solidThinking For Mac

The entire family of solidThinking applications combine unique and powerful modeling and design communication tools surrounded by an interface that is at once familiar, intuitive and informative.

The robust combination of NURBS curve, surface, and solid modeling tools, as well as polygonal and pointcloud creation and manipulation tools, work together to expand the possibilities of what you can achieve within a single 3D design application.

The photorealistic and sketch rendering technologies, along with web-ready interactive exports, combine to produce stunning images of your models for easy communication and approval.

And finally, the unparalleled and interactive Construction History which completes the fully parametric modeling environment, will give you the freedom to create and evaluate more design possibilities in less time.

Simultaneous, cross-platform development for both Windows and Mac OS X means even greater flexibility for all of your hardware profiles.

The end to end support and training possibilities make it easy to seamlessly integrate solidThinking at every level of need in your organization, which results in faster and more expressive design cycles, and even lower overall cost.

Here are some key features of "solidThinking":

￭ It is immediately evident that the interface of solidThinking has been designed for fast, comfortable, and precise work. Not only does the application have clear and self-explanatory icons, but it also provides constant visual feedback in a customizable environment, so there is no hunting for tools or memorizing cryptic terms or names. The application Console guides you through each creation process, prompting you and providing a visual preview of the results. Input in solidThinking can be either mouse-based by manipulating the HotSpots of each object and tool, or numerically and parametrically controlled through the Modeling Panel that adapts to every situation, but in all cases immediate feedback is provided to insure accurate and expected results.

￭ Construction history has been made effortless and fluid. In solidThinking the Construction Tree immediately updates while you modify objects, points, or parameters. Amplifying the power of all of the tools, you can use it for interactive booleans and surface intersections, real-time mirroring, and curve and surface analysis with continual visual updates. Browse the graphic representation of the Construction Tree to identify and select source objects and actions. Add, remove, or replace source objects within the Tree with immediate reconstruction. Manipulate both the parameters and points of all objects freely. And never forget the steps involved in construction - the entire tree is saved inside the file and is accessible at any time.

Comprehensive Curve Creation: ￭ The most complete NURBS curve toolset with parametric controls for all curves, including seamless support for high order (2-7) curves, weighting, analytic circles and arcs, and interactive "comb plot" curve analysis. Build curves from points using freeform NURBS, continuity controlled MetaCurves, and multi-entity curve objects. ￭ Extract complex curves from surface isoparms, edges, silhouettes, and surface intersections. Work fluidly with common construction methods like joining, splitting, blending, and filleting. Edit any type of curve at the point level, and even edit curves in a point-independent method like the bezier-type curve editor, or directly apply any of a suite of deformation tools.

Advanced Surfacing Suite: ￭ A true Class-A surfacing environment for the most precise and flexible shape creation and replication available, complete with a suite of surface continuity analysis and maintenance tools. Create surfaces from curves using unlimited rail and profile sets, curve networks, interactive trimming, and boundary curves. Easily transition between surfaces using continuity controlled blend surfaces, variable radius rounds, and extended or joined surfaces. Utilize powerful multi-surface intersection trimming, automatic solids creation, and high-level rebuild and simplification tools. And, as always in solidThinking, directly manipulate the points of any parametric NURBS surface without breaking construction history.

Integrated Solid Modeling: ￭ Enjoy the seamless connection of surfaces and solid geometry in solidThinking , with the automatic creation, maintenance and manipulation of solid entities, as well as the import and export of BRep solids from other sources. Closure and tolerance analysis tools insure accurate and precise solids, while interactive solid trimming, parametric boolean operators, and shelling and surface offset tools offer complete manipulation for the most demanding solid modeling needs. Unique to solidThinking is the Make Manifold tool which takes any number of intersecting surfaces and derives a history-linked solid entity from the volume those surfaces enclose, trimming away the excess surfaces.

Interactive Analysis and Examination: ￭ To insure the highest quality, manufacturable models, along with accurate representation of the true design intent, a real-time analysis suite is fully integrated into the application. solidThinking provides continuously updating feedback for examining and modifying all types of geometry, from tolerance and tangency checking with visual markers and highlighting, to an interactive curvature and continuity shading system. For the utmost accuracy, there is high resolution diagnostic shading and rendering, as well as area, volume, and region analysis.

Powerful Reverse Engineering: ￭ Whether starting from a physical prototype or bridging the gap between hand sculpting and a digital workflow, solidThinking provides advanced support for scanned datasets. Integrated, native 3D scanner support, and point cloud import and export provides the tools to get a digital representation in, while point cloud creation and planarization refine the data inside solidThinking. Curves can be interpolated and fitted to points, and complete NURBS surfaces can be fitted to cloud data using a variety of algorithms.

Polygonal Modeling and Conversion: ￭ There is complete control within solidThinking for the import, export, creation, and editing of polygonal meshes, including support for n-sided polygons, vertex and normal repairs, and point, edge, and face selection and manipulation. The interactive polygonal tessellation engine provides History Tree feedback for the creation of water tight polymeshes at any stage in the design or prototyping process. Interactive Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces offers the highest level of advanced control for the refinement and smoothing of polygonal geometry as well. Many major polygonal file formats are supported so compatibility with other software is insured.

Intuitive Organization and Management: ￭ No matter the complexity or simplicity of a project file in solidThinking , the hierarchical browser system keeps track of everything. Drag-and-drop simplicity sets the standard for scene organization, and the World Browser supports this intuitive method of organizing for objects, layers, and groups. The History Tree graph illustrates the flow of creation for every object, and allows for easy sub-selections of source objects and actions with OpenGL "ghosting" to show manipulations to hidden objects. The complete, internal library manager allows for quick access to frequently used models and shaders across all projects.

Complete Rendering and Visualization System: ￭ Communicating and evaluating the forms in solidThinking is quickly achieved with any of the built-in, industry-leading rendering, animation and documentation engines. With unlimited resolution, internal image browser, and support for many standard image file formats including VR and web 3D, image creation can be tailored to any target audience. The fully-integrated renderThinking engine provides a state-of-the-art visualization system with ultra-fast scanline, raytrace, and hybrid radiosity solutions for maximum photorealism, and a multifaceted sketch rendering engine for everything from hand-drawn images to watercolor and oil paint versions of your scene. The keyframe animation system in solidThinking adds time-based, functional animations of any native or imported geometry, and the full dimensioning and vector plotting system provides easy and accurate communication of engineering-specific data.

Open Architecture: ￭ The Plug-Ins Development Kit contains documentation for developers and users that want to create their own modeling tools and rendering plug-ins. Included in PDK are code samples that will furnish a reference guide for your programming.

NOTE: To access the 30-day trial version of SolidThinking, you will have to fill in the form and receive the download link and trial information.