Architosh recently published an In-depth feature article on IMSI TurboViewer for iPad last month.

“TurboViewer is now the first 3D DWG viewer for the iPhone,” stated Royal Farros, chairman and CEO of IMSI/Design. “We spent a lot of time making sure everything feels crisp and clean on the smaller footprint… TurboViewer is now an incredibly useful DWG viewer for iPhone, something people thought couldn’t be done.”

01 - The new IMSI TurboViewer for Apple iPhone. Fast 2D and 3D DWG files in the palm of your hand.

Free TurboViewer Features Include:

• Fast native 2D and 3D .DWG (Autodesk AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT) file viewing
• Fast native 2D and 3D .DXF (Autodesk) file viewing
• Full screen preview viewing during file load
• Smooth Multi-touch navigation while panning, zooming and orbiting
• Restore saved AutoCAD views to quickly display the best vision of your design
• Autosense 2D and 3D drawings to automatically set appropriate gesture navigation of a drawing or model
• Doesn’t require the Internet for remote field work

“We built TurboViewer from the ground up for the iPad and iPhone… we think architects, engineers, and designers are going to love having their plans in the palms of their hands,” Farros added.

IMSI/Design has announced that TurboViewer is the first in a series of next-generation apps designed specifically for AEC professionals and students worldwide.

TurboViewer for iPhone is free on the Apple App store through iTunes. To learn more go here.

Architosh is bringing the popular ToshLetter PDF-based newsletter back to its readers. The latest ToshLetter will be sent out March 3, 2010, and is loaded with some premier CAD industry content — including a special exclusive segment of our Architosh interview with Viktor Varkoyni, CEO of Graphisoft, which touches on the future of ArchiCAD. Other exclusive items include details and reasons about Scia’s plans for North America and an analysis and self-analysis of our BIM report.

The ToshLetter was originally created and delivered back in 2005. The PDF-based and hyper-linked newsletter addresses the Mac CAD and 3D industries and brings a unique focus with original content aimed at executive-level discussion, feature articles, interviews and news. Each newsletter is organized around a topical range of issues and includes intelligent hyperlinks for further resources on the web. Some sample back-issues are available here for you to download and read. The newsletter is free but you must complete a brief subscription signup form.

ToshLetter 2010 – No. 1

This issue of the ToshLetter is focused on BIM (Building Information Modeling) and the architectural industry. A brief description of the table of contents (TOC) follows below:

• Discussions about ArchiCAD: Interface and Future Focus —  this exclusive segment of our Architosh feature interview with Viktor Varkonyi, CEO of Graphisoft, touches on rare comments about how the company views its flagship BIM program’s user-interface and notes about the future production direction.
• MarketFocus: Nemetschek Scia and BIM in America — article talks about Scia, one of the world’s premier software programs for structural engineers, and its new push here in the United States to be a leader in structural BIM integration.
• Perspective: What we learned in Architosh’s first BIM report – article covers aspects of our multi-year effort to gain insight into BIM adoption today.
• ToolTalk: Managing Teamwork 2 Projects in ArchiCAD 13 — article delves into many of the smaller details of setting up Teamwork 2 in ArchiCAD 13 and covers aspects often not mentioned in other articles on the subject.
• ToolTalk: Cool iPhone Apps for Architects — we look at some of the best applications for the iPhone for busy architects on the job site.
• News Analysis
• Architosh and Social Media
• Events

Subscribe Today

To receive this upcoming ToshLetter newsletter please sign-up here on the web and complete the very brief signup page. It is important to note that if you have received a ToshLetter before you are still on the newsletter list and will receive it again unless you need to update your email address with us. If you need to update your email address please send us an email to info@architosh.com and put ToshLetter in the subject line. Give us your name, old email if you recall it and your new email address.

If you would like to contribute an article to the ToshLetter please let us know. We are looking for contributors to this free publication. Sign-up here now.

Google Earth has been downloaded over 400 million times since its introduction in 2005, and now the iPhone gains this wonderful application, complete with unique iPhone platform features. One such feature is that you can utilize the iPhone’s accelerometer to fly around and navigate in 3D by tilting the device. Google Earth for iPhone and iPod touch includes all the same features as the desktop version. 

Writing from his Google Blog, Google Earth Product Manager, Peter Birch writes, “Now, with a free download from the iTunes App Store, you can fly through the same 3D immersive world of Google Earth you’ve come to love, without having to fire up your desktop computer.”

Google Earth on your iPhone can uniquely use the iPhone’s “My Location” features to pin-point your location — just like Google Maps on iPhone — on Google Earth. You can interactively discover your location’s options for entertainment, dining, business, et cetera. To check out Google Earth on iPhone watch the video above.

iTracer for iPhone

iTracer is a 3D modeling and rendering application for the iPhone that enables the end user to model objects from basic primitives manipulating their profiles and edit down to per-vertex normals. Then you can you render your models in high-quality images complete with transparency, refraction, shadows, reflection and self-illumination.

iTracer interface

This little iPhone application includes a full material editor with several types of adjustments including the items just mentioned above. You can cast shadows from multiple light sources and use procedural objects like spheres and boxes for infinite precision.

solids modeling

Using Apple’s multi-touch interface on the iPhone you interact with the modeling process via typical modeling tools such as translate, rotate, scale, revolve and extrude. With simple touch movements with your finger you snap to an adaptive grid. Once modeling is complete you can render your images out and save them to the iPhone’s Photos Library where it can be synced back to your Mac or PC. iTracer cost just 3.99.USD and a new license gets you all future updates for free. If iTracer becomes the new SketchUp of the iPhone that early license could be worth quite a bit in future updates.

profile editing

Fabio Policarpo is a programmer who has written several rendering and modeling programs and technologies and has published papers for SIGGRAPH.

To learn more visit: http://fabio.policarpo.nom.br/

Visit the Apple App Store via iTunes to learn and buy the program.

3D Navigation with Accelerometer

Before we touch on Daniel’s analysis, a key aspect of 3D CAD on the iPhone concerns the built-in accelerometer. A good 3D CAD application on the iPhone would utilize the built-in accelerometer to handle full X-Y-Z axis navigation rather than clutter the interface with two or three buttons that most 3D applications use to control 3D rotation, pan, tilt, move forward, move backward, et cetera. Although the iPhone’s applications involve a flexible “touch interface”, you simply wouldn’t want to “clutter up” that screen real estate with a dozen buttons — buttons which need to be a certain size for your fingers to operate well.

A Hardware “Super Power”

Daniel’s article on Roughly Drafted Magazine does an excellent job of pointing out the iPhone’s superior firepower compared to the latest generation mobile gaming platforms. If you have seen the powerful graphics on Sony’s PSP you know just how capable OpenGL ES actually is. And as Chris Bentley of AMD/ATi’s Mac graphics division noted in this article, in the mobile gaming market OpenGL ES is “everywhere.”

On the hardware side Sony’s 2004 model PSP contains a 333 MHz MIPS R4000 processor with built-in GPU and 2 MB of VRAM running at 166 MHz. And the main memory is at just 32 – 64 MB.

Apple’s iPhone by comparison has a Samsung manufactured ARM 1176 SoC processor likely running at 533 MHz and it utilizes a PowerVR MBX processor. Daniel’s article reminds folks thatPowerVR were competitors in the desktop GPU market prior to the rise of ATi and Nvidia.

Graphically, the use of PowerVR is interesting. According to a wikipedia article, PowerVR developed a rendering technique known as Tile Based Deferred Rendering (TBDR) which differs from traditional z buffer rendering in that rendering work is never done for geometry that is obscured by other geometry. Retentive Architosh readers will recall our discussion about an OpenGL feature called “occlusion checking” in this ArchiCAD 10 review which basically does the same thing.

The bottom line is that Apple’s iPhone is a hardware super power when it comes to performance in the mobile space, tapping the best technologies with the most forward looking positions in the market. ARM, OpenGL ES, PowerVR are key positives here. Combine that with Apple’s Core Animation and OpenAL audio (a 3D audio technology) and QuickTime-based media architecture — and of course the use of the accelerometer — and you have a great platform for mobile 3D applications in professional markets like CAD, mCAD, BIM and pro 3D.

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