Architosh reader Jim Anders, wrote in to tell us that eDrawings for iPad also works fine with cloud services such as DropBox, SkyDrive and others. He notes: “This is a great app for us SolidWorks users and it works well on my first generation iPad.”  This tidbit compliments our report earlier in the week.

thinkLabs of Altair

Altair’s thinkLabs design studio team has come up with an ingenious device for handling the power cords of Apple MacBooks. The kickstarter project has developed a prototype and there is a good little video here to show you how it works. The kickstarter deadline is today so act quickly!

01 - Altair's thinkLab design studio team came up with this clever little device for your MacBook.

Vectorworks at AIA National in DC

The Nemetschek Vectorworks folks want people to be aware that they will be at the AIA National Convention & Design Expo this month. The note says….” ‘Like’ us on Facebook and then visit booth #2009 for a prize.” Each day until the festivities start on May 17, we’ll be revealing exciting ways for you to design, collaborate, perform advanced renderings and animations, simulate pedestrian traffic, and present ideas with augmented reality tools!

From their Facebook page (www.facebook.com/Vectorworks) you can get involved.

Self-sufficient City

Designed using ArchiCAD, the Skyscraper Village is based on the design and research of a city that supplies its own food. The building would function as a self-sufficient city, and would also consist of parks, open-areas, dwellings, offices and industrial areas.

01 - Skyscraper City, an award-winning project was done on ArchiCAD.

The project consists of four towers interlinked to one another. The goal of the project was to create the feeling of being in a city. For example, Brendan designed multiple routes to get from one place in the building to another, just as one might take different routes to the same destination in a city.

A native of Voorschoten, now living in Utrecht, the Netherlands, Brendan Bakker studied engineering at the University of Applied Sciences in Utrecht, specializing in architecture and the built environment. He is currently working on his master’s degree in architecture at the Technical University of Delft, which he expects to complete in 2013.

To learn more about ArchiCAD visit Graphisoft’s website here.

LightWave 11 is ideal for all 3D markets: film and broadcast visual effects production, game design, illustration and architectural visualization. Mikael Burman, technical supervisor at Massive, a Ubisoft Studio based in Sweden, says, “Our cinematics team works in a mixed 3D pipeline most of the time. And the updated I/O tools in LightWave 11 (FBX and MDD/GeoCache)–combined with the new Unified sampling, colorspace-aware Adaptive sampling, and updated shaders, such as the reflection blur–allows me and my team to deliver fast, artistic, and adaptable content.”

01 - LightWave 11. Has powerful new features including Instancing and improved IO support.

The new LightWave 11 retails for a suggested 1,495.USD, and is available for Mac and Windows. You can learn more here.

Architosh has an interview article with Dan Farr, Co-Founder of DAZ and its Chief Strategy Officer, about why the company is giving away its software this month. You can read that here.

Part of a strategy to bring 3D software tools further down field to non-professional users as well as future professional users, the goal is to expand the use and market for its Genesis character platform.

01 - DAZ 3D's amazing give-away includes DAZ Studio 4 Pro, Bryce 7 and Hexagon 2.5.

And There’s Bryce and Hexagon

In case you are not much into 3D character modeling, illustration or modeling, the company also has Bryce Pro 7 and Hexagon 2.5 tools to give you as well. So let’s take a quite look at why you might want to obtain this software for free right now.

Hexagon 2.5. This program is a fairly sophisticated surface modeling tool with Boolean operations, Gordon surfaces, Coons surfaces in addition to sophisticated vertex modeling commands. You can export and import to many other 3D and CAD file standards, including: OBJ, 3DS, A3D, DXF, DWG and Illustrator (imports) and CAR, A3D, OBJ, 3DS, DXF, DWG and STL (exports).

Hexagon 2.5 also has a construction history that is fully editable. They call it Dynamic Geometry. Many users use this tool to work with DAZ’s other software packages. You can take models from DAZ Studio to Hexagon and back again. And you can work between Carrara and Hexagon as well.

This is just a brief summary of this organic modeler with subdivision surface capabilities and high-level 3D modeling tools. If you are more interested in designing toothpaste bottles or furniture, Hexagon can also assist you very well. Click here to see some movies of it in action.

Bryce Pro 7. This is one of the 3D legends. Bryce has been around for well over a decade and is a premier landscape creation tool. These days many people use Bryce to create scenery for DAZ Studio characters, creating entire worlds for their characters to live in.

Highlight features include its new Instancing Lab, improved Light Lab, sky rendering improvements, a particle emitter, better import and export and the DAZ Studio Bridge.  The Pro version also supports Bryce Lightning Network Rendering. Import and export options include: COLLADA, FBX, DAZ Studio format, 3DS, Lightwave, OBJ, and many others.

You can learn more about DAZ Studio here in the interview feature. While this software is free and there is literally no catch (again see the interview) system requirements include some important notes.

Hexagon 2.5 is currently not compatible with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. This is likely because the program supports PowerPC processors going all the way back to the G4. The G5 processor is actually recommended. If you are Mactel you can run anything from 10.2 up to 10.6 (Snow Leopard, the last version which supported Rosetta).

Bryce too is not yet compatible with Lion. For likely the very same reasons. Bryce supports Mac OS X 10.4 or higher and will run on both Intel and PowerPC.

Finally, for those wondering, DAZ Studio Pro 4 itself supports both 32 and 64-bit Macs (OS X 10.5 or above and this would include Lion).

To download this software go to DAZ online here.

IMSI/Design has had pdf2CAD for Windows for a bit longer but now the company’s product is made for Mac as well. The software tool converts engineered drawings saved in Adobe PDF format into DXF files which can be opened and edited using numerous CAD tools, including the company’s own TurboCAD and its popular new TurboViewer mobile applications for Apple iOS devices.

The software can also convert to HPGL format, directly from PDF. It supports batch processing to convert multiple files at once. The software concatenates characters to form editable words and lines of text and it maps fonts. Price is usually 199.USD. To learn more visit here.

KeyShot updated to 3.1

Luxion has updated KeyShot to version 3.1. Version 3.1 features an all-new rendering and animation set of options. This release introduces a patent-pending animation system, plus a revamped user-interface and over 600 plus materials. It also supports network rendering and new compatibility with 3DConnexion 3D mice.

01 - KeyShot 3.1 now supports a next-generation support for metallic paint textures where the user can control the dispersement of individual metallic flakes. (image courtesy of Luxion.)

With version 3.1 there is a next-generation of metallic paint support that contains visible metallic flakes, whose distribution can be individually controlled. This and many new features round out version 3.1. Learn more here.

Event: Bonzai 3D Organic Modeling Webinar

AutoDesSys will host tomorrow (16 February 2012) a Bonzai 3D webinar focused on organic modeling. The event takes place online at 1:00pm EST and last one hour. You can learn more and register here.

Columbia Events

Vectorworks Core Concepts Course.

Monday, March 12 and Tuesday, March 13, 2012. Hands-on training will get you up-to-speed on core concepts behind this popular CAD/BIM program. The cost is 700.USD. You can register and learn more here.

Vectorworks Intermediate Concepts Course.

Wednesday, March 14 and Thursday, March 15, 2012. This continues on from the previous two days and advances knowledge of Vectorworks. The pre-requisite for this course is the Core Concepts course and you must have taken it within the past two years. The cost is 700.USD. You can register for this course here.

Virtual Events

Vectorworks Virtual Core Concepts Course.

This is the same course as above but taught virtually over the Internet. It begins on Friday, March 23, and extends to March 23, 2012. Virtual Training is a five-day course with three hours of training each day, where you can choose to attend classes in the morning or evening, freeing up the rest of your day. The cost is 850.USD. You can register for this event here.

To learn more about Vectorworks in general visit them online at: www.nemetschek.net

Donald Ward, Vectorworks expert and trainer at Nemetschek Vectorworks, Inc., will be presenting at the event. Don has been with Nemetschek Vectorworks for six years, initially as a support specialist working directly with customers. Since 2007, he has been conducting Vectorworks classroom and on-line training courses at all levels, as well as presenting Vectorworks at numerous industry events.

Vectorworks UG at the Apple Store

Again, this event takes place at the SoHo Apple Store in New York City and is a presentation of the NY Vectorworks User Group. It’s free and you can register for it here.

There is no additional charge for French and German language options.

To learn more visit the e-on software website here.

The book is officially titled “Entertainment and Lighting Design with Vectorworks Spotlight: First Edition.” Kevin Lee Allen is an award-winning lighting and scenic designer whose work includes theater, film, television, museums an corporate environments.

The book explores the use of Vectorworks Spotlight, the leading CAD design program in entertainment lighting markets, with the use of the Renderworks program for producing final renderings. “It is definitely going to be my course texbook for this semester because, despite my students having different needs than entertainment designers, it specifically lists the most important tools, commands and workflows and talks a little about each one,” said Chris Dopher, Entertainment Design, Instructor, FIT.

The new manual is intended for use with Vectorworks 2012 software and is most applicable to Spotlight 2012. It is a part of the Nemetschek Vectorworks’ self-paced training options, designed for people who like to learn at their own pace. To see all the Vectorworks training options, including this book click on this link.

formZ 7 Highlights

The whole program has been dramatically updated, including a streamlined user-interface (UI). formZ 7 has some new dramatic dynamic modeling tools with new parametric capabilities.

There is a new roof tool that quickly builds simple and complex roofs. And the parametric stairs tool has been updated as well. There is also a new Contour Doctor tool that helps clean up contour line data.

formZ 7 features non-destructive clipping planes (sectioning planes) just like SketchUp and you can model directly inside these clips. formZ 7 has a top class-A NURBS modeling engine and can produce dramatic shapes and forms. While SolidSmack remarks that formZ has always been a great architectural modeler the new formZ 7 will bring powerful new tools to the product design market.

This is significant for AutoDesSys because the “maker” market and digital prototyping are both powerful new trends in design. formZ 7 will feature tools helpful for digital fabrication makers.

To read the article and see some of those YouTube videos go here.

On the official website it says that DXF file are presently limited to 20MB. Anything larger will not open. Also, some complex objects like splines are also not read.

iPocketDraw

iPocketDraw 1.90 is a vector drawing program with comprehensive 2D CAD tools and commands. The tool can send out files via email in Eric Pousse’s RealCADD file format for those who utilize that CAD platform, as well as PDF, DXF and JPEG formats.

01 - iPocketDraw 1.90 reads DXF files and export them too, plus RealCADD support.

Drawing tools include all the basics plus spline, regular polygon, arrow tools and font choices. You can work fully to scale with dimensions. The drawing area is not limited and the objects are not limited in number either. iPocketDraw 1.90 lets you import images into your CAD files as well as PDF files.

iPocketDraw is 9.99.USD. and is available from the App Store. There is a Lite version which is free. To learn more visit the official website.

There are plugins for ArchiCAD 15, ArchiCAD 14, Vectorworks 2012 and Vectorworks 2011. There are also plugins for Autodesk Revit 2012 and Google SketchUp 8.

You can download your plugin today for access to Artlantis 4’s enhanced rendering engine and iVisit 3D technology, which simplifies the process of sharing virtual tours of models online and via mobile devices and tablets.

Integrated CADS Services (ICS) is an authorized distributor of Abvent products in New England and can answer questions about sales and services for such technology (800-383-5195).  You can learn more by visiting Abvent online.

There is also an update to Artlantis 4 itself, taking the version to 4.0.16. You can grab that here.

The notice simply stated that development activities are taking longer than planned. The AIA has contracted with a third-party software developer for this new online version, just as the desktop version is third-party produced. The Alpha trials are now slated for a March, 2012 start.

This delay in no way affects the AIA’s current AIA Contract Documents software product. Those interested can send inquiries to: software@aia.org

Columbia Events

A course titled “Vectorworks Core Concepts Course” takes place on March 12-13, 2012. The company says, this is the best hands-on training option to learn how to master tools, menus and commands. You can click here to see the list of topics covered. The cost of this classroom event is 700.USD. Location is at Nemetschek Vectorworks, Inc., 7150 Riverwood Drive, Columbia, MD 21046. To register click here.

A follow up event is titled “Vectorworks Intermediate Concepts Course” and takes place on Wednesday, March 14-15, 2012. This event too is 700.USD.  To register click here.

Virtual Event

A course titled “Vectorworks Virtual Core Concepts Course” takes place online and offers the same material as the classroom course. This course takes place between Monday, March 19 – Friday, March 23, 2012. This event is 850.USD.

To register for this event click here.

The company is touting its latest integrative rendering technologies and strategies for architectural designers to allow them to create world-class visualizations for their designs using a range of tools options within the Vectorworks – CINEMA 4D family. Because your Vectorworks and Class structures are preserved with you send your files to Maxon’s award-winning CINEMA 4D Visualize product suite, you will enjoy a level of design control that is impossible to match with competing products.

Focus on Getting Vectorworks Models Into CINEMA 4D Visualize

The webinar focuses on the fundamentals of getting your Vectorworks models into CINEMA 4D. Key items covered include:

• Exportation of Vectorworks and Renderworks files into CINEMA 4D Visualize using the Send to CINEMA 4D menu command
• Fine-tune your CINEMA 4D settings to create “unique” presentations
• Quickly create very sophisticated animations, walkthroughs and flyovers

This is a must event for Vectorworks based architects who either use Renderworks now or another tool for this kind of work. Today’s Vectorworks not only utilizes the Maxon CINEMA 4D rendering engine internally but has round-trip fidelity with the professional 3D package.

To sign up click on the banner ad for the event on Architosh or go here.

Editor’s note: See our recent review of TurboViewer Pro 2.0 here.

“We are going to enable an entirely new generation of CAD developers, letting them create powerful, custom apps based on our TurboViewer series, the fastest 2D and 3D viewing platform in the mobile world,” stated Royal Farros, Chairman and CEO of IMSI/Design. “We think this can be a real game changer.”

IMSI/Design has come out with TurboViewer, TurboViewer X and TurboViewer Pro for Apple’s iOS platform and the products are excellent (this site has given TurboViewer Pro 2.0 a top 5/5 product rated score). The TurboApps SDK, due in February, will let CAD developers build apps around viewing 2D and 3D DWG and DXF wireframe models.

“Our goal with TurboApps SDK is to create a mobile development platform specifically designed to take advantage of those things that make portable devices so different from desktop computers. We believe we can be a foundation for Mobile CAD going forward and can’t wait to see what apps the smartphone and tablet generation creates,” added Farros. The TurboApps SDK will be free.

To learn more about IMSI/Design visit them here.

We generally don’t write about Apple’s patent trail but this jot covers an interesting patent related to the world of 3D. AppleInsider uncovered a patent from Apple that describes a Microsoft Xbox Kinect-like interface technology that is sans physical controller. Instead users use their hands to move items in the UI.

Entitled “Three-Dimensional Imaging and Display System” the Apple patent (application #20110298798) attributed to Christopher Krah of Apple. In a nutshell, the Apple patent describes a method that allows the control of a 3D computer interface via a 3-dimensional imaging and display apparatus that scans and detects physical movement within a volume of space. With the system, a user could perform gestures with their hands within a given volume of space in order to control the user-interface of their Mac computer. To learn more read here.

Ad Agency Walter Isaacson uses modo

For the recent holidays Walter Isaacson was hired by Philips Norelco to produce a new TV commercial for their new SensoTouch 3D rechargeable razor. They decided to re-imagine one of Norelco’s most popular holiday ads of all time, which was a stop-motion ad featuring Santa sledding through the snow atop one of their products.

For this new ad Isaacson turned to computer graphics studio re:think studios, of Chicago. re:think studios is a big-time Luxology modo user and turned to modo to produce the ad. “mod is blazing fast!” said Brian Bulock, director of CGI and partner at re:think studios. “And with the deadline we had on this spot, we needed every minute. I vote we put modo on the nice list.” You can watch the spot here at Vimeo.

Adobe to update Critical 3D Bugs in Acrobat

Adobe is slated to update critical 3D vulnerabilities in its Acrobat and Reader applications across platforms today. The bugs were discovered in December where the 3d file format .u3d contained memory corruption issues that could lead to code attacks. These were limited in practice to the Windows platform, says Adobe. To learn more visit this eWeek news report.

LumenRT Customer Story

Vue software maker e-on software has had a new product out for awhile now called LumenRT, a plugin product for SketchUp. The photorealistic rendering plugin has received good reviews in the industry.

You can learn a little bit about this product by watching and reading the customer profile of Matthew Stone, a landscape design professional in Australia, who switched from Autodesk 3D Studio Max to SketchUp with LumenRT for its rendering platform. Read the interview here.

Rhino users will benefit from many new features, fixes and improvements. These include such things as real-time rendering with V-Ray RT, optimized image-based lighting with the new Dome Light, and efficient memory management using Proxy Objects.

Sample of the rendering quality of VRAY for C4D

Vray is not yet available for Rhino on Mac. However Vray is available for Cinema 4D, as you can see from the image above.

If you are a Rhino user on Windows you can tap into this Beta now. To learn more visit this link.

With these editions you can “test drive” the leading digital nature solutions for 3D artists and graphics professionals. While Vue 10 Infinite is a stand-alone professional application that can be easily integrated into a studio pipeline, Vue 10 xStream operates seamlessly inside of Autodesk 3ds Max, Autodesk Maya, Newtek Lightwave, Maxon’s Cinema 4D and Autodesk Softimage.

New editions in the Vue 10 PLE include such items as spline and road tools, physical transparency and water engine, and things like its EcoSystem Phasing. The Personal Learning Editions allow you to save your work, export to other applications, render stills and animations without size or length limits and experience Vue’s power directly inside leading 3D software suites.

To learn more about Vue 10 software options visit e-on Software online here.

Aimed at bringing high-level production capable tools down to the little guy, IKinema, a UK animation technology company, has created WebAnimate.

WebAnimate is an all-in-one platform that can professionally retarget and customize through your browser. Based on the same IKinema technology that major studios use, like Framestore and 20th Century Fox, WebAnimate’s built-in toolset allows users to fashion rigs, manipulate bones, retarget/customize motion capture data and create animation all in the span of a few minutes. Best of all the price is free. To check it out go here

Maxon Re-Introduces Cineversity

The creators of CINEMA 4D have re-launched a brand new version of its premier educational online resource.  Introduced just before the holidays–which is a nice touch!–Cineversity is a redo of its online video tutorials website. The new site is designed around the latest web innovations and is aimed at simplicity and making it easy for artists to get the learning resources they need to master CINEMA 4D.

There are more online video tutorials than ever, a new searching capability and the ability for users to create playlists so they can customize their training. Maxon CEO Paul Babb stated: “We are committed to the CINEMA 4D community to provide educational material that will increase the artist’s proficiency and productivity.”

There are both free and paid membership levels. If you are a CINEMA 4D user or considering becoming one this is a must-see resource. To visit it go here.

Luxion updates KeyShot 3 Plugins

Also just prior to the holiday break, Luxion, the makers of KeyShot 3, introduced updated plugins allowing users of certain CAD and 3D applications to directly transfer 3D data into the GPU-based rendering application for Windows and Mac.

The world’s first real-time ray tracing and global illumination program, KeyShot 3 now has plugin support for the following applications:

• Creo 1.0
• Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 3, 4 and 5
• Rhinoceros 4
• SolidWorks 2011 and 2012
• SketchUp 7 and 8

There are no costs for the plugins. The updated plugins can be downloaded immediately and installed within the modeling software supported. To learn more visit here.