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Archive for February, 2006

Autodesk Inventor 11

February 28th, 2006 admin Comments off

There’s an “exclusive” write up of Inventor 11 available to read at MCAD Online

http://www.mcadonline.com/index.php?…Itemid=73

Topics covered include:

  • Larg assemblies & Assembly Configurations
  • Functional Design
  • Simulation
  • Advanced Shape Description
  • This version of Inventor, currently in Beta, is still a couple of months away from release which is expected in March/April.

    Categories: Autodesk, CAD Tags:

    Microsoft plans 6 Editions of Vista

    February 27th, 2006 admin Comments off

    Vista

    A story at the BBC news website indicates that Microsoft is planning 6 versions of Vista, its next operating system due for release towards the end of 2006, to match the differing demands of its users.

    The versions will be known as:

    • Vista Business
    • Vista Enterprise
    • Vista Home Basic
    • Vista Home Premium
    • Vista Ultimate
    • Vista Starter

    Read the article for more information on how these versions are targeted.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4754462.stm

    Categories: Microsoft Tags:

    Touch and Design (T’nD)

    February 27th, 2006 admin Comments off

    Touch and Design

    T’nD is a Research Project funded by the European Union that is looking at developing a tool for designers using haptic elements.

    Main Goals

    Today, industrial designers are used to produce physical mock-ups of products by modeling and manipulating clay. Designers have their knowledge about controlling shapes in their hands, and the skill they have developed is a high value to be preserved. Current haptic technology is mainly based on point based force feedback allowing for the simulation of a local point contact. That is not appropriate and satisfactory for simulating a full hand contact and interaction with virtual objects.
    The project aims at developing a novel system for shape generation and modification based on novel haptic interaction and intelligent shape manipulation operators in order to exploit existing manual skill of designers.

    All the details are available at

    http://www.kaemart.it/touch-and-design/

    This document Definition of Scenario and Test Cases provides an interesting insight into the project.

    http://www.kf12.com/blogs/uploads/tnd-testcases.pdf

    Partners in the project include

    think3

    http://www.think3.com/en/news/release_detail.asp?id=3584

    Alessi

    http://www.alessi.com

    and Pininfarina

    http://www.pininfarina.com

    An interesting approach but is it actually necessary to simulate the actions of a traditional craftsman to achieve a required design ? (Perhaps 3D modelling should attempt to simulate the approach used by a traditional Draughtsman).

    Categories: Input Devices Tags:

    Evolving Compiler Technology

    February 27th, 2006 admin Comments off

    The IBM Systems Journal (Volume 45, NUmber 1, 2006), although aimed at aspects of online game technology, nevertheless contains an interesting hint at the possible future direction of compiler technology which is being designed take advantage of the growth in processor complexity.

    http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj45-1.html

    Using advanced compiler technology to exploit the performance of the Cell Broadband Engine architecture, describes the research that is progressing to optimise (compile) code written in a high-level language to fit a multi-processor (cell) architecture.

    The prototype compiler innovatively takes advantage of and extends existing parallelization technology to enable partitioning and parallelization across multiple heterogeneous processing elements from within a single compilation process.

    The implication is that the programmer will not have to worry too much about the machine architecture the application is aimed at relying instead on the compiler to produce code that is optimised for the hardware it will execute on (although the capability will still exist for lower-level dabbling if necessary).

    Although at an early stage, it won’t be long before this approach is likely to be adapted to the mass market of application writers for the multi-core architectures from Intel and AMD.

    http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/451/eichenberger.html

    (For those diehards there’s lots of detail about IBMs compiler research at Compiler Technology for Scalable Architectures

    http://domino.research.ibm.com/…/cellcompiler.index.html)

    Categories: Programming Tags:

    Rendering – Technical Papers

    February 15th, 2006 admin Comments off

    If you’re looking for some reading matter on a cold winters evening, there’s quite a collection here. Fairly technical and related to the on-going work by Henrik Wann Jenson – Associate Professor in the Computer Graphics Laboratory of the department of Computer Sceince and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. enjoy

    http://graphics.ucsd.edu/~henrik/papers/

    Categories: Graphics, Rendering Tags:

    Happy Birthday

    February 15th, 2006 Mick Comments off

    One Year Old Today.

    birthday1a.jpg

    Today is the first anniversary of this Blog – started exactly 1 year ago today.

    In the past year, more than 150 articles have been written covering a diverse range of topics from interesting “gadgets” through to the more in-depth looks at what has been happening in the competitive world of 3D Cad.

    This article discusses some of what has been noticed over the last year…

    Some random thoughts – Trends in man-machine interaction

    I recently came across an article entitled 3D Modelling is not for WIMPs – a brilliant title referring, of course, to Window Icon Menu Pointer in regards to how users interact with computer applications.

    Then I was reading an article “PAD Paper Aided Design” about the design process how it is easy to sketch out your design on a scrap of paper before committing it into a CAD system.

    And it got me to thinking some more about UI aspects for CAD software.

    Read more…

    Categories: General, Trends Tags:

    Building a Virtual World in 3D

    February 13th, 2006 admin Comments off

    Trimensions, a company specialized in close-range photogrammetry, has developed a tool to integrate three-dimensional models into Google Earth with great precision and detail.

    http://www.trimensions.fr/frameset.htm

    photogrammetry

    They provide a link that enables you to see the results of a model located in Paris, via Google Earth.

    http://www.trimensions.fr/_private/ILOT_PARIS.kmz

    In another appraoch, the REALVIZ ImageModeller allows you to create 3D scenes from photographs.

    http://www.realviz.com/products/im/index.php

    Categories: 3D, CAD, Photogrammetry Tags:

    Intel shows its Quad Core

    February 11th, 2006 admin Comments off

    In a recent interview, Intel Chief Technology Officer – Justin Rattner stated

    Core expansion will be a dominant theme for Intel over the next few years. It is expected that chips with tens of cores will be available by the end of the decade while in 10 years its theoretically possible to expect chips with 100′s of cores.

    Intel quad-cores are expected to arrive for computer manufacturers late in 2006 or early 2007.

    Trying to keep in touch with developments?

    Some codenames may help:

    • Clovertown – a four core processor for dual processor systems
    • Tigerton – four core chip for servers with 4 or more processors
    • Merom – dual core notebook chip
    • Conroe – dual core desktop chip
    • Woodcrest – dual core server chip
    Categories: Hardware Tags: