[knurrebusk]

Perhaps Maximus can dig into this, I´m more than happy to help design in future succes .
I do not care about money, but do care if talent is wasted.
MR is all about talent, so is nature.


Thank´s for the great snow mat!

[Fernando Tella]

where is el nurbaitor-dim0 when we need him...

Indeed!

[knurrebusk]

The topic is very interesting though!

Subdivision make everything go back to modelling, but no further.
All of this has been done via Lightscape studies.

It´s all about art!

MR work better as the great new tool of art.

[bjorn.syse]

So, I call forth this nurbaitor dim0 to give us his judgement on the matter!

[def4d]

i think everything has been said, but here i can't decide wich technique i prefer, in fact it depends on what you have to do
I love the Nurbs precision and facility, and i think it's nearer from "reality" when modelling product design, but i miss the freedom we have with polymodelling, and its speed in most of cases

[bjorn.syse]

I agree, but how about these newly emerging techniques that are dimming the border between these workflows? I'm mainly refering to T-Splines, which brings the Box modeling approach into Rhino and produces NURBS surfaces.

Has anyone had any experience with the Freeform or ClayTools packages from sensable.com? Used with Haptic arms? They claim on their website that the output can be converted to NURBS.

- Björn

[w i l l]

Why use either? Parametric software like Solidworks is also quite common for industrial design.

[bjorn.syse]

will, I haven't used SolidWorks, but is it very intuitive to work with?

[w i l l]

That probably depends on how easily you can get your head around particular types of software - I started with Solidworks so software like Modo, Cinema 4D etc seems alien to me - but once I got used to them they're no problem too. The fact that it's parametric is more important though. I.e. if you need to make changes you go back and change a feature in the feature tree and the rest updates.

[bjorn.syse]

ah, probably. Yes, that part of really rocks. I know StudioTools has a bit more of that than Rhino does..

[Eric Lagman]

Solidworks is a good choice for ID. I have used it in my last two jobs and my current one as an industrial designer. It works good for concepting, but that depends on what industry you are in and what types of products you are concepting for. If it is very amorphous shapes you have to create all the time you may want to stear clear of solidworks. For most product catagories it works fine for modelling though. Like Will said the history tree is a huge advantage over straight up nurbs software like studio tools and rhino alone.

Also like Will said the learning curve on it will depend on what background of modelling you come from. Parametric is a whole different animal than sub-d. I started out with solidworks, but was able to teach myself a few sub-d programs and can now do both. You may struggle with it at first if you come from a sub-d background, but once you get over the curve I think you would be very happy. Can you get your hands on a seat or get a demo from your production guys?

[bjorn.syse]

Thanks for your comments Eric,

Well, the thing is, I'm trying to get a general idea about these techniques to help a associate/client of mine with this decision. I know they have access to SolidWorks since before, and the whole deal is that they think that it is too limiting in their work. So, they've sticked to 2d-sketches and Illustrator stuff.

Me, myself I haven't tried SolidWorks but only worked in Alias Studio, IronCAD and Rhino. Maybe I should give it a go though..

Regards,

- Björn