SketchUp has become one of the most popular 3D programs worldwide but its momentum sped up only in Google’s reach not in its progress as a software application. Prior to the acquisition by Google the pace of new versions was rather quick and then slowed dramatically under Google’s ownership. Nevertheless, the 3D modeler has advanced well and tapped the power of Google’s brand and technology.

Under Trimble the SketchUp developers feel they will have a stronger wind at their back. Trimble is a AEC software company and it will be able to take SketchUp in interesting directions for architects, engineers, construction professionals and others.

To learn more about this change for SketchUp read here.

Analysis

We think this change of hands for SketchUp is very interesting. It is certainly not what we expected and we ponder how the SketchUp folks put this together. One thing we will want to ask them is why Trimble? If they desired deeper pockets behind them why not approach a larger software company in AEC like Autodesk or the Nemetschek Group of Germany or Bentley?

We look forward to learning more about this change and we will be sure to report it to you here.

What’s New in Cheetah 3D 6

This new Cheetah also has support for Isosurfaces (Metaballs), the keying of mesh vertices and spline control points, improved iBooks Author compatibility, an upgrade to FBX SDK, support for 16-bit textures and many more improvements.

01 - Cheetah 3D version 6 features Bullet physics engine.

To make Cheetah 3D available to an even wider audience the price of Cheetah 3D has been cut from 149.USD to 99.USD. An upgrade from an older version cost 69.USD. For customers who bought Cheetah 3D 5.x after 12 December 2010, the upgrade to Cheetah 3D 6 is free.

There are other new features worth listing here:

• New Parametric object types — capsule, fractal, isosurface, line
• New Mesh modifiers — smooth, shell, crumble
• Global Scene Search Field
• Greatly extended Javascript API
• OS X Lion full-screen app mode

To learn more visit Cheetah 3D here: www.cheetah3d.com

Siemen’s Parasolid Based Technology

CAD Loaders for modo 601 are based on the Parasolid geometry modeling kernel technology from Siemens, an industry-leading software technology that powers numerous Siemens and non-Siemens CAD and 3D software packages around the world and accounts for over 40 percent of all 3D model data stored worldwide.

01 - Luxology's new CAD Loaders for modo 601.

As models are loaded into modo 601, the CAD surfaces can be dynamically tessellated for optimal use in modo’s modeling and rendering operations. Real-time rendering previews and dynamic editing tools in modo can then be used to turn based designs into immersive, photorealistic graphics.

“Exchange of CAD data is absolutely business-critical to our customers,” said Brad Peebler, president and co-founder of Luxology. “CAD Loaders for modo offer users a flexible set of controls for optimizing incoming CAD data that goes beyond simple file importing. This opens up a world of CAD data for designers and other 3D artists who want to tap the power of modo for concept design and advanced visualization.”

CAD Loaders are now available and the advanced version retails for 695.USD while the basic loader is 495.USD. Both Loader products are available for Mac and Windows. To learn more visit here.

modo 601 is now a full pipeline solution for professionals working in media and entertainment, engineering and architectural design visualization.

01 - A rendered image from Luxology's new modo 601.

modo 601

“modo 601 is our most significant release ever,” said Brad Peebler, president and co-founder of Luxology. “With new feature and workflow enhancements, modo now offers an end-to-end production solution that is both powerful and highly useable by artists and designers.”

02 - modo 601 has new character animation capabilities with full body rigging support.

03 - modo 601 also has available new CAD Loaders which enable the support of Parasolid-based CAD formats.

modo 601 features a number of compelling summarized below:

• Character Animation – modo offers a complete character animation functionality, from easy to use posing tools to fully rigged characters with inverse kinematics solver support and layered deformers
• Dynamics – modo supports rigid and soft body dynamics, based on version 2.97 of the Bullet Physics engine. These are now standard with modo 601 and provide realistic simulations of mechanical and organic motion
• Retopology Modeling – Focused on tools and a new dedicated retopology modeling layout that simplify the creation of clean models on top of imported geometry
• Rendering and Shading – New photorealistic rendering capabilities include volumentric rendering, render booleans, hair and skin shaders, and rounded edge control for hard surface models.
• 3D Paint – modo features a multi-purpose paint system for vertex maps and meshes
• Rendering Workflow – The Preview Renderer can now be used for final image production as it will progressively render an image to the desired resolution at full quality. A comprehensive render pass system, plus new interactive image processing and comparison tools, speed image refinement.
• Modeling – modo’s Pixar Subdivision surface modeling now includes the ability to crease individual vertices and control display resolution while rendering at full quality

“Throughout my 18 years in the 3D business, I’ve never seen a 3D software application become so powerful, so fast,” said Dan Ablan, President, AGA Digital Studios, Inc., “The additions to modo 601 are mind blowing, and the render boolean function, blobs, and new deformer tools are absolutely invaluable.”

Architosh Analysis

We were one of the first publications to dig into modo in the early days (see for instance our interview with Brad Peebler from 2006 talking about modo 202) and we’d have to agree with Mr. Ablan above. We are astonished at how quickly modo has grown up and become a full-fledged member of what we might call the “Elite  4″ (Maya, C4D, Lightwave, Softimage) making modo really the 5th member of that high-end 3D professional app group, along with 3ds Max and Houdini as well.

So what distinguishes modo from some of the others? Well, for starters, modo from the beginning supported the Mac and Windows simultaneously with more or less full parity. Maya for instance was ported to the Mac and Softimage to this day still has no Mac version.

Another distinguishing feature is modo’s UI. Their award-winning app was lauded by Apple for instance for its beautiful but powerful user interface. While many of the elites mentioned above have improved their UIs in recent years modo’s was superb from the beginning.

What is impressive about modo 601 today is its rendering technology. The boolean rendering features are incredibly powerful. The new and updated character tools really advance modo as a full-fledged studio production tool and good citizen within an existing pipeline. And like Maxon Luxology has done a good job of reaching out to CAD companies to tie-in modo as a CAD visualization tool of choice.

Pricing and Availability

modo 601 is available now and is 1,195.USD new or 495.USD for existing modo users who want to upgrade. Exising modo users can upgrade for only 395.USD for the next two weeks only as a special promo. And also for a limited time, a cross-grade is available for 795.USD for users of Maya, 3ds Max, Softimage, Houdini, CINEMA 4D and LightWave 3D.

To learn more visit: www.luxology.com

In this release Boolean operations have been advanced with new “Carve” Booleans. The boolean modifier now uses the “Carve Library“, which is a C++ library that is developed and tested in parallel on Windows, Mac and Linux. As a result complex modeling operations in Blender 2.62 are much faster and with improved results. While this is a new library for booleans for Blender the general workflow and options for boolean modeling remains unchanged.

01 - New Blender 2.62 update. (image courtesy Blender.org)

There is also new updated UV tools in 2.62. There is now an advanced interactive stitch tool, to align and join together UV islands. There is seam marking in the UV editor and a subdivision surface aware UV unwrapping to reduce stretching problems.

02 - New Carve Boolean library added to Blender 2.62.

Recent important updates include the Cycles Render engine with support for render layers and passes, multi-GPU support and much more. To see all the updates to Blender in version 2.62 go here.

Blender is available for free on Windows, Mac and Linux, including PowerPC based Macs. Go here now.

Moi (or written MoI) stands for “moment of inspiration” and its developer says its perfect for anyone who has been frustrated with the complexity of existing CAD tools. Its toolset features advanced Boolean functions and enables rapid creation of mechanical or man-made objects.

MoI sports a unique polygon mesh export that generates exceptionally clean and crisp N-Gon polygon meshes from CAD-based NURBs models. Its developer is a guy named named Michael Gibson who, according to this interview over at Novedge, also developed the initial Rhino at RMA.

01 - MoI 3D 2.5 is now Beta for Mac. The relatively young 3D modeler is aimed at being the new SketchUp for mechanical CAD.

What Makes MoI Special

MoI 3D is like SketchUp for MCAD users, according to others. It features a novel interface, simplicity to tasks, and it can be controlled with a pen tablet. It also uses the same Rhino file format and is built on the Solids++ geometry kernel by Gary Crocker at IntegrityWare.

What’s possible with MoI is pretty impressive, judging from the gallery on its website. The good news here in this post is that MoI 3D 2.5 is now in beta for Mac users. This makes the second interesting MCAD-news related addition to the Mac space in as many months. (recently Autodesk announced Inventor Fusion for Mac).

For those on the Mac who want to try out MoI beta for Mac now go here to download it. For those who just want to learn more about it visit: http://moi3d.com/index.htm. MoI for Windows currently sells for 295.USD.

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.

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.

This week the company previewed Autodesk Inventor Fusion for Mac. As part of the Inventor product family, Inventor Fusion is primarily a 3D mechanical CAD modeler application designed to engage emerging young engineers and designers.

Kevin Schneider, Sr. Product Line Manager for Autodesk Design, Lifecycle and Simulation Product Group, noted that Inventor Fusion is the first dedicated mechanical CAD product from Autodesk that is a Mac product.

01 - Autodesk Inventor Fusion for Mac. A new Mac-native ground-up mCAD modeling program for emerging mechanical engineers and design professionals.

“When we look at the next generation of designers and engineers,” says Schneider “we see their expectations of choice and software is very different than the current generation.” Autodesk told Architosh that the company is adapting to trends that show that the future generation of engineers and designers are increasingly coming both to and out of college with an affinity for Apple’s platforms.

While Autodesk Inventor is the company’s Windows-only full-fledged professional mechanical CAD product, Inventor Fusion for Mac is a simplified entry-level product that has been written from the ground-up on Mac OS X. It has a ’state-of-the-art’ modern user-interface and advanced modeling functionality.

The formal release of the product is aimed for the first quarter of 2012. Professionals and students interested in the Mac-based Inventor Fusion can learn more at a special page on Facebook setup by Autodesk (http://www.facebook.com/InventorFusion)

Final pricing has also not been set but those who engage in the public technology preview can try out Fusion for the Mac for free. You can sign up here.

formZ 7 has a new modern user interface with a lot of new functionality and enhancements to existing formZ functionality. Many steps have been automated with the new UI. There is less picking and more doing, the company says.

01 - formZ 7 has bold new features and a modern interface

Discovering formZ 7 – Seminars

January 18, (which is today) there will be a new webinar titled: What’s new in formZ 7, Part 1: Parametric modeling in a modern fluid interface. This free event takes place at 1pm-2pm EST and you can register for it here.

Part 2: Visualization, rendering and fabrication and presentation, takes place on January 25, 2012, and is at 1pm – 2pm. EST. You ca register for it here.

There are also Webinars On Demand covering bonzai 3D and formZ. A full list is 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.

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.

Luxion has recently announced support for Autodesk 3ds Max and Maya, allowing faster, more direct import of these file types into KeyShot, the GPU-based real-time rendering system.

This new capability was demonstrated last week at Autodesk University, 2011, in Las Vegas. Already KeyShot supports direct import of Autodesk Inventor, Autodesk Alias, AutoCAD and FBX formats. To learn more about KeyShot go here. www.luxion.com

formZ News

AutoDesSys has recently announced the public beta of formZ version 7, a major update to the venerable innovator in the area of modeling, rendering and animation. FormZ 7 features a new interface and new parametric modeling capabilities that allow either numeric “parametric” manipulation or what the company is calling “free-form” manipulation.

The company’s previous webinars are also all available on-demand for viewing at your own leisure. You can click here to check things out, including new webinars on version 7 FormZ, plus webinars on bonzai 3D.

Vectorworks Modeling Webinar

Nemetschek Vectorworks will be hosting a “Best Modeling with Vectorworks 2012″ webinar December, 15, 2011. Wes Gardner, Assoc. AIA, Architect Industry Specialist at Nemetschek Vectworks, Inc., will be presenting the webinar.

Wes will be presenting some of the latest new modeling tools in Vectorworks 2012 and showing how to model an object appropriate to any industry and how to create a great looking presentation using Renderworks, the program’s affiliated rendering software package.

The webinar is on Dec 15, at 2pm EST. To sign up for the webinar visit this link.

What’s New in Mudbox 2012

Autodesk Mudbox 2012 continues to advance itself and in this year’s release the design software giant added support for 64-bit Linux in addition to Windows and Mac OS X 10.6.x support. In this update Autodesk touched on all three major areas of Mudbox (sculpting, painting and posing) adding useful improvements, but in general the largest updates are concentrated in the area of 3D painting and posing.

Before we get into those we’ll briefly touch on some general improvements. Version 2011 added 64-bit support for Mac and now as we mentioned we have the same for Linux. A big new improvement in this update is the ability to create and edit stencils. You can bring in images to use for stencils directly from the Mac clipboard.

Autodesk also has introduced new single-step “round-trip” workflows for other related Autodesk software, such as: Autodesk Maya, Autodesk 3ds Max and Autodesk Softimage. Imagining a scene origin from your DCC software of choice, you can export to Mudbox to add painting or sculpting effects and detail and then merge back to your digital content creation (DCC) software. That improves work flows for those working with Autodesk DCC suites. There is a new Send To option in the File menu.

Another useful and related new feature is the new Maya-like “Hot Menus” introduced in Mudbox 2012. Clicking the spacebar quickly creates a “heads-up” hot menu system. For whose who do not use such menu systems it may take getting use to. (see image 01).

01 - Autodesk Mudbox 2012 features new "heads-up" Maya-like hot menu system.

Some significant minor changes include the ability to use tools like Grab and Pinch to manipulate stencils to more closely conform to the shape of your model. There are new selection tools with region and lasso modes. This gives you more control over how you control your model. (see image 02).

02 - Mudbox 2012 features expanded selection tools with new lasso and region modes.

There are two new Grab brush options–Grab Silhouette and Follow Path–that allow you to create innovative new shapes. And this release vastly improves on texture data sets.

next page: Painting Improvements

Lightwave 3D 11 features tons of new features. Instancing enables you to create mass duplicates of objects in a scene with very little overhead. These “virtual” polygon counts will not cause your machine to run out of memory. Instances are not mere clones they can be randomly different via scaling, position, rotation and even surface complexity.

Flocking enhances natural motions with such things as schools of fish, birds, et cetera. Fracture is a new modeler tool and was designed specifically to compliment Bullet dynamics in the Lightwave Layout. It allows the 3D artist to “pre-fracture” an object ready for destruction. Bullet is a fast, production-proven, open-source physics engine that does what you think it does. Lightwave 3D 11 features the Bullet engine directly in Layout.

Lightwave 3D 11 now has a much enhanced Virtual Studio Tools, allowing the user to configure various third-party device controllers (e.g.: SpaceNavigator, Playstation Move). GoZ is a new interchange technology in this version that enables users to send model and texture data to and from Pixologic’s ZBrush.

Rendering is improved thanks to new improvements in the Render Buffer. Saving and viewing various buffers produced by the render engine to make up an image is now more powerful and easier to use. This improves renders out for compositing.

Version 11 now includes Python scripting. Python is an industry standard for scripting and further allows the customization of Lightwave 3D. FiberFX has a new volume rendering mode called Stroke. Version 11 allows you to now make very realistic fibers. FiberFX now uses the new instancing technology as well.

Other Improvements

The user interface has been enhanced, especially in the area of the node editor. There are IK rigs improvements, huge speed boosts in areas such as loading scenes, many modeler optimizations and enhancements. Items can now be modeled off axis. There are OBJ file format support improvements, shader improvements and a whole lot more.

Lightwave 3D 11 is offered today for registered current users as a pre-release advanced beta. The full final release is scheduled for end of year.

To learn more about the new Newtek Lightwave 3D 11 visit them online here.

Xfrog 5 is a procedural organic 3D modeler that allows you to create and animate 3D trees, flowers, nature based special effects or architectural forms. Xfrog 5 includes several bug fixes, performance optimizations, including an over 20 percent speed up over Xfrog 4.4, as well as full compatibility with CINEMA 4D R13.

Xfrog is one of the most popular plugins for Maxon’s C4D software because it enables even the casual user the powerful ability to create and animate organic models. Common uses include tree growth, blossoming flowers, complex nature-based effects and many other uses. Customers who have purchased Xfrog 4.4 in the past six months are eligible to upgrade for no additional cost.

01 - Xfrog 5 is now out ofr CINEMA 4D. The procedural organic modeler adds power to Maxon's flagship tool.

Xfrog Inc., is a world leader in organic plant modeling and ecosystem software research and development. To learn more visit: www.xfrog.com

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.

AutoDesSys has three job posts listed and given that they are still posted we assume that these positions are still available. The company may be in the process to hire as it expands its product offerings with the rollout of the updated formZ 7.0–a major modernization to a highly regarded and heavily used 3D software tool.

One position is focused on just 3D Rendering. This person will be responsible for helping to set future directions for 3D rendering across its product offerings. There is mention of experience with rendering API’s like OpenGL and Direct 3D, which are OS-oriented. There is also mention of API’s like Mental Ray, LightWorks, Vray and others. It may be interesting to see if AutoDesSys expands formZ to support other renderers. In the past the company has had a long-term relationship of sorts with Electric Image, but that company and its famous and quick rendering and animation solution has fallen behind in both public attention and studio use.

These days integration with newer renderers is a vital consideration for any powerful product design, architectural modeler or general modeling application like formZ or bonzai 3D. Such tools should integrate with the newer generation of rendering tools, with new generation GPU tools and possible with the four main professional 3D suites.

Mobile – Android and iOS

AutoDesSys may be looking to not just modernize formZ’s user interface–which it did with version 7–but update other tools. A new opportunity exist for an application OS interface engineer. The advert mentions Android and Apple iOS operating systems experience in addition to Windows. This person will be responsible for the integration between our application suite and the operating systesms on which they run.

There is a third position open for a modeling expert or programmer. This person will joint the formZ development team.

All of these positions seem like good opportunities. It will be interesting to follow this company has it wraps up and rolls out formZ 7 and how it moves forward from here now that both its longtime flagship program and its newer bonzai both have been modernized.

To learn more about these positions click here.

formZ 7 News

formZ 7.0 has what the company is calling a “game-changing” ‘intuitive interface. All model building is dynamic, intentionally tentative, and continuously changeable, which allows you to explore and experiment with no restrictions during the design process.

Back in October the company showcased the new formZ 7 at the ACADIA Conference, referring to the newly updated program as outfitted for the new parametrics of digital design. That day the new Reshape tool was covered to explain how to sculpt and conceptual design ideas with ease. New parametric controls allow for endless experimentation and iterative design.

This new game-changing interface gains on what the company learned from creating bonzai 3D, its powerful NURBS program that is as easy to use as SketchUp but with true class-A NURBS. New intelligent smart interface guides help you model in formZ 7 more efficiently. New parametric, numeric and free-from modeling choices can be dynamically changed during design. There are powerful new digital fabrication tools, plus easier NURBS modeling.

Get Your Copy

You can donwload a free beta 5 version of the new formZ 7 here by just filling out a form. There are also webinars covering the new formZ 7. Unfortunately, the company often gives very little notice with such webinars and the first one passed yesterday. Part 2 of the new webinar series covers Visualization, Rendering, Fabrication and Presentation and will give potential users a good view of the new formZ 7 and its new interface.

That webinar is scheduled for 17 November 2011. To register click here.

Autodesk sees the maker movement as a key step in the next industrial revolution, whereby local manufacturing and product making becomes a growing industry. A Young and Rubicon study puts the DIY (do it yourself) market at $700 billion.

Autodesk 123D Make is Mac OS X only at the moment and allows you to slice up a 3D model into flat plates or sheets which can easily be cut out by hand or via a laser cutter or similar device. These flat plates are then assembled together to create a physical 3D model. Autodesk 123D Catch is the new name for the old Autodesk Labs Photofly technology and is only for Windows at the moment. With 123D Catch you capture photographs of an object you are interested in from various angles and create a 3D model from the photographic data. This is photogrammetry and we’ve written about such products here at Architosh in the past.

01 - Autodesk 123D Make for Mac. Allows you to produce cut-out flat-section physical models from your 3D model data.

All these new 123D tools are essentially quite young and Autodesk is pushing them out into the wild while they are still in Labs. The goal is to get people to use them and give them key feedback for their evolution.

You can download these tools for free today. Go here to get Autodesk 123D Catch (Windows) and here to get Autodesk 123D Make (Mac).

Autodesk has been acquiring many smaller software firms and so the inconsistent platform coverage is a reflection of where the tools have emerged from–which software teams and players working on such and such platforms–and not a reflection of the company’s OS coverage or organization. The goal is to make them work across multiple and even platforms as best suited to markets.