Tidbits: Dosch Design, Lightwave Crossgrade offer and other news…

LightWave 3D News

Lightwave 3D Group has recently announced how proudly they stand behind the support of indie artists and rogue studios and in that spirit have announced a super competitive Cross-Grade to Livewave offer. The promotion is for both 2D and 3D programs and requires that you attach a screen capture of your software running on your system. It ends 30 September 2014.

For 695.USD an artist can obtain the latest Lightwave 11.6 in this cross-grade offer. Lightwave is popular within major studios and post-production houses but is also used by a vast range of 3D professionals in areas such as product design and architectural visualization.

Lightwave 11.6 offers robust polygonal and subdivision surface modeling, interchangeable layered and nodal texturing and powerful dedicated node material shaders. For those who just wish to try Lighwave 11.6 you can go here for a trial version. Lighwave 11.6 runs on Mac and Windows operating systems, including both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows platforms.

01 – Lightwave 3D Group’s limited time cross-grade offer ends September 30, 2014.

For more on this offer visit here.  Readers may also find the new LightWave 2014 Show Reel interesting to watch here.

Dosch News

Dosch Design has a new product called Cars Details SUV. This is an in-depth model on a specific SUV car design and include immense detail. The 3D model contains all the critical parts and systems found in a modern sports utility vehicle. The all Dosch products or most at least the formats included in the CD include:

• 3DS, 3ds max, Artlantis, Cinema 4D, Collada, DWG, DXF, FBX, Lightwave, Maya, modo, OBJ, Softimage, Universal 3D and VRML

Dosch 3D: Car Details -SUV retails for 149.USD or 119.Euro. you can learn more here and check out the images below.

Other News Items

GrabCAD, a web-based CAD community platform that has been described as ‘Github for mechanical engineers’ has been acquired by 3D printing giant Stratasys. GrabCAD and its GrabCAD Workbench tool is the fast and easy way to manage and share CAD files online in the MCAD world. It essentially is a collaboration workflow solution and when we last wrote about it we mentioned their partnership with fellow Massachusetts CAD company Lagoa.

02 – Dosch Design: Car Details – SUV is a fully intensely detailed and textured SUV model in numerous 3D file formats.

Both Lagoa and GrabCAD are browser-based solutions backed by the power of the cloud (for sharing, collaboration, and processing) and are demonstrating a new direction for CAD software development and distribution in general—as in OnShape which we wrote about last week. (see, Architosh, “Lagoa and GrabCAD partner to bring integrated Lagoa rendering to GrabCAD,” 10 Dec 2013.)

MORE: Mac users clamoring for SolidWorks may finally have an answer in OnShape

The reported price for GrabCAD by Stratasys is rumored to be nine figures, says an article on TechCrunch, which also noted that the high price for such a young startup was partly because other suitors such as possibly Autodesk and Adobe were also interested.

GrabCAD has over 1.5 million users in its global community who exchange data, ideas, and access over a half million CAD models. The link between 3D MCAD models and Stratasys’ many advanced 3D printing and 3D manufacturing options has immediate value to both companies. To read more on this acquisition you can read the note on GrabCAD’s website or get more insight here on the TechCrunch report.

Architosh Analysis

On GrabCAD’s official site, GrabCAD’s CEO and founder Hardi Maybaum notes that both companies had many of the same visions but in particular both companies were CAD software agnostic, noting “this has always been one of our most important principles at GrabCAD, and it’s one that the Stratsys team shares.”

This may have been a reason why the company may have shied away from other possible suitors, especially those who had CAD platforms. It also says something about the value of vertical social networks and the requirement of “open-ness” for such communities.