DISQUS

see you on the other side captain...

I hope to god its warm..

al

hey josh - thanks for the props.. (and believe me, that sounds f**king stoopid in an English accent).. all the best for the new year...

Hope you're getting "it straight in 2008"... couldn't resist..

the automotive world uses different phrases for different processes - you don't design and manufuacture, it works like this.

First stage is Styling - this is where the aesthetic form of the vehicle is defined - using a range of tools like alias autostudio, some ICEM, althought its rare in styling. Once you have your design approved and frozen, you then move on to:

Technical Surfacing: this sees the styling concept taken up a notch, every surface that appears on that vehicle (inside and out) is created as a high quality surface to surface skin of the vehicle. The term First Fillet and Flange is used a lot (although not exclusively) used to describe where you stop with the Tech Surfacing workflow. Where body panels end or interact with others, you create the fillet and the flange that are used for the joint or edge. This gives the designer the ability to have exact control over the appearance, in terms of shut lines, panel gaps etc. This is usually done with a tool like Autostudio or ICEM Surf - there are also specialised tools for analysing the gap and flish etc etc (blatant plug but this stuff rocks (http://www.mcadonline.com/index.php?option=com_...)

Once that's done, you then move onto Body in White and Engineering. Body In White is the end result of taking those Technical Surfaces and creating the body panels and the class B surfaces behind them that turn it from a surface into a manufacturable part. Engineering is adding all the other stuff, interior, mechatronics powertrain, drivetrain, harnessing etc etc etc

WIth all this in mind, its worth remembering that if anyone ever claims that a car was "designed" in their software, chances are, its horse shit..

SolidWorks made a big splash about Koenigsegg using their tools to "design the CCR" - truth is, they used SolidWorks to do the engineering and analysis , the Tech Surfacing was done in ICEM Surf - the thing is an incredible looking car, that's nothing to do with SolidWorks - its enabling of its performance on the other, is.

(http://www.solidworks.com/pages/successes/views...).

Technically you could do it any surface modeling system - what a tool like ICEM Surf does is bring the surface specialist a whole host of tools to get it EXACTLY right. so that shadow and horizon lines are right, so the shut lines are right.

ICEM's used pretty much up to first fillet and flange, then something else (I'm guessing Catia, maybe Unigraphics at a push) is used to develop onto those surfaces to engineer the Body in White.. Powertrain is probably done with Pro/E..

Christ knows what they actually style these things with - probably Alias - maybe even the old way - pens, paper, clay..

Its perfect because it's the Italian's designing it and the german's doing the under the hood stuff - the perfect combination. I love the way that Lambo is using this stealth grey colour in their new concepts - makes the things look utterly evil..

Bruce Wayne should own one of these.. I love the gallardo thought, that thing is usable, if a little bit lairy... I saw a guy nearly ground one on a speed ramp in a car park last year - guy was shi**ing bricks.

They use ICEM for technical surfacing, god know what they use for engineering, I'm using Catia.

I went on a tour of the Ferrari factory in Marranello years ago - opens your eyes as to how these things get built.. Its not as "high tech" as you might imagine. But that's another story..

Imagine having on of these (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Lamborghini_...) coming up in your rear view mirror.. Like Jay Z says - you "got two choices y'all pull over the car or bounce on the double put the pedal to the floor"

Styled in Icem Surf - engineered in solidworks.. rendered in icem probs..

I'd have chipped in if you'd have gone with the T...

you got 99 problems, but a Dell XPS ain't one..

Funny, colour never gets a look in the CAD world - selection of colours is critical and even the rendering tools aren't geared up for colour selection and evaluation.. Except a few (maybe Hypershot and Showcase)..

Oh - if like me you're into getting your render work as photo-real as possible or like knowing the make up of colours you see (and what to steal) - these things are wicked:

http://www.pantone.com/pages/products/product.a...

Its for the print industry, but for a designer, its fantastic colour stealing/checking tool.. you put it on the surface, hit the button, it gives you a read out on the LCD of the pantone reference, but also the RGB and CMYK values. Bit costly, but you might find a used first gen one (which I have) on ebay or something.. Carry it with me in my big old canvas bag of tricks.

seen this?

http://www.ugs.com/en_us/about_us/newsroom/pres...

Turns out one of CoCreate's flagship users jumped ship to NX - and I'm told primarily down to the direct modelling tools that UGS/Siemens put into the NX 5 release which pretty much mimics (and in many cases, improves upon) many of the basics of the CoCreate technology.

if you want to learn a language quick - check out michel Thomas' language tapes - the guy is amazing - does a very similar thing - teaches you the basics of using your existing vocabulary and how to adapt it to the new language - if you learn the rules, then you have realise you already have 1,000s of words at your command.. Works best with European languages, but still, its useful as hell and gives you a fantastic head start..

Just a tip.. Adios..

MCAD brings the noise? Now that I like... and thanks man - its nice when we know the mag and the site gets read.. And to continue quoted Chuck, Time for me to exit, terminator x-it

Al

Funny, reading the press releases, you'd think this was all about the history free modelling tools. Umm - yeah - might be. What I reckon its about is the pacific rim. PTC's results in that region are woeful - CoCreate has a huge user base in Japan particularly, we're talking some high-end machinery manufacturers, typically, printers, copiers etc. and a lot of that revenue comes from maintaining ME10, rather than the 3D modelling tools.

Yes, the history free tools are interesting - but they, as most do, work within very specific geometric and topological limitations - download the OneSpace modelling free edition and read the help files - its all documented and plain to see. and for many users, that's ideal - because of the types of components they're developing/editing. If I'm wrong - I'd be happy to hear it.

CoCreate has been hawking itself for sale for years. I had a chat with a pretty high-up exec at PTC last year and asked about someone acquiring CoCreate - his reply? "someone's got to take one for the team."

Some of those tools will appear in Pro/E undoubtedly, but they didn't need to acquire the company solely to get that technology - Siemens/UGS/whatever, did a solid job of matching much of the fundamental in NX 5..

my tuppence..

Al