Cadalyst - January 2008 - (Page 38)

mcadmodeling Figure 3. This quad-bike design was the first-place winner in the Alibre Design Xpress contest. It was designed by Grant Marshall. Figure 4. CoCreate OneSpace Modeling Personal Edition lets you build history-free models and then create drawings. Figure 5. trueSpace has some amazing animation and rendering capabilities. It’s not free, but it’s not very expensive, relatively speaking. of standard modeling formats (something you usually have to upgrade for [figure 2, p. 37]), and creates production-ready drawings that are associative back to your model. It even has photorealistic capabilities. Now for the downside: It has no assembly capability. No sheet metal. No standard parts library. No available add-ons. And last, but not least, the license is good only for one year. Autodesk hopes you will like it enough at the end of your license agreement to buy it for somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,000. Arguably the leader in the midrange 3D solid-modeling industry, SolidWorks presents SolidWorks Personal Edition. To download it online you need to sign up for a free seminar on 3D modeling, which is very valuable. You also can contact your SolidWorks reseller directly, and if you ask nicely they’ll send you a CD. I like this approach because it nets you backup media. You get the basic core of the production version of SolidWorks on the CD, but it has restrictions. For example, you can’t use it for commercial output; it has its own file format that cannot be opened by any other version of SolidWorks. The license will expire after 90 days, but you get the option to renew for free. It places a watermark on anything you print that clearly identifies it as the noncommercial version. You can’t export to any other program, so the files you create will exist in SolidWorks PE pretty much forever. Alibre Design Xpress (figure 3) seems to have one of the best overall mixes of capabilities that I’ve seen so far. You can do parametric 3D design, assemblies (of as many as five parts), and even 2D drafting. It even provides user support! One of the nice things about Alibre is its built-in tutorial offering. The tutorials are the same as for the Professional (paid) version of the software, and they help you get up and running very quickly. If you register for Alibre Design Xpress, you get access to more functionality such as data exchange and the ability to create assemblies of as many as 10 parts. For the nonhistory-based modelers among us, CoCreate’s OneSpace Modeling Personal Edition (87 MB) lets you create great 3D models and 2D drawings (figure 4). You are limited to as many as 60 parts, which is the greatest number of any free application. Automatic feature recognition is a tremendous capability even for a paid program, much less for a free one. It lets designers use data from anywhere. freeform than any of the other programs I’ve discussed here. Designers start with a primitive form and push and pull it into whatever shape they want. You aren’t going to find many programs in this price range that also do animations and rendering. And finally, Robert McNeel and Associates’ Rhino ($995) is another program users can get into for free. Huh? You can download a fully functional version of the software and pay for it later when you want to use it commercially. It’s used heavily in the industrial design community, and with good reason. Its capability is on par with the best out there in freeform modeling and rendering. It’s a great way to start and a great tool for continued use. It’s compatible with so many different file formats that some people use it simply as a translator. Something for Nothing Why do companies give away their software for free? They have several reasons. One is to make a splash, as Alibre did when it first released Alibre Design Xpress (back then it was called X CAD to heighten the mystery). Another reason is to gain market share. Companies also do it because they have other software they want you to buy, and the free stuff acts as a hook so they can reel you in. And then, most often companies want you to be able to learn how their software works so that when you upgrade to high-priced capability, you’ll think of them first. C Mike Hudspeth, IDSA, is an industrial designer, artist, and author based in St. Louis, Missouri. Not for Free Sound Off! Communicate with your peers about a wide variety of MCAD-related topics on the Cadalyst MCAD Discussion Forum at http://forums.cadalyst.com/. Registration is free. Sign up today! Of course, not all software is free. But some software is still an exceptional bargain, even if you have to pay for it. Take Caligari’s trueSpace ($595, see figure 5). It might not really be considered CAD because drafting is basically nonexistent, but nonetheless it’s good for modeling. trueSpace is a lot more 38 January 2008 | cadalyst | www.cadalyst.com http://forums.cadalyst.com/ http://www.cadalyst.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Cadalyst - January 2008

Cadalyst - January 2008 Contents Editor's Window Cad Central Chasing the Dolphins CAD that Won’t Break the Bank AliasStudio 2008 — Design and Visualization Software VectorWorks 2008 — CAD/BIM Authoring Software Dell Precision M4300 — Mobile Workstation What’s in Store for 2008? Low- or No-Cost CAD Goliath Reinvented Doin’ the DEED Cad Cartoon Issue Indexes The Return of Hot Tip Harry

Cadalyst - January 2008

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