The solidThinking Blog

solidThinking on Computer Graphics World

Alex Mazzardo — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:43:56 +0000

Computer Graphics World has just published an online exclusive on solidThinking written by Kathleen Maher, senior analysts at Jon Peddie Research and editor in chief of JPR’s “TechWatch”.

Click here to read the full article.

Some highlights:

“SolidThinking is a lovely industrial design tool with a very graphical interface. The company’s tools are NURBS-based, and the software has combined the ability to directly model an object but maintain relationships through a construction tree. As the company says, industrial designers like to make changes, so it offers designers tools that let them try out ideas iteratively without destroying the design intent or, if appropriate, just grab and move features.”

“SolidThinking’s Morphogenesis technology lets users apply some very basic constraints to a rough block and gives it some guidelines as to how much material to save or remove. The software goes to work removing as much material as possible while still maintaining structural integrity. The result is a skeleton that can then be used to develop new ideas.”

solidThinking Presentations at CimWorks, Spain March 9, 10, and 11

Alex Mazzardo — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 19:27:53 +0000

CimWorks, solidThinking Spain reseller, is hosting three solidThinking presentations for Spanish industrial designers. The two-hour presentations will be given by CimWorks and solidThinking Product Specialist, Adel Matar.

MADRID
Date/Time: March 9, 11:00 am
Location: CimWorks
Avda. America 32, desp 251, pta1
28922 Alcorcón

VALENCIA
Date/Time: March 10, 11:00 am
Location: AIMME
Parque Tecnológico de Paterna, Avda. Leonardo Da Vinci 38
46980 PATERNA (Valencia)
Directions

BARCELONA
Date/Time: March 11, 11:00 am
Location: ELISAVA Escola Superior de Disseny
La Rambla 30-32 (entrada por Plaza de Joaquim Xirau)
08002 Barcelona
Directions

Contact: Yolanda Garijo
ygarijo@cimworks.es
Tel. 93 544 14 60

User Story: Automotive Lighting Rear Lamps, Design in Light

Alex Mazzardo — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 22:56:18 +0000

Automotive Lighting is a leader in the research, development, and production of a complete range of technologies for front and rear lighting, fog lights, head-lamp, and other electronic components.

Automotive Lighting Rear Lamps Italia, a division of Automotive Lighting, has used solidThinking since 2001 in three phases of the product development cycle: ideation, development, and visualization.

Click here to download the PDF and read the story.

FISHER-UNITECH Webcast for North America: solidThinking 3D Tool for Industrial Design

Alex Mazzardo — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 11:26:54 +0000

FISHER/UNITECH, a leading provider of Product Lifecycle Management solutions, will host a FREE, one-hour webcast to demonstrate how you can enrich and accelerate your design inspiration using solidThinking on February 4, 2010 – 7:00 AM EST (Eastern Standard Time).

You’ll learn about:

Morphogenesis form-generation technology – a filter used to replicate natural processes using algorithms
New 3D manipulators for translation, scaling and rotation
Real-time and progressive rendering
A new materials library with environment maps and scene sets
New complex reflectance shaders for generating lifelike visual elements
High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDRI) capabilities

Click here to register.

February QuickStart Sessions for solidThinking

Alex Mazzardo — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 10:53:40 +0000

Duration: 1 hour.

Here are the dates:

February 2, 2010 – 10:00 AM CET (Central European Time)

February 11, 2010 – 2:00 PM EST (Eastern Standard Time)

February 16, 2010 – 10:00 AM EST (Eastern Standard Time)

February 25, 2010 – 2:00 PM EST (Eastern Standard Time)

solidThinking Inspired 8.0 Review on DEVELOP3D

Alex Mazzardo — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 22:54:29 +0000

The January 2010 issue of DEVELOP3D includes a full review of solidThinking Inspired 8.0.

Click here to download the PDF copy of the review. The article is also available on-line.

Here a few excerpts:

“solidThinking has an incredibly rich toolkit for conceptual design.”

“The surface creation selection is first class and can be used to create very high quality forms, but most importantly it is quick and easy to create any number of design variants and concepts. And with the new rendering tools, colours, surface treatment and material options can be quickly and accurately evaluated.”

“Of course, a major part of this release is the introduction of solidThinking Inspired and the morphogenesis tools. I’ve been playing with this non-stop since I first got my hands on it and it’s a fascinating tool for the designer. Using a world-class technology as its foundation, it lets designers explore structure and the performance requirements of a product at a very early stage of the design process.”

“The Inspired interface is clean, sparse and incredibly intuitive and the designer uses a combination of icons and direct input to define where the shape is restrained and where loading occurs.”

“In many cases, the system offers up ideas that might not be immediately obvious and which can be the basis for creating truly intriguing and standout products. But the most interesting thing is that this ‘creative’ process is also generating forms based on sound structure”.

Live QuickStart Training for solidThinking

Alex Mazzardo — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:33:27 +0000

You can register for FREE attendance to the next solidThinking QuickStart Training sessions.

A solidThinking Product Specialist will introduce you to the concepts and tools of solidThinking.

Duration: 1 hour.

Here are the dates:

January 12, 2010 – 1:00 PM EST (Eastern Standard Time)

January 14, 2010 – 1:00 PM CET (Central European Time)

January 19, 2010 – 1:00 PM EST (Eastern Standard Time)

January 21, 2010- 9:00 AM CET (Central European Time)

January 26, 2010 – 1:00 PM EST (Eastern Standard Time)

From the Press: I.D. Magazine

Alex Mazzardo — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 12:11:06 +0000

In its latest issue I.D. Magazine covered solidThinking Inspired 8.0
and the new morphogenesis™
form-generation technology that allows to grow efficient shapes in response to environmental forces and pressures.

“Designers and engineers can use the software to develop new biomimetics forms or test the strenght of existing shapes.”

I.D. Magazine, Ian Volner
January/February 2010 issue
PDF here

Tip: Lighting an interior with just one light

Alex Mazzardo — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 16:22:20 +0000

Lighting an interior that only receives natural light through doors or windows can be a difficult task. In fact, for the most part, the lighting of the interior comes from the light bouncing off the walls, floor and ceiling. In order to achieve a good result, this ‘bouncing’ must be handled properly. Here is a tip on how to obtain good lighting with just one light source in a scene like the one represented in the image below.

This scene does not contain any light. In order to simulate the natural light, follow the below steps:
- add a light to the scene using the Light tool that you find in the modelling toolbar;
- place the light anywhere in the scene;
- open the Shading panel, right-click on “Light [none]” in the shader tree and choose “simple sky”.

Now we need to adjust intensity and shadows. Set them as in the picture below.

At this point, if we render we can have an idea of where the direct lighting hits the floor (see image below). The scene is dark because we have not yet activated the ‘bouncing’ of the light.

In solidThinking, there are different ways to activate and control the light’s bouncing. In this case we will use a method that provides extremely fast, high-quality and natural-looking results.

We use the Final Gather algorithms that we can activate in the Rendering section of the Shading panel. Once it is enabled, we just need to control and adjust some parameters, as shown in the images below.

Once we have set these parameters, we can render and see the final result (see image below).

Tip: Using Sew Tolerance to perform Round

Alex Mazzardo — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:29:20 +0000

In some cases, the Round modeling tool does not highlight some of the edges that you would like to round. This can happen because there are gaps. As a consequence, you cannot apply radii to these edges.

To verify the presence of gaps, click the ESC key to close the Round tool and use the Tolerance Check tool (see image below).

In order to solve the problem, the best way is to first verify the geometry and then close the gaps by taking advantage of the ConstructionTree™ structure that will allow you to apply changes to the model and update the geometry.

In some cases, you may also prefer to perform the operation without fixing the geometry.

To do this, choose the Round tool, then select the object. Now, use the CTRL+ENTER shortcut to close the tool without adding radii (They will be added later). Increase the Sew Tolerance as displayed in the image below.

You should increase the Sew Tolerance by small increments until you get the following panel (see image below). This panel informs you that the number of edges has changed. Just click OK.

Now, by using a bigger value for Sew Tolerance (see image below), all the edges are highlighted.

At this point, you can click the Insert Radius checkbox to add the radius you need.

Remember that in order to perform the operation, you will need to apply radii to ALL the edges that had gaps (they were displayed in yellow when you used the Tolerance Check). Of course, you can also add any other radius that you need.

SV1 Stage Piano from Korg: a Cool Vintage Look

Alex Mazzardo — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:39:17 +0000

The lastest SV1 Keyboard from Korg is a cool piece of design with a vintage look. The placement and ergonomics of the controls are excellent. A pleasure to play.

Korg has been a solidThinking user since 2005.

For more information, read the Korg case study and DEVELOP3D article featuring Korg and solidThinking.

The designer of the new SV1 is Paolo Capeci of Korg Italy. s.p.a.

Images are courtesy of Korg Italy s.p.a.

solidThinking launches Chinese and Japanese Web sites

Alex Mazzardo — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:04:34 +0000

We’re pleased to share that the solidThinking web site is now available in Chinese and Japanese languages to support our international user community.

The language setting can be selected from the drop-down list located at the top left of the solidThinking site.

More languages are coming soon.

solidThinking at Euromold 2009

Alex Mazzardo — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:56:15 +0000

solidThinking 8.0 and solidThinking Inspired will be demonstrated at Euromold 2009. Held Dec. 2-5 at the Exhibition Center in Frankfurt, Germany, EuroMold is an international meeting place for designers and engineers in the moldmaking, tooling, design and application development industries.

solidThinking will exhibit the new and enhanced features of its version 8.0 software in Hall 8 at booth L128 alongside its German reseller, work@solution. Attendees will have the opportunity to see live demonstrations of solidThinking’s new morphogenesis™ technology.

Come and meet us!

Euromold 2009

December 2-5, 2009

Messe Frankfurt – Germany

Hall 8.0, Booth L128

The solidThinking booth at Euromold 2008

solidThinking exhibitions in China

Alex Mazzardo — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:15:07 +0000

To sustain expansion into Asian market, solidThinking is present in two important design events held in China.

The 4th ICCIE (International Cultural & Creative Industry Expo) will consist of 6 main components, i.e., Key Activities, Exhibitions, Forums/Summits, Promotions and Trade Fairs, Creative Activities and Art Performances.

The China National Convention Center will be the main venue for conferences and the China International Exhibition Center the main venue for exhibitions. 18 exhibition areas under different themes will be organized during November 26-29, 2009 covering a total exhibition area of 65,000m2, in parallel to which, the 4th ICCIE will arrange 9 subsessions, 9 quality-oriented forums/summits, 9 promotions/trade fairs, 10 creative activities and 5 performances.

4th Beijing International Cultural & Creative Industry Expo
November 25-26, 2009 (Exhibition)
International Exhibition Center, Beijing, China
Hall 4, Booth 4113-4114

Part of Guangzhou Design Week, the International Design Expo (Dec. 4 – 8, 2009) is one of the most influential comprehensive design exhibition in China. Since 2006, exhibition area has added up to 70.000 sq meters, boasting more than 100,000 professional visitors from design institutions as well as brands at home and aboard.

Int’l Design Expo 2009 covers a wide range of fields including architecture and landscape design, interior design, industrial design and graphic design. It plays the roles as an information center for sharing worldwide cutting-edge design trends and biz platform for designers and branding enterprises, leads trends life style, improving brands images to win the market opportunity.

The Guangzhou Design Week is endorsed & promoted worldwide by three of the top design organizations, such as International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID), International Council of Graphic Design Associations (ICOGRADA), and International Federation of Interior Architects/Designers (IFI).

Guangzhou Design Week
International Design Expo
December 4-8, 2009
Guangzhou Jinhan Exhibition Center
Hall 2, Booth 518

From the Press: DEVELOP3D at the solidThinking Product Day

Alex Mazzardo — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:23:20 +0000

DEVELOP3D recently covered solidThinking 8.0 and solidThinking 8.0 Inspired with two articles which followed the recent solidThinking Product Day in Ludwigsburg, Germany.

About solidThinking

There’s been a debate raging on a recent post… with a reader questioning why you would want a history tree when working with complex surface forms. In short, seeing solidThinking in action answers those questions. By maintaining a fully featured history, by linking the seemingly simple curve forms you use to create surfaces, then the maintaining an intelligent history of the edits that you make (such as moving control points, pushing and pulling geometry), you have a toolset that’s perfectly linked for creating multiple design iterations, new concepts and new models in a very short space of time.”

“…concepts, ideas and forms… can be created, played with and worked in a fraction of the time you’d take to do it in a general purpose modelling systems. And the reason you can do that is because you’re using an intelligent modelling system tuned for the process, rather than a generic surface modelling tool.”

“European HyperWorks Technology Conference 2009: solidThinking Product Day” by Al Dean

Nov 2, 2009

About solidThinking Inspired

“What solidThinking Inspired is about is giving the design community a new tool that, while it’s based on robust proven technology (as used by the likes of Airbus for optimising wing spans or leading architects, SOM, for designing high-rise buildings) its delivered in a manner that enables its use for creativity, rather than simulation. This is a tool that’s intended for finding new design alternatives, for providing, as the name suggests, inspiration, when working on new products. By bringing this type of technology, removing the complexity, but retaining the robustness, designers have the ability to research new structures for any given performance requirement and experiment further. solidThinking, a maker of 3-D design software, thinks it has hit on something big by borrowing a page from nature. The latest release of its software has something called a morphogenesis tool, which amounts to a filter designers can use to tweak their projects. The filter stems from research done around algorithms that try to mimic how human bones grow and support weight.”

“European HyperWorks Tech Forum: Day 1 continued: A quick peek at solidThinking Inspired” by Al Dean

Nov 4, 2009