Earlier this month we had the opportunity to see solidThinking Inc.’s new solidThinking Inspire 8.0 with its new morphogenesis technology. We spoke with Alex Mazzardo, one of solidThinking’s co-founders about the new version.
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The new solidThinking version 8 base product has several important big new features and substantial improvements. At the heart of it, solidThinking’s class-A NURBS modeling capabilities are already tops, but they too gain some important new functions. The new 3D manipulators were demoed for us, and our impression was this was a key new improvement that existing solidThinking users were going to really like. You can work with the 3D manipulators on one, two or three axes and you can also give the exact size of the bounding box in all three axes. We especially liked the user interface components of these manipulators for translation and rotation. (see image 01 below)
01 – New 3D Manipulators make the modeling process easier and faster.
“The new 3D manipulators will make modeling faster for our customers,” said Alex Mazzardo, “which aligns with our product philosophy of helping designers investigate formal options quicker so they can advance their designs through design iteration.” And the enhancements to point, curve and surface representation during modeling creation is much improved.
An example of solidThinking 8.0’s power came through in a demo showing us how a curve that is the basis of a rotated element (like a bottle or vase) can be modified or edited vertex by vertex–or by any combination of segments of vertices–and get real-time rendered updates. (see 02-03 below). And you have point-editing with complete freedom even if you are keeping the Construction Tree.
02 – solidThinking allows vertex-by-vertex modeling editing while retaining the full functionality of the product
The combination of explicit modeling freedom combined with solidThinking’s unique Construction Tree history is one of the program’s strongest selling points. “You can still go back to the profile of an object and modify its parameters even though you have edited direct points,” said Mazzardo. In solidThinking, you have both history-based parametrics and explicit modeling combined.
03 – A group of vertices can be edited and manipulated at once…in this case, we see a twist manipulation effect transform the bottle design.
Rendering is also a key new area for the improvements in version 8.0. There are new interactive visualization options, including wireframe on a shaded model and you have new options for applying environmental maps. This gives the designer additional levels of feedback. One of the new things you can do is render a window with partial completeness so you can get a sense of the quality of the design and/or render. We were impressed with the ease in which you can setup render quality levels for partial renders.
For example, you may choose to render a partial section of say a motorcycle and focus on the chrome areas at a higher level because of their reflections and refractions; on the other hand, you can quickly change those settings for another partial area for something less important. “The important thing is to give the designer the option to spend the time where it is needed,” said Mazzardo, “that way he can focus more on design.”
Next page we delve into morphogenesis and Architecture >
morphogenesis Technology: solidThinking for Architecture
A new product is solidThinking Inspired 8.0 with morphogenesis technology. morphogenesis is the first example of new programming technology that represents a future of modules for solidThinking. While morphogenesis is its own unique program with its own unique user-interface (UI), it is built to work in tandem with solidThinking proper as a module. Users can generate models in solidThinking and take them into morphogenesis for a new type of form making work.
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The new form generation technology is actually based on technology that came from solidThinking’s parent company Altair. Scientists have learned to generate algorithms that simulate nature’s reaction to environmental forces–such as the forces that shape bone growth in humans and animals. The shapes produced by these algorithms can be used generatively and notionally to design efficient and light-weight structures used in a wide variety of applications. This would include architectural structures as well as industrial designed objects, especially those which are subjected to many environmental or situational forces.
Key areas for this technology include aircraft, architecture, ground vehicles, medical implants, electronics and even toys. solidThinking Inspired 8.0 is the first product to bring such technology to the design process at the ideation phase of product design and architecture.
Morphogenesis: Details
What morphogenesis does is enable the designer to define a boundary volume for his designed object from which forces will be applied; the algorithm is then applied to this “design space” to generate a form.
04 – the morphogenesis software interface.
05 – the result of applying the morphogenesis algorithms to your design model.
The user chooses a type of material for his object (eg: metal, glass, cement, etc.) and then specifies supports, forces and other constraints that his object will be subjected to in its environment. Supports can be the ground, pins, clamps, and walls, that hold the object in place. Forces are a push or pull force or torques applied to the object…and the affect of gravity can be applied as well. Additionally, pressures can also be applied such as air or water pressure.
The goal of the resulted form is not necessarily to run with a biologically-determined form but to be “inspired” by nature’s design cues. What morphogenesis technology does is “mimic” nature’s method of design.
06 – Within architecture morphogenesis technology can allow the designer to mimic what nature would do with this problem by applying real-life loading and environmental pressures. In this example after concrete was chosen as its material, gravitational forces on the stadium structure were applied to inform the algorithm.
06a – The result of the algorithm applied above. As you can see the sectional profile of the stadium structure has been dramatically altered, suggesting both structural and purely aesthetic possibilities. The result of this approach leads to the final structure shown in the image below.
solidThinking veteran users may notice that the user-interface of the morphogenesis module with solidThinking Inspire 8.0 looks nothing like solidThinking. Alex Mazzardo said the company rethought the user-interface of the morphogenesis module from the ground up. This is a completely separate program that gets launched from a button within solidThinking, so the company had an opportunity to advance UI design. These new modules of which morphogenesis is the first will give the company opportunities to investigate and try out new user-interface paradigms within smaller programs…with the hope that the best of what works well will find its way back into the main solidThinking program in future versions.
07 – This stadium was designed using the generative formal results from morphogenesis.
Looking more closely at what morphogenesis does, you can see from image 04 above that the user specifies what percentage of the “design space” to keep. The algorithm is then applied to those parameters. The user is able to specify real loads and run the algorithm as many times under various combinations of percentages and force values to generate iterative design options.
08 – This solidThinking model became the basis for the
The results that can be generated by morphogenesis are quite stunning. Two examples include this ultra-futuristic motorcycle design and the stadium architectural design (see images 07 – 09).
09 – The results of the morphogenesis work led eventually to this finished design of the motorcycle. solidThinking Inspire 8.0 with morphogenesis technology became the unique basis of inspiration for this stunning bike design.
As you can see, solidThinking Inspired 8.0 with morphogenesis technology adds a new layer of design thinking to the creative process by allowing the designer to study and review how nature would most likely solve the same problem, yet back off from the literal and strict bio-natural response to environmental forces at various degrees of subtlety.
To learn more about solidThinking Inspired 8.0 with morphogenesis technology go here: www.solidthinking.com. You will also find more information and related articles below in the Related Articles links (below) and our Cloud Tag at right.
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