and why?

Because the kids are using Macs. And sooner or later, Kids become Professionals. And Professionals become Buyers. And that generation of potential SolidWorks users is going to be one hell of a lot more fussy about what hardware they run than previous generations. The good news is that peeps like Lou Gallo are here to help out and get this working - certification or not.

iRhino: Quick update with Bob McNeel

2009-04-10T17:14:00.007+01:00

If there's an organisation in the world of Product Development Technology that consistently does intriguing things, long before the others even get close, its McNeel & Associates. Founded in 1980, McNeel is a privately-held, employee-owned company with sales and support offices and affiliates across the globe.

When the company started out developing the Rhinoceros system was in public beta for four years or so, gather numbers of users (in the order of 100,000s). When the Beta ended and commercialisation began, it had a userbase that still outstrips most 3d modelling systems, one that had come to rely on it in their daily working processes. The clever bit was the pricing. Rhino has always been priced relatively low in comparison to other systems that do similar things, so it didn't take a lot to it was off to a good start - a user base that's become reliant on a product, then sell them that product at a much lower price than anyone else can.

Two years ago, at an educational event in Mexico, Bob McNeel, CEO of the company, stood up and announced that the company was bringing Rhinoceros to the Mac platform. The work had been underway for some time and almost immediately available at the website (which is www.irhino3d.com) for beta test. That beta is still underway, it's open to anyone, even for commerical use. You register, get your link and download. Install it and away it goes. It'll have an expiration date on it, but a new release comes out long before your license does (and even if it does, you just get the download and install again). I shot Bob some questions over to find out how things were going - and of course, the first question is, why now?

Bob McNeel: Why not? Actually it has been a market we have been watching for many years. The trick was finding someone that was both a killer OS X and killer Windows programmer. When Marlin showed up and was ready to start on the project we gave him the green light.

What potential market share do you think the mac platform has with the various industry sectors Rhino is working within?

No idea. Well, actually we have a good idea from the WIP (Work in Progress) users what industries they are in, but WIP/Beta users are often very different from the people that actually buy.

How is the development process going?

As expected. We are in no hurry. There are no unexpected bottlenecks.

What stage are you at?

The stages are:
Core functionality with a prototype U/I.
OS X U/I design and development
SDK and macro/scripting language
Plug-ins
Currently, we are about 80% of Stage 1.

What are the challenges you’re facing/issues that you’re seeing?

OS X U/I design and development will be something completely new for us. Apple has offered to help. We really have no idea how long this will take. Our goal is to have a real OS X application.

We expect Rhino OS X will feel very different from Rhino for Windows. Also, the SDK and marco/scripting language is all new work. Currently we use all the of the standard Windows tools like VBScript, .NET, C#, etc.

None of these are available for OS X, but there is a very rich set of development tools… just completely different. All the plug-ins will have to be rewritten. Not just ours but all 3rd party products. Many will not be ported, but hopefully there will be some new ones that are OS X only.

Are you going to implement multi-touch support and how?

I think it is already in. Just a few things that work as expected.

Any idea of a commercialization timeline?

Sometime after Rhino 5 ships. I expect it will be a couple of years. Hopefully we will already have more than 100,000 users by then.

What's the ultimate goal?:

Most important. Our goal is a real OS X application that OS X users love… not a weird Windows port.

Final Thoughts:

iRhino or Rhino OS X is intriguing compared to some of the complex shape description and surfacing based tools coming on stream now. Firstly, it runs on the most basic of hardware and runs very well. I've been using it, without issue at all in terms of stability, on a first generation MacBook Air - which has all the graphics processing of a chocolate bar. That can't be said of other tools at all.

There's absolutely no doubt that this system will be released and made commercially available only when its reach a state of near perfection in terms of linking into the OS X UI and interaction methods. How its being developed, in a public manner, with constant consultation with users from Rhino's wide spectrum of users is fascinating. But ultimately, it's the fact that McNeel that's developing this tool means it'll be something special, fairly priced across the globe and it'll work. I've just got updated and I'll put together some thoughts in the next few weeks to give you an idea of what it can do.

Sign up now and get working www.irhino3d.com. After all, it's free. For a good long while yet.

Review: eDrawings for Mac

2009-04-09T14:30:00.013+01:00

Launched back in 2005, eDrawings for Mac has been around for quite sometime and maybe has fallen a little on the quiet side. Developed by the team at SolidWorks, it brings a native viewer to the Mac platform and gives you a pretty wide range of functionality. For those that haven't come across them before, eDrawings technology allows you to create easily distributable datasets which can contain a mix of 3D and 2D geometry, which you can view, inspect, disassemble - then mark-up, measure and such.

There are eDrawings publishers for the majority of 3D design systems alongside SolidWorks, including Pro/E, NX, Inventor, Solid Edge, Catia and AutoCAD (DWG and DXF). When it comes to actually reading data, the systems supports eDrawings files from these systems as well as DXF/DWG, and native SolidWorks parts and assemblies.

In terms of 3D-based functioanlity, you can pan, zoom and rotate in full 3D (even on a first gen MacBookAir), drag parts out, hide and show or make them transparent and switch quickly (with nicely interpolated animation) between standard views. If the generating system has it stored, it'll auto explode or reassemble an assembly. 3D geometry can be sectioned and inspected.

In terms of drawing support, if the data is output with it in place, an eDrawing can contain both multiple drawing sheets and the underlying geometry, so you can switch between the two to get a real feel for both the form, the assembly as well as inspect dimensions, manufacturing information present.

Drawing views can be worked with and inspected. If the 3D data is present, the two work together very nicely indeed.

One of the interesting things eDrawings gives you is the ability to create mark-up files (which can be stored in the same dataset and redistributed). It has the usual array of redline tools, as well as measurement tools. On that subject, eDrawings publishers will allow you to disable that ability, to protect your IP if that's a concern.

eDrawings has a full range of view, mark-up, redline and inspection tools

Mac limitations: If you look at the base spec sheet for eDrawings and then compare it to the Mac version, then you'll quickly see that there are a number of key things that the system can't do in an Appley-flavour. The big one is the restrictions on data import we've already discussed. If you're working with password protected DWGs, then those won't work at all. The STL out option isn't available (although I would imagine this is something that most people aren't too comfortable with using anyway). Another big one is, if you're working with and passing around simulation data, then while the system can view it, there are none of the specialised tools are available such as Mesh, Legend, etc. Finally, while the original press release claimed otherwise, there is no Professional version of the application.

Final Thoughts: While there are obvious moves across the 3D design technology industry that indicate that there's a rebirth of interest in the Mac platform for design, what is lacking right now, are the tools that allow those involved in the process, but without access to CAD, to involve themselves and participate in the development process. File viewers are few and far between. While eDrawings for Mac doesn't have the full range of file viewing options that its Windows variant does, it does offer some basics and if your organisation is using them, it'll make life much easier. The simple fact that there's a DWG/DXF vieweris intriguing on its own. Oh, and did I mention that this is Free?

Is Autodesk bringing AutoCAD to OSX?

2009-04-09T12:24:00.005+01:00

It seems that someone's flicked the switch at Autodesk, with OS X implementations cropping up across many of its industry division. Media and Entertainment has new versions of Mudbox to compliment the existing tools like Maya. More recently, the Manufacturing Solutions team has launched the 'mother of all surfacers', Alias on OSX to go along side the existing SketchBook Pro product (all of which we'll be covering in some depth shortly).

But now it seems that the grandaddy of them all, AutoCAD, is going to get a look-in too, if customer demand shows there's a market. Shaan Hurley, over at his Between the Lines blog, has a Customer Survey, where the team is looking for interest in an OS X port, what industries and demographics that interest comes from. From there, one assume, they build the justification case (or not).

But what I found truly intriguing was the comments below the post, which go from the benign "i cannot install my autocad 2009 on apple mac.why?its for windows only?" and while there's a fair amount of anti-mac sentiment, there are some fascinating details, such as:

I represent an international yacht design firm and we have been with Autocad and other Autodesk products for nearly 2 decades. Last year we have been moving over to some Macs because we getting just too fed up with hardware/software interface and stability issues. We use a lot of very specific Windows developed software because of our niche industry but we manage to get everything running just fine in VM ware using either XP32 or Vista64bit versions. However it remains a pain running in a shell, disk access through the virtual network link for one slows things down. Anything which can run in the native operating system would be a massive plus. Autocad still remains our core program to push out 2D working drawings and as a result remains the single most used program in the office. Getting that native on a OSX instead of windows would be a big plus. The cost of the hardware is irrelevant in a professional environment compared to any downtime due to software/hardware problems. In the office you just want a machine which works and keep working Macs have proven to be far more reliable to us than any Windows based PC in the past year.

Posted by Alexander Simonis of Simonis Voogd Design

There was one common negative theme there, with one commentor questioning market share, with "you're looking at 3~6% of the computers in the world" - from talking to the Alias team in particular, there's a much much larger percentage when you boil it down to the Creative user, whether they be in architecture, industrial design or elsewhere.

coming soon...

2009-04-09T01:10:00.000+01:00

honest