CAD User Online Article Archive

Review

SolidThinking

From CAD User Mechanical Magazine Vol 22 No 2 - FEBRUARY/MARCH 2009

Industrial designers want tools that are as easy to use as they powerful - giving their creative urges full reign, says David Chadwick

The Italians know a thing or two about design. I started my computer career with an Italian company that made typewriters and calculators, and which regularly won awards for the simplicity and elegance of its products. So embedded was the culture of imparting aesthetics into its search for efficiency of function, that it even created a hotel for its visitors that was based around the design of a typewriter. However, stuck as it was some way off the beaten track, some (doubtless reluctant) compromises had to be made in the hotel’s design, as the room I stayed in when I visited the head office some years later was curiously shaped - being part of the platen!

Small wonder, then, that one of the latest companies to hit the market with a great new Industrial design package has Italian origins, as well. SolidThinking was started in 1991 by a couple of Italian brothers - Alex and Mario Mazzardo. It was called EvoQ back then, and became the leading software for industrial design up to 2005, when it was acquired by Altair Engineering, who changed its name to SolidThinking. The company now has its headquarters in Michigan, and has just launched Version 7.6 of its comprehensive design tool.

INDUSTRIAL DESIGN So what was it doing at SolidWorks World? Isn't it in competition with the parametric modeller? Bob Little of SolidThinking explained the difference between the two. He said that their software was aimed at industrial engineers, and that it complements SolidWorks and other leading 3D modelling tools, helping them to get their concepts into the 3D computer world as quickly as possible.

Industrial engineers work differently to design engineers, working with design concepts and style without bothering too much about engineering detail. It's the design engineer’s job to re-create the geometry, working on the 3D model data from SolidThinking. The models come through with all surfaces and solids in place, and with complete construction trees - but no parametrics.

He gave an amusing example of the sort of thing they can produce - the BMW GINA concept car! Check it out, if you haven't already seen it, for its winking headlights and elastic skin. A beautiful design concept, but perhaps a bit beyond what is technically feasible at the moment! SolidThinking, then, is designed for studios working on advanced concepts, and for any industrial designer who needs a tool that can rapidly transform sketches on the back of a napkin into exciting and realistic looking 3D models as quickly and as easily as possible. It is a tool for the designer with high spatial skills, rather than one with high technical skills, and is a natural follow-on for any designer who lays out his initial concepts in something like SketchBook Pro.

PARAMETRICS AND DIRECT EDITING SketchBook Pro, or a scanned-in pencil sketch, are all you need to start modelling in 3D with SolidThinking. Alternatively, you can start laying out 2D concepts straight on the screen, and work these up into 3D models.

The user interface owes more to 3ds Max than to SolidWorks, with multiple views, and an impressive array of tools in the side bar - which extend, when accessed, to additional capabilities within the same category. These are not familiar icons, either, as many if them add features that are not commonly used in SolidWorks and other 3D modellers.

The interface is designed for simplicity and ease-of-use (a hackneyed phrase but true) and careful thought has been put into making a desktop environment that fits the working patterns and needs of designers, rather than engineers.

The processes fit the patterns, as well. The software works in two modes. Whilst the advantages of parametric modelling are used to create structures and relationships between components, the designer can revert to direct modelling for editing point features. After a surface has been created using parametric modelling, for instance, the designer can switch to control-point (direct) editing that brings up a pattern of points on the surface, any of which can be dragged to update the surface contours.

There is another important advantage of dual model creation and editing modes. With pure parametric modellers, creating multiple design concepts involves complex knowledge and manipulation of history trees. The SolidThinking construction tree is clever enough to allow designers to change their minds at any stage of the design process, and keep track of the changes. It is capable of producing realtime updates when modifications are made to points, curves, parameters of entire objects. SolidThinking users can therefore quickly build whole ranges of styles with simple manipulation of parts using direct editing - editing points on parametric objects, changing parameters, and inserting, removing and replacing source objects at will.

As you would expect, style and presentation are at the heart of the software. Along with the simultaneous parametric and control-point editing, you get a powerful rendering engine, and rich photo-realism.

Designers can use up to 4 grids to display their concepts, each of which can be configured with its own origin, spacing, grid type and colour. The numerous snapping options available snap to points, curves, midpoints, tangents and incremental manipulation, with three-axis interactive snapping in 3D. An integral World Browser is also at hand to provide a wealth of technical and organisational information to support complex and precise modelling.

NURBS-based modelling is, of course, an essential element of SolidThinking, enabling designers to represent any desired shape, either in free-form or analytically created. The NURBS toolset is pretty comprehensive, and can support high order curves, weighting, analytical circles and interactive 'comb-plot' analysis. Designers can build curves from points using either freeform NURBS, continuity controlled MetaCurves and multi-entity curve objects.

This all builds up into the most comprehensive set of surface tools available in any modelling software, and includes sophisticated tools like curves networks, multisweeps and railsweeps, n- sided patching, as well as the usual blending, filleting, trimming of surfaces and solids, rebuilding of curves and surface intersection tools. The software seamlessly integrates solid modelling and surface modelling technology to produce a Class- A surfacing suite, combining the best of both worlds, and allowing designers to create complex, multi-surface shapes in new and innovative ways.

ANALYTICAL TOOLS

Part and parcel of advanced surface designs is being able to analyse them, and

SolidThinking includes advanced analysis tools to calculate areas, volumes, lengths and curvatures, as well as real-time surface analysis with reflection lines and environment mapping. This allows designers to check for smoothness in the design, and to see how curvature varies along a curve.

A Tolerance Check tool can also detect gaps between surface patches which, when found - and because of the advanced construction tree - can be adjusted to make the model 'watertight'.

STUNNING VISUALISATIONS

SolidThinking has integrated a fast and reliable rendering engine to produce photo-realistic images that can be set up in stunning visualisations to accurately reproduce real world environments, which can then be used as artistic rendering or animations in QuickTime VR movies, or on

the Web.

Designers can also create their own libraries of scenes, parts, assemblies, surface attributes and materials, that can be easily customised, retrieved and used to develop new concepts. Think of the scrapbooks full of images, ideas and sketches that no self-respecting industrial designer would be without in the past!

IMPORT/EXPORT

As an industrial design tool, SolidThinking designs also needs to be accessible to design engineers. Hence the range of import/export plug-ins that include IGES, DXF, 3DS, 3D Studio Max, DWG, Lightwave, Maya, RIB, SolidWorks, STEP, STL, VDA-FS and VRML.

In the words of Bob Little, “SolidThinking is about how fast you can get into 3D space!” www.solidthinking.com

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