SolidWorks PhotoView 360 and Luxology’s modo 401 Open Doors for Engineering Designers

Last Updated on Friday, 10 December 2010 08:53 Written by DCD Admin Wednesday, 17 February 2010 09:03

Designers Stuart Brown and Paul McCrorey Produce High-Quality Visualizations with SolidWorks Models

Industrial designers are achieving photorealistic imaging results from designs modeled in Solidworks 2010 and visualized in Solidworks PhotoView 360 and Luxology’s modo software. PhotoView 360, which is bundled with the SolidWorks Premium and Professional 2010 editions, offers ease of use for rapid design visualization while modo offers maximum control over design visualization parameters with advanced features like animation.

SolidWorks users Stuart Brown and Paul McCrorey have recently tapped the capabilities of both PhotoView 360 and modo 401 to radically improve the quality of client presentations.

Based in Dorset, England, Stuart Brown is the owner of 3D Engineers, a specialty design firm that applies computer visualization tools to the process of classic car restoration. Stuart’s work straddles the worlds of mechanical engineering and design, and he was enthusiastic about how the rendering features of PhotoView 360 enhanced his SolidWorks experience.

Recently, a client who wanted a custom car asked Stuart to create a virtual wooden render of a buck, which is a wooden rig used to help make automobile bodies. After using Solidworks 2010 and PhotoView 360 to realize the buck and then modo 401 for final visualization, Stuart says, “The results showed an incredible visual performance increase, to the extent that I am often asked whether the picture I am showing a client is real or computer-generated.”

Paul McCrorey, also a designer and mechanical engineer, is based in Louisville, Ky., where he runs McCrorey Digital. He recently concluded a project using SolidWorks 2010, PhotoView 360 and modo 401 to create realistic images plus an animation of a unique Merlexi Chair wheelchair design. Like Stuart, Paul is very pleased with how this new generation of visualization tools has extended his SolidWorks modeling and design capacity.

“I was surprised by PhotoView 360′s extreme ease of use, coupled with the outstanding output quality,” Paul says. “It has helped me save both time and money, by allowing me to get very high quality images in a short time.”

Later importing his model into modo 401 for finishing, Paul says modo’s range of control was much greater than he expected: “For texturing, I used UV mapping to establish the fabric pattern on the back seat of the wheelchair. Displacement mapping was used to generate the treads on the tire. With the rich visualization and animation toolset provided in modo, the possibilities are truly endless. Features like morph maps and vertex weight maps were new to me but proved critical for realistic cloth movement. I used the constraint tools to precisely define the wheelchair’s folding action. Finally, the gradient editor provided extreme flexibility in timing of the animation.”

Another recent project of Paul’s led to a computer graphics modeling contract after the final image was posted publicly.

“As a result of my image of the ‘AMC module’ appearing on the Luxology image gallery, I landed a contract providing CG modeling assets for a short film directed and produced by Marc Leidy from Lightdog Films,” Paul says. “Using my engineering background and artistic capabilities, we are working together to interpret artistic conceptual drawings and model them in SolidWorks and modo.”

Stuart Brown and Paul McCrorey are but two of the thousands of designers finding new creative possibilities in the creation of breathtakingly realistic models produced with SolidWorks 2010 and visualized in PhotoView 360 and modo. This potent combination of tools from SolidWorks and Luxology is pioneering a crossover discipline between mechanical engineering and advanced design visualization that is allowing designs to be presented with greater accuracy and appeal than ever before

Craft Animations Aligns with RTT to Advance Real-time 3D Animation for Design and Visualization

Last Updated on Thursday, 9 December 2010 08:55 Written by DCD Admin Tuesday, 12 May 2009 08:54

Adds Realistic Movement to Interactive Photo-real Visualizations; Cost-effective Animation Solution Saves Hours, Days and Weeks of Laborious Animation Time

With the goal of delivering powerful, new real-time 3D animation tools to the industry’s leading designers and visual minds, Craft Animations??? AB and Realtime Technology (RTT) AG today announced a strategic alliance that includes the upcoming port of Craft Director Tools to RTT DeltaGen. By combining the ease-of-use and accuracy of Craft Animations’ Craft Director Tools with the flexibility and photo-real quality of RTT DeltaGen, users will be able to easily add realistic, natural movement to their interactive design visualizations within minutes.

“We are happy to enter this promising partnership with Craft Animations,” said Ludwig A. Fuchs, co-founder and member of the RTT AG Management Board. “The cooperation is of mutual interest and benefit. We are confident that, by joining our technologies, we can utilize synergies and push forward the boundaries of the real-time visualization market.”

Industrial designers utilize RTT DeltaGen software to develop high-quality interactive real-time 3D virtual prototypes for car and aircraft styling, design development, customer product design, and marketing. Craft Director Tools – including Craft Camera Tools, Craft Vehicles, Craft Accessories and Craft Freeware – eliminate the prolonged animation tasks of key framing and scripting. This allows designers to drastically condense traditional animation processes, reducing production times by as much as 90 percent.

Designers using Craft Director Tools for RTT DeltaGen will also gain the ability to easily:

• Make vehicles drive on different terrains considering real vehicle dynamics (e.g. suspension)
• Control vehicles with an input device such as a steering wheel or 3D mouse, or automatically through autopilot functionality
• Switch between camera rigs to highlight specific parts of the design concept
• Control camera views within RTT DeltaGen
• Change the environment or terrain
• Make changes to the physical setup and behavior of vehicles

“Designers have traditionally shied away from utilizing animation to showcase their design concepts because of the immense time and skill needed to demonstrate accurate physics of the design itself,” explains Craft Animations’ Founder and Head of Research, Luigi Tramontana. “The addition of Craft Director Tools to RTT DeltaGen’s already powerful visualization toolset will completely eliminate this obstacle and allow designers to enhance their concepts with the cinematic appeal they desire.”

Craft Director Tools for RTT DeltaGen will be available late 2009.
Craft Animation Tools & Software are now available at?Refuelled.com

PLM Used by Students to Build F1 Car

Last Updated on Thursday, 9 December 2010 08:56 Written by DCD Admin Saturday, 20 December 2008 08:55

Engineering students use Siemens’ PLM software to collaborate with their counterparts around the world to design and build a Formula One racing car

Brigham Young University (BYU) gives engineering students an opportunity that only a few other schools can match ? the ability to experience, in the classroom, the kind of global product development collaboration they will encounter after they graduate. This opportunity is made possible by the university??s participation in the Partners for the Advancement of Collaborative Engineering Education (PACE) program, a first-of-its-kind partnership between the corporate and academic sectors that uses commercial product lifecycle management (PLM) software to conceptualize and develop a product, in this case an automobile.

Specifically, students in the PACE program collaborated with their counterparts around the world to design, manufacture and assemble a racecar to Formula One specifications ? all in one academic year. The scope of the project is huge: 20 universities, 200 students, 24 faculty, four continents, 16 time zones and seven languages. And the time frame of one year is highly ambitious. ??Some would say it??s impossible,?? says Dr. C. Greg Jensen, professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering at BYU and coordinator of the project.

And yet it happens, and in addition to the satisfaction of seeing something as concrete as a racecar at the end of the year-long project, students experience the challenges and rewards of the global nature of today??s product development. ??The intent is that this is a collaborative project that emulates how a major automotive OEM like General Motors works with its operations all over the world,?? explains Jensen. ??This way, students learn how to deal with situations they will encounter when they graduate, such as the exchange of engineering and manufacturing information that must bridge cultural and time zone differences.??

Co-sponsors of the PACE program include Siemens PLM Software, General Motors (GM), EDS and Sun Microsystems. Siemens PLM Software??s role has been to enable the global communication and information management required by the PACE program, which it has done by providing Teamcenter??? digital lifecycle management software to participating universities. Siemens also supplies the digital product design solutions, NX??? and Solid Edge??? software, to PACE participants.

The design effort

The PACE universities in this project are located in Germany, Korea, Canada, Mexico, India, United States, China, Sweden and Brazil. At the beginning of the academic year, each university receives its assignment from Jensen, which is typically to design and build one of the racecar??s subsystems (such as front or rear suspension, outer shell, exhaust system, brake system, fuel system and so on). All the parts are eventually shipped to BYU where the car is assembled during the summer.

??This works because we build the car virtually in NX,?? says Jensen. ??That allows us to find interference problems before cutting metal or laying up composites.?? The students use the advanced simulation functionality within NX to perform stress and kinematics analyses of their designs. They also use the NX data in other analysis programs such as Fluent (to evaluate the aerodynamics of the outer shell) and ADAMS (to predict how tires ride or how a suspension handles, for example).

The collaboration platform

While NX enables a virtual mockup of the car, the other critical aspect of the PACE project is the collaboration platform, Teamcenter. Because each team??s work must be integrated with that of many others to build the car, students must share and manage their NX models. They must also communicate with each other directly from time to time. This is where Teamcenter comes in. The PACE program relies on Teamcenter??s engineering process management functionality to manage all of the design and analysis data for the project, and uses Teamcenter??s community collaboration capabilities to facilitate communication.

??Teamcenter provides a central repository for information as well as a collaborative work environment where we can share component designs and discuss work in process in real-time via the internet,?? Jensen says. ??This way, schools don??t incur the costly expense of international telephone and travel.Without the Teamcenter PLM technology, a project of this scope would be cost-prohibitive in the academic sector.??

Using a centralized Teamcenter collaboration system to store ideas and information eliminates some of the challenges posed by the time differences between the various schools?? locations. Students access information when and where they need it. Teamcenter??s ease of use has been a welcome feature in that regard. ??Teamcenter simplified the learning curve of a PLM system by offering a familiar Windows desktop environment,?? Jensen notes.

In addition, Teamcenter facilitates information re-use, helping make the ambitious one-year timeframe possible. Jensen points out, ??The project is set up so that students design and build a new Formula One car three years in a row. Teamcenter lets us capture lessons learned so that students can benefit from it. There??s less likelihood that a team will follow a dead-end, and they can move more quickly into a final design.??

Over the past two academic years (2006-2007 and 2007-2008), PACE students have designed, analyzed and built two racecars. ??GM was amazed at the quantity and quality of virtual design and analyses work done during the first two years of this three-year collaboration project, and they were impressed with how well the finished cars came together,?? Jensen says. This year??s racecar is being shipped to Korea for testing at the GM Daewoo facility. During the 2008-2009 academic year, PACE students will use the Teamcenter PLM suite of tools to refine and correct any problems identified by GM Daewoo that would prevent this racecar from qualifying for a November 2009 time trial. Teamcenter will be used to release the new or modified designs to particular PACE schools so their students can make the physical parts or modifications to existing parts for a scheduled reassembly of the final car in the spring/summer of 2009. ??This project and its success is a tribute to Siemens?? PLM technologies,?? Jensen says.