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:
This version of Inventor, currently in Beta, is still a couple of months away from release which is expected in March/April.
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:
Read the article for more information on how these versions are targeted.
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
and Pininfarina
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).
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
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
One Year Old Today.
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.
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
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.
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:
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