Alternative modelling programs
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@watkins said:
Dear Lewis,
Many thanks for the detailed reply. By the way, do you teach at a Higher Education Institute? If so, I suggest you contact your SpaceClaim rep and ask what the deal is for an educator. You might be pleasantly surprised.
Kind regards,
BobI believe they will just give me a license while I'm an instructor, Bob...but I will contact them and find out exactly what the mechanism for that is. Thanks.
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Bob,
I met with the local rep just to get a sense of where the program was going before I taught the class, and I brought up Spaceclaim because it is a "local product" which makes much of its interchangeability with Rhino. And it really does work read and write 3DM files well. And it's about the least money you can spend on a BRep solid modeler.
But the rep was utterly contemptuous..."Everything I could ever want to do with that program I could do faster with Rhino." That is hardly a statement I could challenge, but the odd issue is that Rhino is (even when it makes a "solid" object) really just making a closed NURBS polysurface, not a solid in the same sense as a BRep modeler (which is what Spaceclaim makes). There are some "solid editing tools" now available in Rhino, but for all but the most simple objects they tend to fail (it's apparently related to the old Boolean operations/trimmed NURBS surface limitations), requiring one to operate at the level of individual surfaces again.
The rep is an industrial designer, not an engineer or an architect, so this may be simply his experience or his applications for modeling software.
Right now, I'm a little more interested in MOI than Spaceclaim as a way of producing "swoopy" 3D things in a quick, intuitive fashion, but I'll probably eventually end up getting licenses to both. (I tend to get deals as an educator.) On the other hand, I've been using Rhino, by itself, for six years so I can generally get any shape I want with a minimum of fuss...
Incidentally, in case you are wondering, the most astonishing development in the Rhino world I discovered during my meeting is not some secondary program but a beta plugin called
"explicit history."http://en.wiki.mcneel.com/default.aspx/McNeel/ExplicitHistoryPluginMainPage.html
Youtube:
It's a visual, node-based scripting language!
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Dear Lewis.
That is pretty much it. I was surprised when I found out. Like AutoDesk's Inventor package, I was expecting a good educational discount, but SpaceClaim has obviously decided to promote the software in schools and universities. A wise move as today's student is tomorrow's user and buyer.
I will let you know how I get on when I have the software. I have too much to do at the moment and so I don't want to be distracted by something new. Sketchup is bad enough.
Regards,
Bob -
Solid modelling - Inventor
Surface modelling - SketchUp Pro
CAD - ChoiceCAD (16 bit UK version, available now as AllyCAD) This was my second CAD program, after X-CAD on my Amiga, and I still love it for quick 2D drawings.
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Has anyone here tried silo? it looks quite interesting (and more importantly a bargain!)
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I just downloaded it. The interface looked very easy to get into. Very interesting modelling app.
Previously I've used Rhino. Think it was version 3, or 2, we used at uni. We used it mostly to create 3D working drawings of the models we made. (I did a modelmaking course)
Had a quick look at the Penguin render for it, but never really got into experimenting. Haven't tried v4. Is it much different from v3? -
How about Flamingo or any of the other zoo animals?
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@thomthom said:
How about Flamingo or any of the other zoo animals?
The new version of Flamingo is (or soon will be) the version of this
for Rhino. (Accurender is another McNeel line.) I've downloaded the beta (or is it alpha?) but I haven't had a chance to play with it much. The built in Rhino Render has been improved so much that for many purposes it is almost enough, with a judicious addition of post-processing and some layering with Penguin, for my purposes.
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Lewis, look at http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=235
sketchup had it...mmm RPS -
@ilay7k said:
Lewis, look at http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=235
sketchup had it...mmm RPSI know...I have a beta copy for the upcoming SketchUp version.
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@unknownuser said:
@lewiswadsworth said:
I know...I have a beta copy for the upcoming SketchUp version.
h8!!!
I beg your pardon, Julian...what does that mean? Here's the link...you just sign up and they give you download rights.
http://nxt.accurender.com/files/folders/arnxt/entry1668.aspx
Anyway, weren't we talking about other modelers?
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@remus said:
Has anyone here tried silo? it looks quite interesting (and more importantly a bargain!)
That really looks almost too good to be true for a mesh modeler. Something else to add to the list of things to play with...and just when I was happily settling down to play with my faculty license to MOI!
Nevercenter is based in Salt Lake City...I've never heard of them or this product before. Has anyone here ever used it for anything?
Thomas, most importantly Rhino 4 added 2D layout capabilities (something like ACAD's paperspace) so that you can use it as a full CAD solution without resorting to any plugins or other programs. I haven't had to upgrade my AutoCAD license since Rhino 4 came out...what a relief to tell those AutoDesk jerks what they can do with their extortion--I mean, subscription--packages!
McNeel made a great deal of improvements to mesh and solids handling for Rhino 4, but I frankly have not found the changes affecting my workflow much.
I do have the newer version of Penguin for Rhino, as well...I actually find Penguin a little buggy, but in general I can if necessary use it to produce decent NPR renderings.
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hmmm,
Rhino 4 sounds interesting, I was using Rhino v2 years ago but I moved away from it and went through a naive snails-pace "Only Autodesk for everything" phase.
Has anybody tried Wings 3d?, I downloaded it the other day, it's free, certainly simple to use and looks like it could be pretty useful.
http://www.wings3d.comI really like the feel of MOI, the interface is great but I don't think it is that straightforward to use.
Remus originally wrote
@unknownuser said:Id really like to find soemthing thats better for producign plans than SU and layout.
I am constantly hunting the evolutionary missing link - a 2d cad handshake with Sketchup. It pains me to say it but I still think AutoCAD or a flavour of Intellicad (such as ProgeCAD) are hard to beat for this. I tried Spirit but I didn't understand it at all.
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I'm interested in a package that'll be suited for landscape. I some times get projects where there's allot of landscape, large terrain and vegetation. And that makes SU choke just thinking of it.
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@unknownuser said:
I'm interested in a package that'll be suited for landscape. I some times get projects where there's allot of landscape, large terrain and vegetation. And that makes SU choke just thinking of it.
...vue inf/xstream....
and add-ons to other modeling programms like d.p.i.t. for cinema4d, tgen for xsi and ect... -
@lewiswadsworth said:
@unknownuser said:
@lewiswadsworth said:
I know...I have a beta copy for the upcoming SketchUp version.
h8!!!
I beg your pardon, Julian...what does that mean? Here's the link...you just sign up and they give you download rights.
http://nxt.accurender.com/files/folders/arnxt/entry1668.aspx
Anyway, weren't we talking about other modelers?
OK, I misunderstood you somehow. I thought you had a beta release of SU7.
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Thanks for the info Lewis, Wings 3d will probably get uninstalled today.
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@unknownuser said:
Thanks for the info Lewis, Wings 3d will probably get uninstalled today.
It's funny that you should write that...I was just upgrading the three computers in my office to the newest Ubuntu (actually, Ubuntu Studio, which makes me wish I was a musician and not an architect)...and I made of point of installing Wings3D on each of them.
Not that anyone will ever use it, probably, but it's there along with the other slightly lame 3D "solutions" available from the Ubuntu repositories. Actually, some interesting things I hadn't seen before did turn up when I did a search in the Ubuntu repositories under the term "3D." What in the world is "Vertex"? "Whitedune"?
Edit: Vertex is a seriously incomplete OpenGL model creator (made very little sense), Whitedune is a seriously old-looking VRML editor. Why in the world is this stuff in the Ubuntu repositories?
Incidentally, a little research revealed that Wings3D is still under development, if only barely. They haven't managed to even write a complete manual, and they started that documentation project in 2003.
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Wings3D has been around for a long time, and though stable is not undergoing further development. It's actually rather interesting (in a geeky trivial way) as an app, being one of the few (or maybe the only) graphics programs you are likely to find written in the obscure communications-oriented computer language Erlang.
Ignorant Linux-geeks often suggest that there is not real difference between SketchUp and Wings3D, but I found Wings3D to be lacking in the kind of precision you sometimes want if you are modeling (say) architecture. Like real units with a relation to real measurement units. And snaps. And axis/construction planes. Constraints of various kinds are available, but much more primitive than in modern modelers.
Not that you couldn't model architecture with Wings3D...if, you could bear modeling with an open-minded "Well, that's about what it should look like..." while worrying about the hard requirements later on...Everything is rather based on extrusion.
Wings3D isabout as close as you will get to SketchUp on Linux, if you're not lucky with running SU under WINE.
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