[rafaelo]

[quote="ricardo"]Rafaelo: Tell me something, has alias changed studio's interface or it's the same PowerAnimator 7.8 that I saw on studio 10 or 11?

Ricardo Hi, no big change on the ui really, If I remember well Alias has only make two really big changes on the ui causing lots of discomfort on the users, maybe that is the cause they have been very conservative regarding to changes on the ui, I haven't upgrade since 10 so don't know how the V13 is looking this days, but looking at videos on their website seems like there is some neat changes on the icons and ui as well.

regards

Rafael

[-Adrian]

Rafael, i'm a Modonaut myself and i can tell you that Modo is not suitable for precision work, definitely get a nurbs modeler for that kind of thing.

[deadalvs]

thanks guys!

a problem is that there certainly are many cool packages that handle stuff well, but i can not try all of them...

maybe You guys post some example pictures that show the special features of the individual pieces of soft from Your daily work? of course rendered with maxwell... (let's hope maxwell supports nurbs soon!)

example:
spline modelling, nurbs booleans, ...

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?

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deadalvs

[Mihai]

deadalvs, you have to think more in terms of what you would like to do with your models, not only modeling feature set.

Do you actually want to manufacture the stuff you model, or is it more for concept work? One of the reasons Catia or Solidworks costs so much more is that they have powerful features to help you make models ready for prototyping and manufacture. For example they make molds out of your models with a few clicks, and then let you test to see if the mold will work or if you will need to make adjustments to your model.

Another thing is organisation. If you have projects with 10 000 pieces, which you want to reuse in scenes as references across a whole work group, then Rhino will not be enough.

I feel Rhino is more suited in the area of making quick concepts, and later taking the nurbs data and using it as a base to model in another package like Catia.

So if you just want to start playing with Nurbs then Rhino is very much OK. Also SolidThinking looks very nice, and it has construction history.

[Thomas An.]

Another thing is organisation. If you have projects with 10 000 pieces, which you want to reuse in scenes as references across a whole work group, then Rhino will not be enough.

Rhino has block instances for that reason. It is possible to use blocks within a file or import blocks from other files (referenced). Changing the original will cause updates to all instances.

[Mihai]

There's more to it than that though. Annotations, part library, automatic placements, customizing the components that make up a reference model but still keeping the relationship with the original model etc....

[John Layne]

My primary modelling package is SolidWorks, SolidWorks is mainly an Engineering CAD package.

If you want to design products or machinery it's ideally suited to these tasks. SolidWorks is not a freeform surface modeller, it does have inbuilt surface modelling just good enough for most product design. If you are looking to model organic shapes or just looking to produce concept models you are better off using something like Rhino.

When I bought SolidWorks about 5 years ago, it cost around NZ$18,000 (Roughly US$12,000) and I currently pay around NZ$3,000 yearly for upgrades and service. Note the price has dropped significantly since then. At the time I bought SolidWorks Catia was around NZ$90,000 for the base package, Catia is sold in a modular format, ie the advanced Surface modeller is an additional charge.

Catia and SolidWorks are owned by the same Company Dassault Systemes. I'd only use Catia if someone would pay me to design an Airbus from scratch

Note I have had a quick play with Rhino, the apparent lack of an inbuilt drawing module to produce engineering drawings makes it next to useless for someone like me. Plus after using a history tree based modeller like SolidWorks I found it very frustrating to alter an existing model in Rhino. In SolidWorks if I want to change an M5 Tapped hole to a M4, I just double click on that feature in the history tree and 2 clicks changes all the features related to that hole. That change from M5 to M4 would also automatically propagate to the engineering drawing linked to that model and an assembly models.

Rhino looks like a great package for conceptual design work, the surface modelling tools appear very powerful. I wish I had some of those tools within SolidWorks.

I have a demo Video showing the, very basic, work-flow of SolidWorks. The Video is at the bottom of my "About" page note it's 18Mbs.
www.solidengineering.co.nz/about.htm

[deadalvs]

aw god...



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there we see why that software costs that damn much...

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which of all these packages can be scripted for parametric design? this would be the interesting part...

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deadalvs

[John Layne]

You might also look at SolidThinking, I recently asked for a quote. SolidThinkng appears to combine the features of SolidWorks and Rhino. Plus it runs on Mac unlike SolidWorks, Catia etc

http://www.solidthinking.com/products/comparative.htm

It comes in 3 flavours
Forma costs US$495
Design US$2,745
Vantage US$4,995 (A similar package to SolidWorks, ie includes an engineering drawing module but, probably, with better surface modelling features)

Most companies including SolidWorks and SolidThinking have Student packages at very little cost.

The biggest advantage SolidWorks has over SolidThinking is it' larger user base, hence it' easier to get work.

Other similar, Solid Modelling, packages to SolidWorks are SolidEdge and Autodesk Inventor (I don't think any of these will run on Mac).

[Maximus3D]

But as usual you should ofcourse try them out before you spend a huge pile of cash on such a piece of software to see if you like it and if the shoe fits you and your workflow. Otherwise you sit there ripping every tiny bit of hair out from yourself after spending your lifesavings on something you in the end hate working with.

Download trials or similar and give them a twirl, whichever one makes you hover 5 inches above the chair when you play around with it is the one you choose

/ Max

[Eric Lagman]

My primary modelling package is SolidWorks, SolidWorks is mainly an Engineering CAD package.

SolidWorks is not a freeform surface modeller, it does have inbuilt surface modelling just good enough for most product design. If you are looking to model organic shapes or just looking to produce concept models you are better off using something like Rhino.

Solidworks 2007 is supposed to have a new push pull feature with a mesh like rhino does for freeform surfaces.

As far as your intial question Miha is right. What do you want to do with your models? If you want to design for manufacturing these are the tools you use. Catia and Alias Studio tools are very high end, and you must have quite a chunk of change, laying around or plan on trying to pirate them (which I dont encourage). Not to mention the learning curve is pretty high for apps like those.

If you just want to do concept renderings with your models Rhino is a good choice. Rhino is more of a support tool for programs like Solidworks that have weaker surface creation tools. Base surface bodies are imported in, and the rest of the features to create a production ready part are managed in the feature model tree. It would be suicide to try and do a complicated product design with all the internal features details etc. because once your design has to change you would spend quite a bit of time tweaking surfaces that arent driven by easily changable sketch geometry. The beauty of apps with feature trees is they allow for easy modifications. When it comes to manufacturing parts there are always modifications from inital design.

[deadalvs]

for me, RP (Rapid Prototyping) is the most important topic.

we here at the ETH have gotten a new robot which can "produce" parts within the size 6.5 m x 3 m x 2 m (drilling, putting, ...)
the idea behind the chair that bought the robot was to develop approaches in (parametric) design and thus it would be interesting for us students to get involved with a software that can output exact geometries and then translated into robomove which accesses the robot. we fabricated polygonal objects with 1500 holes in it (all holes oriented differently, NO way with maya to visualize because of booleans and nurbs!!!) and now, we are programming the robot to build up a brick wall...
for the precise and PARAMETRIC approach towards design it was my idea to get some experience with such soft...

i think for me personally the most pleasant app would be (alias) studio, i think.
we also have a 3d printer here at the ETH for RP...

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deadalvs

[mapro]

for me RP is also very important. We use a Perfactory mini System. The software I use is Rhino and VX (www.vx.com). VX is a Construction programm with history and cam Modul ...What i can not do in VX i do in Rhino.
The good thing is, you can ask VX for the cross over Program. You have to send them the invoice of any CAD software and you get the VX full version for the price of one year maintanance. So the Software costs me only 2800.- Euro instead of 30000.- Euro.

Marcus

[deadalvs]

i decided to have a look at SolidThinking 6.5 on mac and AutoStudio on pc.

as You guys said, there's a nice edu version available for ST and for studio, there's one here to get:
https://www.journeyedeurope.com/selectCountry.asp

(i just downloaded the free trial for studio and i'm waiting for the confirmation of the free ST demo)

let's get it ooon...!

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deadalvs

[deri]

It sounds like you need to be looking at the Solidworks /VX/Rhino end - if you're a student, Solidworks do a good cheap student licence I think, there's a good online comunity with some VERY knowledgeable people and it's heaps better than Rhino for part management, but not as good at the curvy swooping shapes. VX is not as nice to use as Solidworks (Solidworks is IMO the easiest 3D package I've ever used - stuff kinda makes sense, but maybe that's just me!) but is far more powerful on the surfacing side and creating solids off the surfaces - it's a kind of Rhino on steroids, with part management and all sorts of other fancy things, but you need to keep using it to keep up to speed.
I keep coming back to Rhino because it seems to be the "utility" 3D package - it's crap at 2D drafting, but I generally end up doing most of the really problematic bits of work on single components in there - it seems the most flexible surfacing package out, while keeping the CAD numerical input options. The fact that there seems to be a growing range of good plugins at reasonable cost seems a bonus. I'm looking at coupling it with Silo to do the polygin side if things, which makes a powerful package for not a huge outlay.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is no one package that will do it all - learn to flip between them to use the right tool for the job. I work on various marine projects (unfortunately not megayachts - mainly fishing boats!!) where you're going from NURBS surfaces to solid modelling to 2D DXF components for cutting and producing STL data for rendering and a bit of rapid prototyping - all in different packages. That's the real world of engineering and I'd imagine most other people on here are the same?
Cheers
Deri