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.

Crafted by Hungarian sculptor Erno Toth, the life-like bronze statue stands near the entrance of architectural software maker Graphisoft’s Budapest headquarters building.

The relationship between Graphisoft and Apple can be traced to the 1980’s, when Jobs came across the first version of Graphisoft’s ArchiCAD software running on an Apple Lisa computer at the 1984 CeBIT show in Germany. His first impression of the software led him to throw Apple’s support behind the development and distribution of ArchiCAD.

01 - State of Steve Jobs dedicated and placed in Graphisoft Park in Budapest, Hungary.

“With its attention to excellence in every detail, Graphisoft Park’s environment embodies the spirit of Steve Jobs,” said Viktor Varkonyi, CEO of Graphisoft. “I can’t think of a better place to commemorate the man and his legacy.”

“We are thrilled to receive this honor,” said Steward Rom, Chief Marketing Officer of Nemetschek Vectorworks. “We strived to make the Vectorworks 2012 program the ideal solution for designers in the AEC community with continued improvements to our 3D, Building Information Modeling (BIM) and rendering capabilities, and it’s an honor to be recognized by the Construction Computing Awards. We’re also fortunate to have partners like Computers Unlimited who make it possible for us to bring these innovations to users around the world.”

The awards ceremony was held November 17, 2011, at The Hotel Russell in London, and team members from Computers Unlimited were in attendance to accept the award.

To learn more about Vectorworks, go here.

The event takes place globally on December 1, 2011, Thursday. Here are some times:

• Sydney Time – 4:00pm AEDT (register)
• London Time – 2:00pm GMT (register)
• Paris Time – 1:00pm CET (register)
• Moscow Time – 4:00pm MSK (register)
• Los Angeles Time – 9:00am PST (register)

A Spanish-language event on December 1 is also available here:

• Madrid Time – 4:00pm CET (register)

Earlier this month Strata announced that its award-winning Strata 3D software was placed in the Apple Mac App Store, marking the first time the company has made their 3D software available through this channel. “We’re very proud to be at the forefront of the companies offering this level of software through the Mac App Store,” said Ken Bringhurst, Strata President. “Strata started as a Mac developer in 1984 when the Mac first launched. We’ve been committed to easy-to-use professional level 3D software for the Mac ever since.

The company created a special version of their top-of-the-line 3D software specifically for the Mac App Store. Strata Design 3D CXi is 499.99.USD in the App Store. Visit the Mac App Store to learn more and get it.

01 - Strata 3D CXi is available specifically for and in the Mac App store.

CAD Market Growth in 2011?

James E. Heppelmann, CEO of PTC, stated to analysts at a recent earnings call that their company has seen growth in the CAD market in 2010 and especially in 2011. Speaking about Creo and PTC’s growth opportunities, Heppelmann noted that the company has gained share in the automotive sector with wins at Volvo Truck and Hyundai. Hyundai recently switched from Dassault to PTC passing over Siemens.

Noting CAD growth in 2011 is interesting as the overall economy may not reflect this.

Apple Acquires 3D Mapping Company C3 Technologies

We have written about C3 before, a Saab aerospace spin-off 3D mapping technology company. In August Apple acquired the Swedish mapping company and many are thinking this new 3D mapping technology will be coming to the iPad, iOS and even the Mac.

C3 technology uses missile guidance system level technology developed by the Swedish military that is now declassified. A combination of this astoundingly precise 3D mapping tech with Apple’s new Siri could seriously change the mapping market landscape. To read a report go here.

Strata 3D CX 7 is the latest release of the company’s flagship program which over the years has been redesigned to integrate highly with Adobe’s Creative Suite software, targeting traditional 2D design professionals and helping them bring 3D to their creative arsenal. CX 7 brings end-to-end power for the entire 3D workflow with a simplified learning curve and familiar toolset.

“We had an excellent response and a lot of positive feedback from our recent launches of the Design 3D CX 7 for Mac and the Cxi release in the Mac App Store. Designers really love the new features and functionality and we’re excited to finally place it in the hands of our PC customer base,” said Ken Bringhurst, Strata President.

To learn more about Strata Design 3D CX 7 for Windows or the Mac, go to the Strata website here. Training for Strata is available online at Strata University here.

KeyShot 3 includes a new, patent-pending animation system, major improvements to the UI and workflow and over 400 new materials and new importers for NX, Parasolid, JT, Solid Edge and SolidWorks for PC and Mac.

KeyShot 3 Features

KeyShot features a brand new realtime 3D animation system that is geared towards designers, engineers and marketing professionals, not animation and rendering studio professionals. This makes it easy for users to quickly produce high-quality results. KeyShot 3 breaks down the complexity when creating part and camera animations from 3D models.

Rather than rely on keyframes, a traditional approach to animation, KeyShot 3 introduces a new and patent-pending system based on offset transforms. These transforms can be combined to create complex part and camera animations. Animations can be output to AVI, Apple QuickTime and Adobe Flash.

The user interface has been greatly improved. New areas include improved model interaction, redesigned library section, better material editing, texture mapping and general dialog cleanup.

KeyShot 3 now has more pipeline options for both Mac and PC. All formats are now supported on both Mac or PC as well, so Mac-based users can grab and import file formats associated with traditionally Windows-only based CAD programs. Some highlights include new support for NX 8 and prior with ability to control tessellation. Same goes for Parasolid, making KeyShot an option for Vectorworks users since that program is based on the Parasolid kernel. FBX importer now supports part animation that can be imported and played back.

To see all the features in detail visit them online at: www.keyshot.com

“Vue 10 represents a significant milestone in our continuous delivery of leading-edge Digital Nature technologies,” said Nicholas Phelps, President of e-on Software. “High-resolution rocks, physical water and spline-driven effects together with faster rendering and advanced render stacking are some of the examples of the many new technologies in Vue 10.”

The Beaverton, Oregon-based, company also announced that they will release the rest of the Vue 10 product line by mid November, 2011.

Vue 10 xStream is the company’s flagship solution offering CG professionals the leading solution for creating exceptionally rich and realistic “Digital Nature” environments, fully immersed within a range of 3rd-party software suites such as: Autodesk 3ds Max, Maya, and Softimage, plus Maxon CINEMA 4D or Newtek Lightwave. All Vue tools are fully integrated in the host application as menus and toolbars and directly accessible from within the host interface.

Vue 10 Infinite is a premier standalone solution from e-on Software. It offers all the powerful tools in a separate application and is ideal for multimedia and entertainment professionals, architects and graphic designers.

Standard retail pricing for Vue 10 xStream is 1,790.USD with a one year maintenance contract and upgrades start at 395.USD. Vue 10 Infinite retails for 1,190.USD with a one year maintenance contract with upgrades from 295.USD.

To learn more about the Vue 10 product line visit them online here.