What are the fundamental requirements?
I see at least 2 of the fundamental requirements being:
- 3D Model display
- Face/model picking
3D Model display – it is necessary to display the 3D model and the user must be able to interactively manipulate the view as required (in real time).
Face/model picking – as a minimum, in order to be able to do anything with the model, a user needs to be able to pick or select faces. In an assembly, a user may want to pick and drag the components.
3D on the web – in action
One of the first “zero client” applications which provides the ability to view a model and manipulate the view of that model has been demonstrated on the Autodesk “labs” web-site.
In this web-application, manipulation of the view of the 3D model is provided by interacting with a 2d image of the current view orientation. The model is held on the Autodesk server and the 2d view of the current orientation is generated and sent back to the users web-browser as necessary.
Updated Link (14/08/11) : http://labs.autodesk.com/technologies/freewheel/
Scheduled to be released in April, you can read all about the forthcoming features available in Autodesk Inventor 2008, in the What’s New document
http://kf12.com/blogs/uploads/s-new-2008.pdf.
At the recent Autodesk University, Autodesk, have announced a collaboration with Microsoft to integrate DWF technology with Windows Vista using the XML Paper Specification (XPS).
This will provide users with the ability to view and manage DWF documents without requiring additional downloads of plug-ins or the need of special viewing software, directly within the Operating System.
In addition to automatic DWF file viewing, the Windows Vista desktop search function will make it easier and faster for customers to find relevant design files with Live Icons and Preview Pane features. For example, a product designer can search for files based on specifications, designs, or any piece of related data such as an address or supplier’s name. Regardless of where the information is stored, Windows Vista returns Live Icons — thumbnail images of files retrieved — that let the designer see files’ general content at a glance.
You can read an article published in AECNews.com at http://www.aecnews.com/…
More details of the Microsoft XPS format can be found on the XPS home page at http://www.microsoft.com/…
September 27th, 2006
Mick
Autodesk has recently introduced Autodesk Labs a web-site that provides free, early access to prototypes, experimental and beta applications and technologies.
The intial offerings include:
- Feature Recognition for Inventor 11, User Guide for converting neutral 3D CAD data models (STEP, SAT or IGES) into fully featured Inventor 11 models.
- Autodesk Vault Mirror Beta which provides the ability to create a read-opnly mirror of the files and directory structure in a Vault.
- DGNV8 Translator allows a user to share AutoCAD DWG and Bentley Microstation 2D V8 DGN files.
- Google Earth Extension Beta provides the ability to publish 3D models from AutoCAD 2007 based products directly into Google Earth. (User Guide is available HERE Adesk Google Users Guide.pdf )
- Project Freewheel http://dwfit.com/ both a web-site where you can enter a DWF url for interactive viewing and a web-service that allows you to embed an interactive DWF viewer in your own HTML page.
The software is not intended for mission-critical projects, nor is it supported.
Quoted from a recent article at Yahoo News,
…Since going live about two months ago, Autodesk Labs has received more than 190,000 hits and over 49,000 unique visitors from 150 countries. There have been more than 10,000 downloads of the beta products available on the site, and hundreds of positive emails about the offerings and the overall experience, including suggestions for new products.
Autodesk has released Autodesk Design Review 2007, the product formerly known as Autodesk DWF Composer, at a cost of $199 (same as before). Other tools freely available are the DWF Viewer, and the DWF Writer.
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=6101753
An addin is provided for SW2005 and SW2006 that enables a user to create a DWF variant of his model directly from within SolidWorks. Plugins are also provided for other CAD systems including CATIA, Pro/ENGINEER, Solid Edge, and NX.
The DWF writer includes the ability to capture 3D geometry from any application which uses opengl for drawing – similar to the capability offered by Adobe.
Another interesting feature is the ability to move (move/rotate) components of the assembly but this functionality is VERY limited (at the moment), and has no collision detection etc.
AECbytes has a review of AutoCAD 2007. Actually, this one makes quite good reading, although it is biased towards Architectural – it does after all come from a site dedicated to the Analysis, Research and Reviews of AEC Technology. Of further interest is the glimpse of how mental ray has been integrated into the AutoCAD environment.
Read the article at
http://www.aecbytes.com/review/2006/AutoCAD2007.html
In a recent interview with Heather Clancy Editor of CRN, Autodesk COO Carl Bass says (amongst other things)
The kind of acquisitions we normally do, Alias would be more of an anomaly. What we do a lot of is technology acquisitions to fill in gaps. What we’re doing in analysis and simulation. We’re moving to this world in which we’ve gone from a 2-D, line-drawing representation of what it is you’re going to build to a digital, 3-D model. What comes with that 3-D model is the ability to analyze it, simulate it, avoid making prototypes of it. And with each of those are specialized software. So, there are gaps in our ability to visualize, analyze, simulate some of those things. You’ll continue, probably, to see us do small technology acquisitions. These bigger acquisitions are much more opportunistic.
The full article is available at
http://www.crn.com/…articleId=183702289&pgno=1
It looks as though Autodesk have re-branded Alias products following the recent completion of the acquisition.
Trying http://www.alias.com now re-directs to Autodesk.
ImageStudio is now known as AutoDesk ImageStudio and they also offer Autodesk DirectConnect to enable data exchange between leading CAD products, such as SolidWorks, and ImageStudio.
There are various demos available which are worth a look. It is interesting to see the approaches used in this product.
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