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WELCOME EDITORIAL Editor-in-Chief Al Dean al@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)7525 701 541 Managing Editor Greg Corke greg@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)20 3355 7312 Digital Media Editor Stephen Holmes stephen@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)20 3384 5297 Consulting Editor Jessica Twentyman jtwentyman@gmail.com +44 (0)20 7913 0919 Consulting Editor Martyn Day martyn@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)7525 701 542

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ight at this moment, we’re in such a state of flux that I don’t think I can bring myself to comment on the world at large. Yes, there does at least seem to be a grown-up in the White House now. But Matt Hancock has been shown to have broken the law with regards to PPE procurement and it seems that putting high-end audio appliances on expenses is now perfectly reasonable for public officials. Same shit, different day, right? Let’s try and cheer you up instead. This month, we have a brilliant issue for you. I got to speak to the innovation team at Lush Cosmetics about how the company develops those products that so many have turned to for a little bit of self-care over the last 12 months. It was truly fascinating talking to Damien Carter at Lush about how he came to the position, the work his team does, and the tools it uses to create something as seemingly straightforward as a bath bomb. Also, and let me be clear on this, the opportunity to run a photograph of a llama predominantly made out of sodium bicarbonate in a product development technology magazine is right up my straße. Elsewhere, Stephen talks to IDC about its work with Gozney on building ovens for al fresco cooking fun. Erin discusses how ray-tracing isn’t just about creating pretty pictures when it comes to optical design. And we also welcome a new columnist, SJ. Those who follow her on twitter (@inconelle) will know she’s a metal additive manufacturing maven who doesn’t pull her punches. Welcome aboard, SJ! Enjoy this issue and stay safe out there, folks. An end to all this might now be in sight, but let’s not screw it up at the final hurdle, eh?

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CONTENTS MARCH 2021 ISSUE NO. 125

12 15 16 18 22 28 30 35

NEWS Stratasys announces acquisition of RPS; Hexagon launches Recreate for reverse engineering; Solidworks demos viewport ray tracing with Vulkan; and Makerbot starts 3D printing in stainless steel, plus lots more... FEATURES Comment: Erin McDermott on optical visualisation Comment: SJ on engineering ethics in 3D printing Visual Design Guide: Kano PC Bare grills: IDC’s work for on the Gozney Dome COVER STORY Bathtime’s the bomb at Lush Fuel economy flies high at Otto Aviation Talking Heads: Industry experts on data translation Interview: McNeel CEO Bob McNeel on Rhino 7

REVIEWS 39 Shapr3D Q1 2021 42 Siemens NX Q1 2021 44 Nvidia RTX A6000 / Scan 3XS GWP-ME N1-32T THE LAST WORD 50 A recent Twitter thread’s got Al Dean wondering: Does any technology advance these days really qualify as ‘new’ – or it is just a rehash of a previous idea? 51 DEVELOP3D SERVICES

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NEWS

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT TECHNOLOGY NEWS

STRATASYS ACQUIRES RPS TO EXPLORE THE STEREOLITHOGRAPHY MARKET » With its acquisition of UK-based RPS, Stratasys has taken a decisive step in its journey to bolster its industrial SLA 3D printing portfolio and materials range

tratasys has announced its acquisition of UK-based RP Support (RPS). The acquired company’s technology, which includes its flagship Neo line of SLA 3D printers, gives Stratasys a full suite of solutions, from concept modelling to manufacturing. The new addition also brings to Stratasys “dynamic laser beam technology”, which RPS claims offers high levels of build accuracy and feature detail and low variability across the full extent of its machines’ large-build platforms. “One of the company’s goals is to be the firstchoice 3D printing polymer provider for designers, engineers and manufacturers, so you could wrap that up and say: ‘We want to be a onestop shop’,” said Stratasys managing director of stereolithography products, Daniel Thomsen. Thomsen added that Stratasys is looking to fill the key gaps in its portfolio – as seen in its recent acquisition of DLP 3D printing technology provider Origin. It’s also looking to strengthen others, such as its SLA offering. RPS started out as a service and support provider for SLA 3D printers from other vendors, before developing its own technology, off the

back of knowing where drawbacks lay for users and having skilled people in-house to build a new system that addressed them. Thomsen explained: “We recognise that [the RPS team] have been in the business for 31 years, and have first-hand experiences of the challenges with stereolithography – and I’d even say some of the struggles – so the machine that they have developed and built fixes many, many issues currently with stereolithography.” He continued: “In evaluating the technology, we really put the machine through its paces. We put builds on the machine that I would call ‘suicide builds’ and even they were very successful and none of them failed!” The Stratasys SLA family of products has long been a behind-closed-doors bureau service, used at Stratasys Parts Direct, despite the public launch of its V650 Flex system in 2019. Thomsen revealed that the newly acquired Neo line of products would eventually replace the V650 Flex systems, and Stratasys will maintain the current open resin policy of those machines and support RPS’ current materials supplier, DSM. At present, the Neo 3D printers provide users with a wide range of materials options, with

properties such as chemical resistance, heat tolerance, flexibility, durability and optical clarity all covered. Stratasys is making a big point of this, with talk of its desire to “break the stranglehold” associated with SLA materials and allow the technology to achieve its full potential. Despite the relatively small footprint of RPS’ 3D printer, it can produce large parts within its 800 x 800 x 600 mm build chamber, which sits well with Stratasys’ plans to increase its manufacturing production capabilities. “As businesses accelerate their embrace and adoption of additive manufacturing, our goal is providing our global customers with the world’s best and most complete polymer 3D printing portfolio,” said Stratasys CEO Yoav Zeif. “We believe the Neo products are superior relative to other solutions currently available in the market, due to an open choice in resins, low service requirements and reliable and accurate builds with simple day-to-day operation. With access to our strong global channels and our innovative GrabCAD software, we will bring RPS’ innovative products to many more manufacturing organisations.” stratasys.com DEVELOP3D.COM MARCH 2021 9

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NEWS

HEXAGON LAUNCHES RECREATE FOR REVERSE ENGINEERING

MakerBot Method now 3D printing stainless steel

akerBot now supports 3D printing in steel and its Method 3D printers can use BASF Forward AM Ultrafuse 316L Stainless Steel Composite material. This allows users to produce lightweight, hollow metal parts with high-tensile strengths. The steel parts require the second-generation MakerBot LABS Experimental Extruder and will require debinding and sintering to turn the part printed with the composite material into solid stainless steel. makerbot.com | basf.com

exagon has unveiled Recreate, a new software solution designed from the ground up to make it easier and faster for users to reverse engineer parts. Hexagon’s aim for Recreate is to remove much of the complexity from this process, because the new software provides a single working environment, covering all tasks in the workflow, from metrology scan through to manufacturable CAD model. The user is able to prepare CAD models and drawings from any point cloud data, with a CAD tool suite supporting 2D engineering drawings, as well as 3D CAD. Recreate also features a set of analysis tools, which enable manufacturing professionals to interrogate 3D models and ascertain whether or not they are

manufacturable, before exporting them as CAD or STL files to CAM or additive manufacturing processes. While designed to be interoperable and slot into a customer’s existing processes, the solution offers additional features that rely on other technologies in the Hexagon portfolio. Those organisations using Hexagon’s portable arms for inspection, for example, should be able to reduce training needs, by enabling any operator to read inspection data directly from the device, in order to reverse engineer using a single solution. Hexagon states that Recreate has already been rigorously tested with its production software tools, which are used to plan, optimise and programme machining processes. hexagonmi.com

Hexagon Recreate is intended to help users move smoothly from high-density point cloud capture to analytic CAD models

Solidworks demos viewport ray tracing with Vulkan, aided by AMD technology

assault Systèmes is working with AMD on a new graphics engine for Solidworks, designed to bring enhanced visual fidelity, GPUaccelerated ray tracing and better performance for large assemblies to the Solidworks viewport. Project Romulan uses Vulkan, a new graphics API designed to take better advantage of modern GPUs than OpenGL, the API currently used in Solidworks 2021 and most other CAD software. According to Rob Jamieson, AMD’s senior partner alliance manager for workstation graphics, Vulkan removes a lot of the restrictions of OpenGL, enabling higher performance in larger models with [visual] effects. “It exposes new technologies that you can’t get at with OpenGL today, such as ray tracing, which gives really high-quality ambient occlusion,” he says. In a technology demonstration at 3DEXPERIENCE

Teradici PCoIP to offer remote access for Mac

eradici is to offer secure remote access for Macs, by adding new PCoIP support for MacOS workstations and desktops. Using Teradici’s Cloud Access Software, users can get remote access for the Mac, with a local-machine experience at high resolution and high colour fidelity. It is designed to support both onpremise data centre and public cloud environments and will support MacOS in both deployment scenarios. teradici.com

KeyShot 10.1 brings collision detection & settle

L World, Dassault Systèmes and AMD showcased a prototype graphics engine running on top of Solidworks, using the soon-to-be released AMD ‘Navi21’ Pro GPU with hardware ray tracing. The demonstration showed how a combination of GPU-accelerated ray tracing and denoising could be used to calculate accurate ambient occlusions. solidworks.com | amd.com

uxion has launched a hefty point release of KeyShot which brings physics modelling to the rendering system for the first time. The new feature is found in a general purpose collision detection tool which allows you to align objects using the move tool (so that parts will stop when colliding with others). Alternatively, you can use the new Settle option that essentially switches on gravity and lets parts fall naturally. There are also updates to multi-select in the animation and light manager dialogs as well as new AR export options. keyshot3d.com

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SHAPR3D UNVEILS DRAWINGS & APPLE MACOS SUPPORT BETA

ROUND UP ITI has launched CADfix Viz for CAD-to-mesh conversion, which maximises the reuse of 3D digital assets for VR/AR/ MR applications. CADfix Viz is claimed to be a userfriendly solution built on the proven CADfix model translation, repair and simplification platform iti-global.com

Rize has debuted its Safe at Home Manufacturing initiative, to safeguard the health of designers and engineers working from home and at potential risk from carcinogenic emissions and other airborne particles emitted by desktop 3D printers rize3d.com

hapr3D has added drawings capabilities for the first time with the latest release of its iPad-focused 3D direct modelling system. If you’re not familiar with the Hungarian company, Shapr3D has been developing its eponymous Shapr3D system for the iPad (and soon, MacOS), taking advantage of multitouch portability with the iPad and the Apple Pencil. As well as the update featuring drawings, there’s additional news in that the pricing scheme has changed. The free version remains, offering 3D modelling

and two datasets per user with basic export of STL files. The previous Pro package is being replaced with a $499/year or $59/month Business package offering users access to the full toolset. Between the two is a Hobby licence, priced at $149/year or $30/month, which comes with STL export for 3D printing and 10 workspaces for personal use only. We took a look at the system a few months back and it impressed us then – so much so, we look at it again this month on page 42, with a peak at the macOS Beta. shapr3d.com

Shapr3D's drawings capabilities offer the slick user experience we've come to expect from the company

Supermicro AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro workstation boasts up to four high-end GPUs

upermicro has announced details of its soon-to-bereleased Threadripper Pro workstation. With up to 64 cores and 2 TB of memory, the Supermicro A+ SuperWorkstation 5014A-TT should be well-suited to high-end simulation and design visualisation. Supermicro’s new desktop machine will be part of a second wave of Threadripper Pro workstations now that Lenovo’s exclusive agreement with AMD is coming to an end. Supermicro pitches the 5014A-TT as a “server-grade, high-end workstation that offers maximum configurability”, thanks to its new M12SWA-TF motherboard. It offers up to 2 TB of DDR4 3200 memory and up to four full-height, double-

width GPUs, double that of the Lenovo ThinkStation P620, which has more of a mid-range chassis. Other features include four M.2 slots for ultra-fast PCIe Gen 4 NVMe storage, built-in 10 Gigabit Ethernet and support for 25/100/200G NICs. supermicro.com | amd.com

The Supermicro A+ SuperWorkstation 5014A-TT is one of a raft of new Threadripper Pro workstations

Express Group/GoPrint3D has rebranded as Additive-X, to showcase the evolution of the company. Its new name firmly positions it within in the additive manufacturing industry, with the ‘X’ linking back to its 30-plus years as Express Group and its drive to add value and go the extra mile for customers additive-x.com

An early preview of the Lynx R-1 MR (mixed reality) mode has been given by Lynx CEO Stan Larroque. He showcased the Lynx R-1 headset’s ability to overlay content onto the real world. This should be of interest to designers, given that the Lynx R-1 doesn’t use a transparent display, but instead, video pass-through with minimal latency lynx-r.com

Structur3d Inj3ctor Platform, which injects industrial-grade liquid materials into 3D-printed moulds, leverages Ultimaker water-soluble PVA filament and 3D printing technology to custom-design complex moulds that dissolve structur3d.io

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COMMENT

There’s a whole lot more to optical simulation than simply running a ray trace if you really want to get the best idea of the lit appearance of your proposed widget, as our columnist Erin McDermott explains

have some bad news. You may think the ray trace you did to show what your widget will look like once it’s lit up is comparable to an optical simulation. It is not. Some engineers I run into say they know what I do for a living, because they’ve run a ray trace, too. Then, they explain what they did. And then I try to explain how far off that is from what I do when I design illumination as an optical engineer. There are many different versions of simulations these other pros bring up. It might be an artistic rendering program, like for a video game. Or it might be an add-on in their existing CAD programme. I’ve even had my work compared to a hand-drawn sketch of six light rays. That’s six rays total. With these examples, it’s like comparing a napkin sketch to digitally sculpted CAD. You wouldn’t covert that napkin sketch directly into a design for mass production. And you shouldn’t be using these other approximations for your optical design, either! The exception is if that CAD add-on or link is from a legitimate optical software provider. Examples include Synopsys LightTools or Ansys SPEOS. These other engineers I speak with retort, “but I can spec different materials and I can trace rays.” But can you, though?

DEVIL IN THE DETAILS I understand why it seems like that’s all there is to it! You got your CAD, you create a light source, you apply material properties, and let the sim rip. What else could there be? However, each step comes with extremely important details. The devil is in each of them. Creating a light source, like a model of an LED, can sometimes take several hours. When it’s difficult to hunt down data from the manufacturer, it can take days. If your product is a special case where, say, colour is crucial, it can take weeks. Sometimes we need to physically send an LED to a lab. The next step, applying material properties, could be an entire university

course. There is both colour and surface texture to worry about, which for best results requires measured models. Then, if you have a translucent material, like a milky-white polycarbonate, you need to worry about telling the rays how to behave inside the part, too. With these materials, it’s not enough to select ‘translucent plastic’. If, for example, you bumped up the opacity of a PC part by custom-mixing in white barium sulfate powder, you need many details. There’s the concentration of BaSO4:PC by weight or volume, and also the size range of the particles! A 30:70 mix will act very differently if the average particle size is twice as big in one sample versus another. The number of rays bouncing around your simulation is also critical. When running a true, full-length optical simulation, I run not dozens, not thousands, but millions of rays. To generate one lit rendering, it can sometimes take several days.

WHAT WOULD AN OPTICAL ENGINEER DO? Beyond these annoyingly important factors, there’s one more secret about optical simulations: renderings of real-life performance are unreliable! Most optical engineers rarely use them for the design work we do. Instead, we use numerical values and false colour plots more often. Photorealistic renderings are more for sanity checks and sometimes to demonstrate lit appearance to a client. However, I try to avoid using them in client communications. A big part of why they don’t work perfectly is that it’s hard to guess what the ambient light will look like. That’s how bright the sun or your fluorescent lighting will be on the day you examine the real part. It’s easy for a lit effect to be absolutely blinding at night – like that obnoxious LED indicator on the charger in my vehicle – and then barely visible under daylight. Sometimes you can change ambient light levels in your simulation. However, at some point, it’s hard to tell when these changes

are more like Instagram filters than a step closer to reality. By the way, it’s a good rule of thumb to never catfish your clients. Do other ray trace add-ons have any value? Of course! They can give rough approximations of lit appearance, and they can give early warnings of problems like hot spots or dark spots in illumination. They’re also used for client proposals, like in the automotive industry, where companies need to win a bid before designing a headlamp. That’s when an artist will create a rendering to give the client an idea of predicted appearance. However, often upon seeing these mockups, I’d say, “Dammit, Dave, we won’t be able to make it look that good.” To which Dave would reply something like, “Well, that’s your problem. Good luck.” So, if you run a ray trace and are disappointed in the results, don’t hate ray traces in general! Instead, when it counts, connect with an optical engineer.

Optical ray traces are serious business... except when simulating the lit appearance of kitschy Christmas ornaments like this

GET IN TOUCH: Erin M. McDermott directs optical engineering at Spire Starter, helping hardware engineers who don’t know that things using light (cameras, LED illumination, laser processes, etc) need competent design, optimisation, and tolerancing like the rest of their widget. She also runs OddEngineer.com, connecting manufacturers and startups with niche HW engineering experts. Get in touch at spirestarter.com or @erinmmcdermott

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COMMENT

“Just because you can print something, doesn’t mean you should,” says our new columnist, SJ. As many look to 3D printing to ease supply chain issues and add the wow factor, they also need to consider engineering ethics

y boss’ irritation slowly sinks in as he firmly puts his foot down. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this,” he says, “but it’s just not an additive part.” There’s a moment of hesitation from the design team lead. I can tell this isn’t the ugly truth he came to hear. He responds, even more firmly: “But can you print it? That’s what we’re asking you.” My boss hesitates, work politics clearly on his mind. “It is printable, technically speaking, but it’s a much better candidate for a traditional process like casting or forging. From a cost perspective –” The other shoe drops and my boss is cut off by Mr Fancy Title Engineer. “Additive brings the manufacturing of the part inhouse and at an advantageous schedule,” he insists. “Cost isn’t an issue here. We’ll proceed forward with the design and take it to production.” I feel like I have this conversation more and more as the pandemic progresses. Companies looking to hedge the risk in their supply chains exacerbated by Covid want to bring manufacturing in-house or to a 3D printing bureau closer to their home operations. As an engineer, I am constantly reminded to “stay in my lane”. My job is to take CAD data, format it for printing, and then make the parts to customer requirements. Fortunately for me, my job is the thing I’m most passionate about: 3D printing. I jump out of bed in the morning with dreams of new geometries that have never



The time will come when you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy

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been made before. My goal is to give life to parts that are not only aesthetically beautiful, but can also match or outperform traditional parts in almost every category. 3D printing is the edge of an engineering design frontier and as we approach our ‘manifest destiny’, I have to stop and ask: “Just because we can print it, does that mean we should?”

WHO DECIDES? For all of the performance enhancements that 3D printing can provide, in the form of light weighting, topology optimisation, low blade angles and crazy, curvy heat exchangers, this technology seems incredibly underutilised. But who decides what we print? Is it the additive manufacturing engineer or Mr Fancy Pants, who’s in charge of the cheque book? And why does it matter, anyway? In my past, I was asked to work on a highly classified defence project, where I didn’t exactly know how the part would be used. I just knew its key characteristics: material, shape, size and budget. When I asked my engineering colleagues how they felt about not getting more information, I was told: “Your job is simply to make the thing. There’s nothing unethical about making the object. What the user does with it after that is none of our concern. The only ethical obligation you have is to make sure that it is of the highest quality, meets all requirements and is delivered on time.” I feel like we’ve all been there at least once. Questioning authority isn’t easy and, looking back on this conversation, I remember nodding and not pushing the issue any further. But in the present, as someone deeply passionate about this technology, I can’t help but feel some sort of contrition. Did I do the right thing by staying in my lane? It’s just a (.eos) job…right? Which then makes me wonder if we, as an additive manufacturing industry, are taking ethics into account? Are we making parts that put public welfare first? Who is going to feel the effects – both positive and negative

– of this technology that we’re introducing? Has anyone mapped out the short-term and long-term consequences? It is 2021. We are living in a pandemic. People are dying in greater numbers than ever before. So, when asked whether or not you should print something just because you can, I ask that you take a moment to reflect. To give it some thought every now and again. The time will come when you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy. Even if it hurts in the moment, at the end of the day, making a choice that aligns with your core values is what helps you sleep at night. In twenty years, you don’t want to still be asking, “It was just a job…right?”

To paraphrase Rodin: “3D printing is the art of the hole and the lump”

GET IN TOUCH: SJ is a Metal Additive Engineer aka THEE Hot Girl of Metal Printing. She currently works as a metal additive applications engineer providing AM solutions and #3dprinting of metal parts to help create a decarbonised world. Get in touch at @inconelle on twitter DEVELOP3D.COM MARCH 2021 15

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VISUAL DESIGN GUIDE KANO PC & ACCESSORIES A pioneer of computing and STEM resources for the curious kids of the world, Kano has stepped up to a Windows-based machine, perfect for home learners

SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED A former DEVELOP3D cover star, Kano was founded with the goal of providing kits and software that give kids of all ages, all over the world, the power to create technology, not just consume it. The Kano PC and accessories are its latest set of products

CLEAR INSTRUCTIONS & CLEAN PACKAGING If you’re combining the younger generation and technology, you’ll know that clean, concise instructions are the only way to fly. Kano’s guidance excels in its clarity, as does the company’s recyclable packaging

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WEBCAM FOR LEARNING The USB-connected webcam is an ideal add-on for the Kano PC (or indeed, any other compatible laptop.) It’s positionable, runs at 1080p resolution and features both a macro lens that slides for closer work as well as a light. It can also be unplugged for guaranteed privacy

CLASS IS IN SESSION The Kano PC might not be the most powerful computer, but it’s probably the most fun. Running Windows 10, it’s packing a Intel Celeron N4000 Dual Core 1.10 GHz, 4GB RAM and 64Gb of storage. The display is an 11.6-inch touchscreen, running at 1366 x 768 or 720p HD. There are a couple of USB slots, a single HDMI for plugging into a monitor or TV, dualband Bluetooth and the ever-present WiFi. It also offers that all-important microphone for speaking up in class, as well as line outs for both headphones and speakers. Alongside the hardware, Kano does an amazing job with the software provided on its machines

BUILDING OUT A DESIGN TEAM We spoke to Bruno Schillinger, lead product designer at Kano, about how the design team has evolved since DEVELOP3D last caught up with it. He told us: “We have built out our own design team since the article came out. We have a team of industrial designers, which I lead, and several electronics and mechanical engineers, who all work closely with our team in China to produce our designs from sketch to product, in-house.” In terms of 3D CAD tools, the team uses Rhino, Solidworks, Creo, Fusion 360, Oculus Medium, Illustrator and Blender, Schillinger told us. In other words, its members use “different tools for different types of CAD work or individual preferences.” Some projects demand more parametric builds, which allow the CAD to scale as component sourcing happens, he added, while others involve more complex surfacing work, for which the team mainly uses Rhino, along with the X-nurbs plug-in, to achieve the optimum results

BUILD YOUR OWN ADD-ONS As well as the Kano PC itself being selfassembly, the same principle applies to both the mouse and the headphones. Both of these products can be put together with very little prior knowledge, but provide enough of a challenge that kids learn something useful during the build process

NEXT STEPS

The Kano PC, headphones, webcam and mouse are available now for a total of £359 kano.me

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PROFILE

The Gozney Dome is a pro-grade outdoor oven, designed with a range of add-on abilities - such as the Neapolitan Arch, seen here, which takes pizzas to the next level

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BARE

GRILLS Gozney’s latest wood-fired oven, the Dome, is designed for making restaurantclass pizzas at home. Stephen Holmes talks to IDC about how it developed the initial concept and ensured the product was oven-ready for manufacture

erfect pizza is the ultimate goal of all Gozney products, whether the company is supplying commercial ovens to restaurants like Pizza Pilgrims and Franco Manca, or outdoor ovens for domestic use by consumers. Based in Christchurch, UK, the company was launched after founder Tom Gozney built himself a pizza oven in his own back garden, attracting the interest of local restaurants. This early experiment quickly evolved into The Stone Bake Oven Company. Launched in 2010, the firm offers precast stone ovens, and has inspired celebrity chefs to use stone cooking at home. Initial products were snapped up for installation in luxury kitchens and were such a success that the company grew quickly, adding Gozney Professional Ovens to the mix. Today, Gozney products are found in a number of worldleading commercial kitchens and its consumer products have proved popular, too. The crowdfunded Roccbox, for example, shrank the pizza oven to a portable format. For its latest product, the Dome, Gozney wanted to make wood-fired cooking easy for home cooks, in the form of a versatile outdoor oven. A dual-fuel approach retains the wood-fired approach – which gives the best taste and experience – but also means the user can switch to the convenience of a built-in gas burner. That’s more flexible for customers and enables the oven to reach temperatures of 500-degrees Celsius, simply at the turn of a dial.

DESIGN AND ENGINEERING INGREDIENTS During the Dome’s development, Gozney called on product development agency IDC’s engineering team to review its initial plans. “The overall challenge was to engineer how this product would be manufactured and put together,” explains IDC project manager Micha Uhman. In a series of brainstorming sessions, Gozney and IDC came up with several innovative ideas to improve the design, including scalable engineering for size changes to the product in future and simplification of components for easier assembly. While Gozney already had the look and feel of the product firmly in mind, IDC developed the internal engineering. The Dome’s compact form houses both gas and electrical elements, as well as materials that react differently under high temperatures. Based on its wide experience of manufacturing and sheet metal forming, IDC proposed a new approach to the outer metal pressings, taking into account the depth and angles that would best suit the smooth, domed geometries of the 1 product.

1 IDC was brought ●

in to perfect the Dome’s engineering using Solidworks, and ready the design for manufacture

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PROFILE

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One of our design mantras is to simplify and I think this project is an excellent example of how to simplify engineering and design for manufacture, with the added benefit that our design is scalable for potential size changes too

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2 The optimisation of the design for manufacture and assembly was carefully balanced with the need to retain the core functions of the internal geometry, in order to control the flames and retain the outstanding cooking performance of the oven’s original design. “There was very little space for error,” says Uhman, explaining that there was also no time for a full prototype to be built to test out the design. In fact, the only elements that were physically tested before heading to manufacture were a couple of 3D-printed models to test the fit of some small sections and a 1:10 scale model. “Other than that, we relied on all the internal expertise [at IDC],” says Uhman.

READY TO SERVE Once the first packaged design was complete, it was a case of ironing out some small features and tolerances to ensure that all the parts came together with the neat fit that Gozney demanded. IDC kept in close touch with the factory producing the parts in China, receiving feedback throughout and making any necessary amendments, ensuring they completed Gozney’s brief for a high-quality product. The design and engineering work was all carried out in Solidworks, importing Gozney’s initial designs and building them out. This included the client’s ideas for a comprehensive range of accessories. Several add-on fitments, for example, enable the Dome to transform into a Neapolitan pizza over, a bread oven, or a smoker – so it was up to IDC to flesh out these ideas, ensure they worked with the design, were manufacturable, and took into account issues like heat breaks between all the elements that the user would handle. This was made easier by good lines of communication with Gozney, enabling the project to be completed in under six months, from first engineering plans to samples. “On the outside, it looks very simple,” concludes Uhman. “But then it was about making sure that all the elements came together, including the sturdiness and the reliability, so that it fulfills the quality required by Gozney.” idc.uk.com | gozney.com

3 2 With the help of IDC, Gozney was able to scale its ● engineering solutions for potential future size changes and simplify components for easier assembly 3 The design allows the user to easily switch between ●

fuel types and reach temperatures of 500 degrees Celsius, all at the turn of a dial

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PROFILE

LUSH COSMETICS IS TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THE LATEST TOOLS TO BRING MORE FUN AND RELAXATION TO BATHTIME AS AL DEAN REPORTS ,

Bath bombs are one of Lush’s signature products and it has sold some 135 million to date

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 We like to call ourselves a reactive business. Things change daily and I stopped planning my days, because there are different priorities that come from various places. It’s very much a case of, ‘Come in and see what happens’ Damien Carter, Lush Cosmetics

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PROFILE

ush Cosmetics is a company that requires little introduction. If you’ve ever set foot inside one of its 928 retail stores around the world, you’ll know that all five senses are in for a treat. From massage bars and body butters to its legendary range of bath bombs, Lush’s products are an important part of bathtime in millions of households worldwide – especially at a time when many of us are prioritising self-care and relaxation. Its championing of vegan ingredients, its ethical sourcing policies and its keen eye on reducing packaging, meanwhile, make for a guilt-free experience for even the most principled shopper. For many years, Lush crafted the master moulds for its products by hand, using a mixture of clay modelling and stone-cast carving. This was often laborious and timeconsuming for the development team. Product iterations were less flexible, too, as each mould could take several days to create. What was needed was a heady infusion of digital and additive manufacturing technologies. In 2018, Lush decided to enhance its product design

1 1 Lush’s retail ● capabilities and opened a state-of-the-art research and outlets are instantly development facility at its headquarters. This is equipped recognisable to with a range of design and additive manufacturing shoppers worldwide technologies and heading it up is innovation lab manager Damien Carter. Carter’s route to managing Lush’s innovation lab is not the traditional pathway you might expect. Prior to joining Lush, he was making furniture in his native Poole, before joining Lush as a technician in the moulding department in 2014. As he explains: “I didn’t have any experience in what I do now. I joined Lush in the bubble department, working on various machines, pressing the products. I then went into work in the mould-making department, making all clay models and moulds by hand. We were pouring things in epoxy resin and then using a Dremel to carve out the detail. I did that for about a year.” Lush then started to look into 3D printers, he says, “because we always struggled with complex designs, particularly with lettering. We were cutting letters out of cardboard and then putting them on a block of wood then making a mould of that, pouring it and then having to Dremel and drill it. It was quite a long process.” Lush first investigated 3D printing seriously in 2016, creating a couple of samples. It went really well, according to Carter. Today, the innovation lab has six

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2 3

Formlabs Form 2 printers, three Form 3s and a largeformat FDM printer. That’s on top of its own laser engraver and a brand-new CNC mill. “The reason we’ve stuck with Formlabs printers is usability and reliability. We just plug them in and can expect to get great results every time. The 3D renders also help our colleagues visualise the intricate details of the product before sending the designs to production. There’s all sorts of stuff going on now,” he says. Alongside the adoption of additive manufacturing technologies, this period also saw the innovation lab build up its workflow to drive those machines and select its digital design tools, eventually settling on a combination of Solidworks and ZBrush. As Carter explains, a former colleague from France was already experienced in Solidworks, having been taught it at school, and showed him the ropes. Along with a natural affinity for more complex software (his passions outside of work include music production), Carter found Solidworks to be a good fit for the type of work Lush needed to do. While 80% to 90% of Lush’s design work is now completed using Solidworks, Carter’s team also uses ZBrush for more organic modelling. Often, a combination of the two is used to achieve the final forms. “Sometimes, I model something in Solidworks and

5 2 The company relies on a fleet of ●

Formlabs desktop SLA printers to assist with all manner of design tasks 3 Lush’s design team makes good ●

use of Pixologic’s ZBrush to help with organic shape creation 4 Solidworks is a mainstay of Lush’s ●

digital workflow from initial concept to mould master creation 5 The bath bomb is the product for ●

which Lush is probably best-known

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‘‘ We looked

at our first printer in 2016 and created a couple of samples and it went really well. Now we’ve built out the Innovation Lab

’’

then put it into ZBrush, just to sort of smooth it off or change it more organically,” Carter says. “ZBrush is much better for that organic shape.”

PROGRESS TO PRODUCTION Once digital designs are ready, Carter and his team will prepare prototype moulds and carry out small-scale batch tests to ensure that a design is manufacturable using Lush’s processes. A new set of masters is then provided to the in-house moulding department, which will use its own vacuum formers to test the designs in a large batch. When production readiness is achieved, tooling is built for production, via either a combination of vacuum forming and epoxy resin or, more recently, aluminium tooling, also in-house. Once tooling is ready, it’s sent out to each of the departments and manufacturing sites, depending on the product: Ballistics for bath bombs; Bubbles for bubble bars (crumbled to create a bubble bath); and Massage for massage bars. Carter’s team also makes interesting use of laser scanning technology, primarily for scanning existing casts, which can then be reproduced or edited for size and reused. Here, it relies on a Creaform Go!Scan 3D. “Sometimes we get asked to scale up existing products, so this is ideal,” says Carter. “We also use it to scan in objects and manipulate the data to make the said object mouldable. We were asked to make a local artist’s wood resin sculpture into a bath bomb mould. To do this, we scanned the sculpture, manipulated the data – that is, we removed any undercuts so the product would release from the mould – resized it, then printed it.”

AUSTRALIAN BUSHFIRE RELIEF PROJECT Another example of how 3D printing has enabled Lush to stay reactive was its ‘All The Wild Things’ relief project in 2020. In January of that year, the company began selling koala-shaped soaps to raise money for the Bush Animal Fund, a charity helping wildlife in the wake of the Australian bushfires. The soaps were limited-edition: 50,000 were available worldwide, to represent the number of koalas in Australia. They quickly sold out and fans

THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX

Lush’s new additive manufacturing unit is a tribute to the very technology that it is designed to house. Engineers wanted to be able to fully visualise the building and create a scaled architectural

model, in order to make the best use of the large open space. For the work involved, the company received a quotation for £15,000, including labour, materials and shipping, from a specialist

architectural design bureau. Instead, Carter took matters into his own hands, building a mock-up of the space in Solidworks and then printing it on a Form 2 3D printer, using a mix

of standard engineering materials from Formlabs. He calculates the costs associated with this in-house approach at around £900. And in addition to savings of over £14,000, the project was delivered faster, too.

“We found this to be a great tool in terms of spatial planning, which means we can 3D print our equipment and then we can tangibly look and feel how something is likely to fit within units,” he says.

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PROFILE begged the company to make more. Carter was extremely proud to be part of the team that worked on this project, he says. “We were able to turn around the mould designs within 24 hours with Formlabs printers and the custom Koala soaps went into production in under a week.”

PLANS FOR THE FUTURE Lush likes to think of itself as a business that’s fast to react to changing circumstances and trends. “Things change daily and I stopped planning my days down, because there are different priorities that come from various places. It’s very much a case of, ‘Come in and see what happens.’ In the future, we’d like to expand the team, but in the current climate, that’s difficult and it all comes down from workload,” says Carter. One thing he definitely wants to do is to equip other manufacturing sites around the world with their own 3D printers and CNC machines. “Then I can email them files, and they can print them off there. It’s just a lot quicker when we don’t have to send it in the post. When we release a new product, we have to get the mould master to them. At the minute, they’re getting pulled in epoxy resin and sent.” Carter’s goal to build better connections between Lush’s manufacturing sites across the UK, Japan, Australia, Croatia and Germany using 3D printers as the conduit is an interesting one. In fact, it’s how he works already with the Lush team in Japan, the first overseas manufacturing unit to have its own 3D printers. When new designs are created, masters for moulding can be sent out straight away, and Japanese colleagues can print them the next day. It’s faster, more environmentally friendly and easier on the company’s budget and product-release schedules. Where once mould creation took two to three days, the average design now takes just 4.5 hours to print. As a result, the team can take ideas from design to manufacture in under 24 hours. And that’s all the better for customers desperate for a little self-care and indulgence in these stressful times.

lush.com

6 Koala-shaped soaps were sold by Lush to ●

raise money for the Australian Bush Animal Fund and the moulds them were turned around in just 24 hours 7 Formlabs SLA printers are a core part of the ●

Innovation lab’s kit, along with machines for FDM, CNC and laser scanning 8 Vacuum formers are also a mainstay for ●

mould creation

9 From an SLA mould master model... ● 10 ...to a bath bomb, ready to go off ●

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PROFILE

POWERED

FLIGHT Reducing wing drag was key to Otto Aviation’s design for the world’s most fuelefficient passenger aircraft. Stephen Holmes discovers how it used Esteco Volta to optimise its laminar shapes and achieve supreme fuel economy

tto Aviation, a California-based start-up looking to make private air transportation affordable for both passengers and the environment, has described the development of its revolutionary Celera 500L design. It bills the plane as “the most fuel-efficient passenger aircraft in the world”, with real-world flight tests of the prototype recording fuel-economy figures of 18 to 25 mpg and cruise speeds of 450 mph. The current version of the Celera 500L is powered by the highly efficient Raikhlin Engine Development A03 turbo diesel engine, which can operate on either Jet-A or Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF). Flight test results show it has already delivered emission reductions of 80% versus comparable aircraft, while passengers are able to relax in the 6ft 2in-wide cabin over transcontinental ranges.

USING LAMINAR FLOW TO FUEL EFFICIENCY The dramatic reduction in fuel consumption should make the production version of the Celera 500L the most environmentally friendly airplane in its class and presents a major leap forward in the effort to develop a zeroemission air transportation system. This is predominantly down to the Celera 500L’s extensive use of laminar shapes for the wings, fuselage and tail section. These enable a 59% reduction in drag compared to a similar-sized aircraft. This does, however, create issues for the design and engineering process, given the revolutionary nature of the design and its clean-sheet design, when it comes to bringing all elements together for full optimisation.

SOLVING PROBLEMS WITH SIMULATION “Multidisciplinary design optimisation of this aircraft is essential to its performance”, says Otto Aviation

CTO David Bogue. “We need a tool that improves team collaboration and gets the job done faster.” For this purpose, Otto has turned to Esteco Volta and its web-based product development and simulation platform. “Volta’s server-based framework allows team members to alter optimisations on a real-time basis and deliver the best overall performance,” says Bogue. The evaluation period for Volta came about as Otto Aviation looked to improve the high-lift system of the aircraft, which can allow aircraft designers to reduce the overall size and surface area of the wing, lessening the drag of the Celera 500L when cruising even further. Travis Fousek, senior aeronautical systems engineer, adds: “Not only have the Volta optimisation results shown marked performance gains, but the framework has allowed faster design cycles and increased collaboration between structures, flight controls and aerodynamics disciplines, all due to the rich visualisation, exploration and workflow toolsets.”

Otto Aviation recently announced the Celera 500L, a flight-tested, full-scale prototype aircraft

ottoaviation.com | esteco.com

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THE GEOMETRY EXPERTS

Optimise, reuse and share your CAD models CADfix removes the barriers that prevent the reuse of solid models in CAD design, manufacturing, analysis and virtual reality. CADfix’s extensive set of geometry handling tools, enables you to maximise the effective reuse of 3D CAD model data across a range of engineering applications and industries. • Advanced Simulation • Design Collaboration • Digital Manufacturing • Virtual Reality

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TALKING HEADS

THE FUTURE OF:

DATA TRANSLATION JOHN MCCULLOUGH MARKETING GENERAL MANAGER KUBOTEK

to leave that decision up to the process expert who requires the derivative. A related problem we have seen is CAD users who are not aware that STL files are not just a translation to a different CAD format. The precision lost when a solid CAD model is converted to an approximate STL mesh can be significant and a supplier receiving an STL can’t put that precision back. It is best practice with all ith the addition of translations and conversions new 3D data types in of critical 3D data to include the product definition independent model comparison arena, it is more important software in the process, in order than ever for design and to validate that the derivative has manufacturing teams to clearly not lost any data and is within define and communicate the required tolerance of the original. authority dataset. This practice is widely used by Unless there is a specific need aerospace suppliers working on to limit accuracy, that dataset aircraft programmes that use should always be the most precise model-based definition (MBD) as and complete type of geometry the authority data set. available, usually a solid. Many There are evolving technologies 3D technologies, from finite to convert mesh, lattice and element analysis to additive point data into solids, but it is manufacturing, operate on mesh important to understand that models that can be derived from these are not meant to be used in the authority solid using widely back-and-forth translation. available and easy-to-use software. The proper use of them is when Any mesh, lattice, or point a solid is needed and the original model derived from a solid only data was in mesh, lattice or point approximates the original. Some format – from a scan of a physical of the precision is lost. Depending part or from animation artwork, on the intended process, that loss for example. can be absolutely fine, but it’s best kubotek3d.com

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A related problem we have seen is CAD users who are not aware that STL files are not just a translation to a different CAD format

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ROMAN LYGIN CEO & COFOUNDER CAD EXCHANGER

recise B-reps and polygonal meshes often go hand in hand. This drives the necessity for consistent data structures and algorithms for both, including support of multiple part representations and multi-LODs (for example, availability in JT or STEP formats), simplification

Much richer information encapsulated in B-rep often makes it a better master representation, which provides the required accuracy of a mesh. Mesh-to-B-rep conversions are certainly in demand, but their implementation will take time to achieve quality and speed comparable with B-rep-to-mesh. Unlike professional CAD developers, domain-specific software vendors and end users often do not have a deep understanding of the peculiarities of 3D formats or representations. It is not uncommon to hear this: “I need a STEP file from this STL one.” So it often takes extra effort to educate users on which formats to use for more efficient data exchange. Format standardisation



It is not uncommon to hear this: “I need a STEP file from this STL one.” So it often takes extra effort to educate users on which formats to use for more efficient data exchange

 and decimation, as well as particular geometry recognition (such as NURBS-to-analytical surfaces) or cross-references (for example, per-face triangulations or mesh-to-face indexing). Both require parallel algorithms with good scalability to support growing geometry complexity and assembly sizes. Still, given very different sources of origin (such as design versus scan), the representations can hardly be called really interchangeable or equivalent.

committees can contribute by encouraging support for dual (or multiple) representations. Hardware vendors, meanwhile, should be taking an interest in leveraging more powerful 3D formats and not just those that are easy to use. Overall, it will take a concerted effort from multiple participants in the workflow, not just CAD conversion technology providers, to achieve the greatest impact on efficiency improvement. cadexchanger.com

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The 3D design and engineering world is bringing together solids/surfaces with meshes, lattices and point-based data like never before. How will data translation technology adapt to bring together these often disparate and incompatible geometries and make them interchangeable?

KENTARO FUKUTA, GENERAL MANAGER, GLOBAL BUSINESS, ELYSIUM

ompatibility of raw data between solids/ surfaces, polygon/ mesh, and point clouds is a minimum requirement for data translation, but it will not be enough to fully leverage the value of data. It becomes more important to include the context, so as to fully

For example, in a scanned point cloud environment, the ability to extract the objects targeted for use in a specific context is necessary to make efficient use of the information. Interoperability, with the goal of adding value to the raw data, will be more essential when we accelerate MBD/MBE to establish robust digital end-toend processes. When more and more product information is digitalised with added value, such as complete manufacturing instructions, data will be better connected, automated and consumed across the organisation and the supply chain. Interoperability will be more platform-centric in the near future; the mobility and

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When more and more product information is digitalised with added value, such as complete manufacturing instructions, data will be better connected, automated and consumed across the organisation and supply chain

RYAN DUGMORE HEAD OF CONSULTANCY THEOREM SOLUTIONS

s CAD has evolved, so has data translation. At one time, it was all about lines, points and surfaces, and then later, product structure and solid bodies. With early virtual reality (VR), and when the PLM vendors offered desktop viewers, it meant polygon data had to be created and consumed. Today, mixed-mode data is handled, and bodies made of surfaces, B-rep solids and polygon meshes can be created. If the target system supports those forms, it can be consumed. Scanned data can be created and meshes produced.

It’s now feasible to read and create an assembly composed of parts (bodies) made up of surfaces, solids and polygon meshes. The issue is what will the target CAD system do with it? If the target CAD can define a mixed assembly, then it is feasible to read and write that data. How well the modeller will deal with a ‘mixed’ assembly is a question for CAD vendors. Another use case is support for data in extended reality (XR) applications, which, being based on gaming engines, means polygon meshes. That data can be created today, and if needed, optimised to improve the XR experience. This begs the question again: If a user modifies the source CAD data in XR and outputs it, what would the CAD system do with it? The answer for systems that support hybrid modelling is they could consume and model with it. So when use cases demand, data translation will be the enabler for sharing mixed-mode data. theorem.com

 equip the consumer with the deliverables of an application in which the data is being applied. For example, in order to be able to apply manufacturability checks, it is important to recognise not just the features but also the design intent, which may mean having an understanding of the data beyond ‘raw’ geometry. It is also important to be able to recognise specific areas of relevance in situations when data may be overly abundant.

modularity of interoperability software will become significant, and can then serve to fully utilise the variety and types of 3D digital data and tools in use. We should not be tied to specific formats/systems or tools going forward. It will be a mission for interoperability software to remove the barriers between process, companies and organisations. elysium-global.com

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Today it’s feasible to read and create an assembly composed of parts (bodies) made up of surfaces, solids and polygon meshes. The issue is what will the target CAD system do with it? If the target CAD can define a mixed assembly, then it is feasible to read and write that data. How well the modeller will deal with a ‘mixed’ assembly is a question for the CAD vendors

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TALKING HEADS

PETER KERWIN PARASOLID PRODUCT MANAGER SIEMENS DISW integrity. We’re also delivering ball-and-rod lattice support employing the same evolutionary approach. Our commitment to data openness was central in the design of both. For example, with a single, unified data structure, it’s straightforward to update the XT file format to enable the Parasolid community to exchange new data formats in XT files. Siemens Digital Industries he rise of meshSoftware doesn’t see other major based technologies is vendors following this unified challenging software data structure strategy, so we vendors to mix and match mesh expect end users will see new data with long-established data formats causing potential boundary representation (B-rep) interoperability headaches. data structures and algorithms To support interaction with in complex product design non-Parasolid licensees, we workflows. publish the XT file format and For data exchange vendors and data exchange vendors have standards organisations, the access to functionality for shifting task is to understand building the Parasolid end of how each vendor is changing mesh-enabled, application-totheir data structures, in order application translators. to identify commonality for For application developers, developing standards and to the Parasolid/STEP translator understand where fundamentally toolkit uses AP242 definitions different approaches require data to export/import models as translation. collections of NURBS surfaces Parasolid’s answer to managing and mesh surfaces with mesh data was convergent connectivity data to rebuild the modelling, which integrates model on receipt. meshes into B-rep data For import, Parasolid reads structures and algorithms as a STL mesh files and has extensive new surface type with topology, analysis and repair functionality delivering new capabilities to improve mesh quality where without disruption to existing necessary. functionality or legacy data siemens.com/plmcomponents

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Siemens Digital Industries Software doesn’t see other major vendors following this unified data structure strategy, so we expect end users will see new data formats causing potential interoperability headaches

MARK GAMMON TECHNICAL DIRECTOR AND CADFIX PRODUCT MANAGER ITI, A WIPRO COMPANY

he 3D digital geometry landscape has changed rapidly in recent years, with novel forms of geometry reaching industrial maturity. High fidelity 3D scans are now commonplace. Super-flexible subdivision surface geometry powers intuitive free-form design tools. Lattice-based implicit surface geometry driven by simulation algorithms create designs unimaginable with traditional MCAD tools. This rapid expansion of the

differences in the maths supporting the 3D geometry representations make this a nontrivial technical challenge. Access to the mathematical definitions of the various representations is an essential pre-requisite. STEP (mostly) provides this for traditional MCAD, but the other forms are either too immature or fragmented (for example STL, AMF, 3MF and so on). Continuing innovation will outpace the standardisation process, which leaves open/ royalty-free programmatic access as the near-term solution. Pixar provides an OpenSubdiv toolkit, Autodesk provides an FBX toolkit. Other providers of novel geometry need to see open access as an essential part of their wider industrial adoption strategy through the collaborative R&D it enables. A hybrid geometry engine capable of simultaneously



Standards, open access and collaborative R&D will be essential enablers in this and the innovations of the 3D digital geometry industry in general

 industrial geometry frontier is exciting and promising, but geometry exchange weaknesses are limiting opportunities. The existing MCAD-based toolchain supports a vast ecosystem of digital geometry consumers. To tap into these, robust bidirectional MCAD connections need to be developed. However, fundamental

holding a design in multiple linked representations is the approach ITI is taking to upgrade its CADfix data exchange product for the multi-representational future. Standards, open access and collaborative R&D will be essential enablers in this and the innovations of the 3D digital geometry industry in general. iti-global.com

 COMING UP NEXT MONTH: Why has simulation not fulfilled its promise of becoming a mainstream part of design and engineering workflows? Want to get involved? Email al@x3dmedia.com DEVELOP3D.COM MARCH 2021 33

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INTERVIEW

UNENDANGERED

SPECIES Hard on the heels of Rhino 7, DEVELOP3D caught up with Rhino CEO Bob McNeel and business development head Scott Davidson, in order to dig a little deeper into the features of this latest release

hino occupies a special place in the designer’s CAD arsenal: a generic modelling tool, not skewed towards any single scale or industry. It’s used in footwear development and jewellery design just as much as it’s used in automotive surfaces and architecture. The only rule here is that the geometry that this system defines is able to be manufactured. While new features provide core functionality, such as mould design, it’s not a full or dedicated feature set. In other words, other developers or customers are welcome to develop on top. With Rhino 7 now available, DEVELOP3D spoke to two of the company’s guiding figures about what the latest release has in store, and what is yet to come. DEVELOP3D (D3D): There are a lot of features crammed into this new release. What were you thinking about when you decided on this feature list? Bob McNeel (BM): It was a timing thing. Part of it was that we needed to get the SubD stuff up to par. A lot of that was core work that had to be done by very small group of people, just because of the type of work it is. It allowed other people to work on all the other stuff, which just needed to be hooked up. It wasn’t inventing stuff from scratch, like the SubD project was, which was really going on for about three years. This is core geometry. What that means is that you touch every import/

export function, display pipeline, the picking engine, plus, then you’ve got to do all the core geometry work. And, the SubD stuff is a classic problem. The classic SubD implementation is basically just a mesh or refined mesh at various levels. For the Rhino community, where everything’s got to be at manufacturable precision, we had to develop the core technology to have the limit surface be a spline surface, not a mesh. D3D: So, how much better is this than T-splines? BM: It’s better and it’s different in a couple ways. There’s no patents involved, so that means that we can publish this, we can let people play with it, we can expose it in software development kits and we can put it in open source projects that we support. In terms of data structures and stuff, our SubD is actually compatible with Pixar’s OpenSubdiv. So, if you use the same control net from our SubD, and hand off to another open SubD project, they’ll get the same limit surface with their calculations. Now, the other system’s output may be a mesh, but for downstream applications like rendering, STL printing and, of course, animation and all of that stuff in the movie industry, they are identical, so there isn’t a loss going that way. But on the same hand, it can go the other way as a spline surface, so you can export it as a STEP file or whatever, and it’ll come in as ordinary B-rep. D3D: But can you turn it back into a SubD on demand? BM: You can in certain cases. It depends on what somebody does with it later. If you take a trimmed B-rep, something with round holes, a typical mechanical part, there’s not an obvious way to always go back. Scott Davidson (SD): Every SubD has a NURBS equivalent, but not every NURBS model has a SubD equivalent, because they’re two different geometry types. But going back the other way, you know, that’s where QuadRemesh comes in. We can QuadRemesh and go back to SubD. DEVELOP3D.COM MARCH 2021 35

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INTERVIEW

Now it’s a different SubD, but it’s close to the NURBS. While you can take a mesh and QuadRemesh it and go to SubD, and therefore go to NURBS, there is a limit to how damaged the mesh can be. We don’t have all the tools to do mesh repair in all cases. D3D: For Rhino, is injection-moulded parts and toolmaking an important market? BM: The essential geometry calculation to figure out where those mould lines go, so that parts will come out – it’s a heavy-duty math problem. And to hand that off to some other product, especially when the shape is freeform, is not something that anybody but a bunch of math geeks can figure out. We’ve actually had the math in there to do that for a while and finally one of our guys pointed out that they keep having to help people figure out how to use this stuff. We’ve just wrapped it up within a user-friendly interface. We’ve got customers in shoe companies and toy companies building these little plastic parts, and they have hundreds of people just working on the mould. The shoe folks tell me that, for every designer they have in Germany or Portland, Oregon, they’ve got somewhere between 60 and 600 people developing the moulds! D3D: How about rendering tools? BM: The first thing with Rhino 7 was to replace the rendering tools that we had in Rhino and replace the core rendering technology with Cycles – which is what’s in Blender – and that just opens up a whole bunch of capability. One of our guys is on the core team for Cycles in the Blender project, so he’s going back and forth between what he’s implementing for us, plus making sure its compatible with a bunch of stuff, particularly on the materials side, which is looking pretty good. SD: This is good to talk about, because it’s a pretty sophisticated advancement and not just as to what we

have in Rhino. We have Cycles, and Cycles is modern and supports a bunch of modern technologies like denoisers, right? Everybody has come out with denoisers lately Nvidia, AMD and Intel all have their own denoisers, and we support all three. It takes renderings from 20 minutes down to two minutes – kind of crazy numbers. Then you’ve got the materials. One of the things that people have asked for decades is, ‘Can I have compatible materials across multiple rendering tools?’ PBR [physically based rendering] done by Disney and Pixar and whoever else, is a step in that direction. We support PBR materials. Now, PBR is really great, because you can do a lot of sophisticated maps and we can take the bitmaps and textures from another product and use those in ours. But, there’s some kind of unspoken advantages here; for example, Adobe Substance Designer outputs PBR materials. So now you can use Substance and read Substance materials into Rhino and use them in your renders. You can also use Substance as a kind of a 3D painter. But if you want to talk about augmented and virtual reality, if you look at Unity, or Unreal, or Nvidia’s Omniverse, they use PBR materials too! Now, we’re pushing out to those, and have ongoing work to be compatible with Enscape, TwinMotion (which is free for Rhino users) and all of those type of tools. Rhino 7 is very much a play into all of this, but it’s also a lot of the foundation work that’s going to play into AR/VR worlds. We want to play well with all these tools. We want to be able to store their information and to be able to write their information out.

Perhaps the biggest news about Rhino 7 for DEVELOP3D readers is the addition of SubD modelling

D3D: So what is the AMD ProRender play for you then? SD: ProRender is there. It’s AMD’s play into using their GPUs and we can support all that stuff. It’s one of our strategies and what you’ll see throughout Rhino 7 is that we are really trying to be compatible with the SubD engines, PBR materials, the way we can get in and out of other products.We are trying to be a better player on the world stage of CAD information. rhino3d.com

36 MARCH 2021 DEVELOP3D.COM

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REVIEWS

Shapr3D Q1 2021 Shapr3D is one of the only 3D design applications so far to take advantage of both Apple’s iPad and Pencil hardware. The future looks interesting, as Al Dean reports, with latest updates introducing both drawings and the beginning of MacOS support

e first took a look at Shapr3D last year and the system impressed us. The combination of Apple’s iPad Pro hardware, the recently updated Apple Pencil and a Parasolidbased 3D design system was pretty compelling, particularly for those looking to capture thoughts and ideas in 3D, via a very portable format. In case you’ve not come across Shapr3D before, let’s first get you caught up. The company was founded by István Csanády in Hungary in 2015, with the goal of bringing the benefits and power of 3D modelling tools to the iPad platform. Where most CAD vendors had only tinkered with Apple’s tablet devices, Shapr3D went the whole hog and built a set of tools that allow you to interact with the iPad in a very fluid manner, taking advantage of both touch and the Apple

» Product: Shapr3D » Supplier: Shapr3D Price: $59.99/month shapr3d.com

Pencil to create and edit your geometry in 3D space. Since we last looked at the system, there have been some pretty big additions to what the system is capable of and some interesting clues as to what the future holds for it, so let’s dig in and see where things are at.

CORE CAPABILITIES

1 Shapr3D’s latest ●

update brings the team’s take on drawings to the system for the first time

The modelling tools within Shapr3D continue to mature nicely. The system is unabashedly focused on direct modelling, and as such, the typical user will be more involved in using features to create geometry, rather than relying on carefully crafted and impeccably drawn sketches. To my mind, the interactivity of the modelling process is very well-matched with the interactivity of the iPad/Pencil combination. The team continues to evolve the adaptivity of the modelling process, in

which the system presents commands and operations based on your selections, in order to speed things up and reduce screen clutter. But nor has it been afraid to take a fresh look at how certain, long-established processes work. An excellent example is Boolean operations – something which are vital in direct modelling systems. Shapr3D now presents the process of choosing which geometry is kept, removed and intersected, and provides assignments for each in a very dynamic manner. Where some CAD systems leave it to the user to know – or guess – what to do next, Shapr3D shows you, using colour and on-model assignment widgets. Figure 2 illustrates this very clearly for a subtraction operation. It’s a small thing, but it shows how seriously the user experience team takes the task of making its tool as accessible as possible. DEVELOP3D.COM MARCH 2021 39

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SOFTWARE REVIEW

2 DOCUMENTING IDEAS When we first looked at Shapr3D, it was a 3D modelling tool. A very useful modelling tool, certainly, and one built on the industrystandard Parasolid modelling engine – but if you were looking to use the same data to create drawings, to document your concepts and ideas, you’d be out of luck. Basically, you’d need to move that data to a different CAD system using one of the export options. The good news here is that, in the most recent release, the Shapr3D team has begun adding those all-important tools to help document your 3D-based ideas in the form of more traditional orthographic drawings. The tools now available in this release provide the bare bones of a fuller drawing creation environment. You begin with your model, start a new drawing, and you’re asked to select which bodies you want to use. This is useful, as you don’t really need your construction geometry present. You’ll then define a sheet size (from standard A* sizes) and orientation, a default scale and choose whether you want the system to place your standard front, top, right and isometric views for you. The system then switches to a drawing and places those views within a pretty welldesigned standard border. You can then adapt your view positions and scale as you see fit. It’s worth noting that the system does not maintain alignment in a way you might be used to, but

the movement widget lets you keep things in vertical or horizontal alignment easily. If you require additional views, these are available at the base of the screen to be quickly positioned (again, alignment isn’t added automatically.) You can then start to add in dimensions. The selection is basic, but well thought-out, from automatic dimensions based on your selection to explicit types from the menu on the left of the screen. These are placed and can then be arranged as you see fit. Alongside geometric dimensions, you can also add in notes, either in open space or using a leader from specific geometry. It’s interesting to note that Shapr3D’s plans for these tools – and their expansion to include additional view types such as details, sections and auxiliary (derived from existing views) – are pretty clear. In fact, the company has already added in the icons, along a small note saying ‘coming soon’. Right now, you get a pop-up window if you hit them by accident. It’s a nice touch, which gives the user confidence that these new options are in the pipeline.

BEYOND THE IPAD & PENCIL Alongside functional updates to the system, there have also been a couple of core changes to how you can interact with Shapr3D. The first change is that the system has also been adapted to take advantage of

keyboard and mouse support on the iPad – a popular combination, particularly for those looking to travel and work light. To take advantage of this, interaction with the system shifts from dynamic input with the pencil and finger to something more akin to a traditional CAD system. In other words, you use the right mouse for pan, shift, middle mouse for rotate, and the keyboard for text and numerical input. The second is that the team is currently beta testing a version of Shapr3D that runs natively on the MacOS platform. This is potentially huge news, particularly for younger users, especially those coming out of universities, who have a natural affinity with the Mac platform. I’ve had access to the beta version running on both an Intel-based Macbook Pro, as well as one of the new Apple M1-based machines featuring Apple’s first silicon developed inhouse. It works very well indeed. What’s interesting is that vendors trying to shoehorn pen-based input into traditional systems often struggle, as the two methods (mouse+keyboard versus pen) unfortunately clash. Shapr3D seems to be avoiding this so far, with a subtle shift of its user experience to better suit the keyboard+mouse input. It’ll feel very familiar to the iPad variant, but will give you the experience you’d perhaps expect from a more traditional 3D modelling system.

2 Shapr3D’s Boolean ●

tools have been reworked to make the assignment of options and inputs clearer, in an approach we think all vendors should adopt

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IN CONCLUSION I’ve grown to become quite a fan of Shapr3D in the last few months. On the face of it, the reasons behind that admiration are quite subtle, but they add up to something more substantial. Yes, the iPad and Pencil input is ideal for capturing ideas quickly in 3D. Many of us now default to playing with 3D concepts to test out ideas or document an idea. Being able to do so without the need to fire up a workstation and a heavy CAD system is very useful. If it just stayed as it is, a 3D conceptualisation and experimentation tool on an ultra-portable platform, I’d be happy. But we also need to consider the vector of development for Shapr3D. It’s clear that the company has a roadmap based on building out a more all-encompassing design and engineering system. In other words, not just 3D modelling, but all those other tasks that run alongside it. These start with drawing creation – and for a first release, this is already nicely executed. It also seems clear that Shapr3D won’t be tied to the iPad for much longer and will instead become a desktop application, too. This will be an interesting development to watch unfold. What I hope is that the Shapr3D team is able to retain the elegance of what it has built so far. We all know that as 3D design systems mature, feature creep and bloat tend to arise. That’s true of all software. But it would be nice to have a system available that sticks to doing what

3 this system already does pretty well – allowing users to just think, create and document in 3D. It is worth noting that there’s also a new pricing structure, which sees some reconfiguration of how Shapr3D is packaged. There’s still the free version, which gives you two datasets, no drawings and lowresolution STL out only. Then you get to the Hobby licence, which

is priced at $149/year or $30/month, which comes with STL export for 3D printing and 10 workspaces, for personal use only. Then there’s the all-singing, all-dancing Business package which comes in at $59 per month (or $499 per year). This brings you unlimited models, all the import/ export and AR capability, and the new drawing tools.

3 Shapr3D is doing a ●

great job of retaining its ease of use and discoverability as the system matures

shapr3d.com

APPLE SILICON: ARE 3D DESIGN SYSTEM VENDORS READY?

hen Apple made the move to using Intel processors back in 2006, its hardware suddenly recaptured the interest of the CAD community. Not everyone jumped on board, but a handful of vendors went for it in a really big way. Autodesk created a Mac-native version of AutoCAD. Later on, its Fusion 360 system became the only mechanical design tools available for the platform. McNeel brought Rhino to the Mac, as did KeyShot and a number of others. So, with the move away from Intel processors to Apple’s own silicon, what’s going to happen to those systems? With the first release of its M1-powered hardware, Apple also released the Rosetta translation environment. This attempts to automatically translate Intel-based applications, with the intent of providing a way to get the tools up and running even before software developers redevelop those tools as native universal binaries. One of the first vendors to readopt the Apple hardware platform was McNeel and Associates with its Rhino CAD system. McNeel’s team has posted on its forum regarding the current state of play and

it boils down to this: Rhino 6, 7 and 8 for Mac are not supported on Apple’s M1 processors. Development work to support Rhino 7 using Apple’s Rosetta environment has started, and the intent is for Rhino 8 to support Apple Silicon via Universal Binary has started. According to the forum posting: “Rosetta doesn’t work with Rhino, yet. Many of the issues are OpenGL-related, and may be OpenGL driver issues. We will file driver issues with Apple as we get more information. Problems we can fix, we will fix in Rhino 7.” Meanwhile, KeyShot developer Luxion has stated: “Luxion is dedicated to Mac users of KeyShot, with support for the latest macOS on Apple Silicon Macs. Luxion’s development team tests and validates each release of KeyShot to ensure both an optimal user experience and device compatibility among macOS products.” Autodesk’s products for the Mac include Fusion 360 and AutoCAD for Mac, but while there’s no news yet about AutoCAD, there is some for Fusion 360. As Stephen Hooper, vice president and general manager of Fusion 360 has stated: “We’re proud to say that Autodesk Fusion 360 runs on Macs with

the powerful new M1 chip and the latest macOS, using Rosetta 2 technology. This next generation of multi-core computing power, energy efficiency and performance from Apple brings improvements we know Autodesk users value highly.” “Running natively on Apple hardware is part of our plan and one hundred percent consistent with Autodesk’s goal of providing our users a high-performance experience on the computing platforms they choose,” he continued.

The first Apple hardware to feature the new M1 combined CPU GPU silicon are Macbook Pros, Macbook Air and the Mac Mini (shown here with Apple’s legendarily expensive Pro Display XR)

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SOFTWARE REVIEW

Siemens NX Q1 2021

With mature convergent modelling, plus new implicit and algorithmic modelling capabilities, NX supports users who are intent on pushing boundaries from a single toolset, as Al Dean reports

iemens’ flagship product definition system, NX, has undergone some interesting changes of late. For a start, the system has moved to a continuous update model, where more frequent updates are rolled out to users who choose to adopt that method of keeping their software current. What’s interesting is that, unlike some newer systems that mandate such updates, the Siemens team recognises it has a mix of users. Some are keen to jump on any update. Some just aren’t. In response, it’s made the process optional. In other words, users can update as and when they (and their organisation) sees fit. Second, NX’s core underlying technology has not just moved to synchronous technology, but is also now able to cope with a more diverse set of data than just the usual pure solids and surfaces. Specifically, mesh-like data can be brought in as a firstclass citizen, rather than an afterthought or something to be worked around. This new technology, referred to as convergent modelling, has now reached the point where its goals are truly starting to be achieved. So let’s start with this, then take a look at some other recent updates.

CONVERGENT SURFACE FITTING The last few releases of NX have seen convergent modelling advance from simply holding mesh data as part of the traditional part model to allowing features to be built up and to include mesh faces. The system also supports operations that interact with both types of geometry at the same time, such as running a fillet or blend at the points where mesh and solid geometry intersect. These tools have now been extended to allow quick replacement of mesh-faces with analytic geometry using a surface-fitting approach. This is fundamental in solving the whole problem. It is now possible to have solids, surfaces and mesh data in a single part and have the type of geometry exactly where you need it. That makes the whole thing much more powerful. Let me explain further. Now that these analytic faces can be defined on the mesh, they can be used just as you would surface or solid faces, whether that’s for easier editing, measuring to/from, assembly mating, machining or generating PMI data. These new surface-fitting tools follow the same approach that many systems do,

2 » Product: NX » Supplier: Siemens Digital Industries Software Price: On application siemens.com

1 Convergent ●

modelling does some incredible things: face fitted to mesh, then direct edits made 2 The new node●

based interface, as used to drive algorithmic modelling

using the mesh to define an analytic face such as a plane, a hole or a cylinder. There’s no previous segmentation of the mesh requirement and you get feedback on the deviation between the mesh and your final surface. There are also some interesting things going on under the hood once you combine these capabilities with the direct edits in NX. For example, if you grab a fitted face built onto a mesh and move it, the system will extend the mesh behind that move and allow you to make tweaks without all of the hassle that you might normally associate with adding, for example, machining stock to a mesh-based part.

ALGORITHMIC MODELLING The next big addition to NX for this release cycle is algorithmic modelling, a response to how Siemens’ competition is addressing the definition of complex forms, particularly new-generation developers like nTopology. When we talk about complex forms, we mean the types of forms that have gained exposure due to uptake of additive manufacturing, but that are by no means limited to those manufacturing processes. Whether that’s lattice in-fill for light weighting, gyroid in-fills for heat exchange or heat sinks, or the use of mathematically driven patterns and structures, the tools you use are common.

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Within NX, these tools manifest themselves as a new node-based definition environment. The idea here is that you take your starting point, add in how each node processes the inputs and outputs, and pass them onto the next stage to achieve the desired end result. If we take a look at Figure 1, you’ll see a geometric select (in this case, a face) selected as the first left-hand node. The system then creates a UV count for that face and applies a triangular grid to it with those UV controls. That grid is then projected onto the face, ribs are built from those curves and then it’s output to display in the final node. This is a relatively simple set-up, but to create this type of structure manually would be a royal pain in the behind and would not be particularly intelligent. With this new environment, a change made to the original geometry could be very quickly reapplied – or indeed, that process could be saved as a ‘rule’ and shared with other users. In this way, it can be applied to other forms from the NX Reuse Library. On this subject, it’s key to note that only the authoring of these rules is a licenced activity – not for reuse.

NX & IMPLICIT MODELLING Alongside the algorithmic modelling additions, another geometry creation method that has had its profile boosted by additive manufacturing is implicit modelling. The term refers to the process of defining a set of geometry (such as a hugely complex lattice, for example), using a set of implied commands and a graphical preview on screen. That’s opposed to explicit modelling, which defines everything in hard geometry. In practice, this type of approach can be used for a lot of things, but it’s most commonly used to make the creation of super-complex lattice structures more efficient. While NX has included some lattice forms for some time now, this release cycle brings on board one of most commonly used: Voronoi. This can be used in all manner of applications, from crumple zones and shock distribution to the medical field, to assist with osseointegration for bone implants. Other new tools in NX’s implicit modelling offering include the ability to have lattices defined in multibody parts (this would previously require something of a workaround) and to connect lattice structures to part bulk (such as a lattice in-fill connection to the walls of a heat exchanger). There’s also the ability to smooth/blend lattice spar intersections to achieve a strong connection, though right now, there’s no ability to automatically smooth the connection between a lattice and part bulk, which would round things out nicely – pun absolutely intended.

MODEL-BASED DEFINITION The use of a 3D model as the host for all of the essential documentation associated with

3 engineering drawings is not a new concept. Whether you refer to it as PMI, MBD, PPR, 3D annotation, it’s all essentially the same. Rather than creating separate drawings that show curated orthographic views to store and display GD&T information, it’s stored instead on the 3D model using intelligent views of that model. In other words, diverse dimensions, tolerances and annotations move from being static items on a drawing to dynamic data points. Select a datum on a drawing and the system can show you the referenced faces or features in a model, either as an orthographic view or in a rich 3D model. The potential is huge, if used sensibly and in a controlled manner. The issues here are often less about the benefits (well-established within the industries most bullish on MBD) and more about the efforts required to create PMI in the first place. To address this, NX has a set of new tools to assist. The first is a set of rules-definition tools that use a node-based interface similar to that used for algorithmic modelling. Here, they are used to capture how your company defines its dimension and tolerance information and how that PMI is applied to a model. Once created, these rules are then made available in the reuse lIbrary. Alongside these tools to speed up creation, there are also a new set of validation tools to ensure that the PMI you create is compliant with both industry and company standards, whether they’re created using the automated tools, the rules-based approach or interactively/ manually. These validate each piece of PMI against both ISO and ASME standards, and not only highlights potential issues graphically, but also offers correction actions to fix them.

OTHER UPDATES OF NOTE Alongside the big-ticket updates in product design, there are a whole host of others that we don’t have room to cover in depth, but are worth mentioning. (There’s also a whole other review’s worth of manufacturing updates, too.)

One highlight is the wealth of new visualisation materials delivered with the system, almost 1,000 delivered with the latest release, as well as a brand-new appearance management toolset. The idea here is that Siemens is building on its acquisition of Lightwork Design and its visualisation knowledge to make the creation and assignment of appearances more manageable. Specifically, these features enable you to define visual appearances without having to open and edit individual parts. They also use a new material-specification feature within NX, which will make visual properties and material definition more consistent across the entire application.

3 PMI creation and ●

validation is a big focus in the latest release of NX

IN CONCLUSION NX Is, as we all know, a mature beast of product design and engineering system. It runs the gamut of all of the common or garden modelling tools to the super-niche, within a niche, within a niche. It’s all there, if you have the need and the budget for it. This release shows that there’s still room to grow, particularly when it comes to supporting new methodologies, new ideas and new manufacturing techniques. But the maturation of convergent modelling, plus the introduction of implicit modelling and now algorithmic modelling, shows that NX is capable of supporting those users who are intent on pushing boundaries from a single toolset. You won’t find its equal anywhere else on the market at present. If another vendor claims it can provide all this, you’ll probably find that it’s lying to you. Yes, you could piece together a similar toolset from multiple providers – but from a single source? Not a chance. If you want to take a good, hard look at the current state of the art, you should definitely start here. Yes, it’s perfectly true that NX has a steep learning curve. Yes, it’s a costly system for an organisation to adopt, manage and maintain – but at the same time, there’s still nothing else quite like it on the market today. siemens.com

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Nvidia RTX A6000 review » The Nvidia RTX A6000, one of the most eagerly anticipated workstation GPUs in recent years, is finally here. And it’s certainly been worth the wait, writes Greg Corke » Product: Nvidia RTX A6000 » Supplier: Nvidia Price: £3,730 Ex VAT nvidia.com pny.eu

vidia first announced its new Nvidia RTX A6000 workstation GPU back in October 2020. But like many IT products in the year of Covid-19, it was delayed and we’ve been eagerly awaiting its arrival. And now it’s finally here – or rather, it should be, by the time you read this. UK firm Scan should have availability of the PNY Nvidia RTX A6000 from 3 March and sent us a sample to review inside its new 3XS GWP-ME N1-32T AMD Ryzen Threadripper workstation, which we take a closer look at below. Tuned for visualisation workflows, the Nvidia RTX A6000 (A for Ampere) is Nvidia’s second-generation RTX GPU. With an emphasis on hardware-based ray tracing, it promises to deliver more than double the GPU rendering performance of its predecessor, the Turing-based Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000. And, of course, it also offers a significant boost for 3D graphics, VR and AI workflows. And all for £3,730 + VAT. The Nvidia RTX A6000 is the first workstation GPU to be built on the Nvidia Ampere architecture, and also the first to support PCIe Gen 4. With double the

SCAN 3XS GWP-ME N1-32T With the new Nvidia RTX A6000 GPU and AMD Ryzen Threadripper CPU, this beast of a workstation has the power to deliver in a whole range of design viz workflows, writes Greg Corke

bandwidth of PCIe Gen 3, it should mean data can move in and out of the GPU quicker, but it won’t benefit all workflows. PCIe Gen 4 is currently only available in workstations with the latest AMD CPUs.

WHAT NO QUADRO? The observant among you will have noticed that the Nvidia RTX A6000 is missing something. Yes, after 17 years, it appears that Nvidia is retiring its Quadro brand. For someone who has written about Nvidia professional GPUs since the early 2000s, it’s hard to get used to this change. And, it would seem, Nvidia is struggling too. For the October launch, product photos were sent out with ‘Nvidia Quadro RTX A6000’ in the file name, which suggests a last-minute rebranding. But the Nvidia RTX A6000 is certainly a Quadro card in everything but name. It has certified drivers for pro applications, renowned reliability, ECC memory and plenty of niche features for pro visualisation, such as stereo and Frame Lock for viz clusters. There’s also support for Nvidia virtual GPU (vGPU) software, which allows a workstation to be repurposed into multiple high-

In the world of design viz, there’s a long-running debate about CPU/ GPU rendering and where to best allocate your workstation budget. Do you place an emphasis on GPU, with one or more high-end graphics cards for rendering, coupled with a high GHz, low core count CPU, or go large with a 64-core CPU and spend what’s left on a half-decent GPU for real-time 3D? The reality is, for those who take design viz seriously, and rely on multiple applications, it’s never really that black and white. Unreal Engine, for example, thrives on a multi-core CPU for many workflows, including recompiling shaders and building lighting. In V-Ray, you can choose to render on GPU or CPU, depending on what you want to achieve. The good news is that with Scan’s latest workstation, the Scan 3XS GWP-ME N1-32T, users don’t have to make that decision. Equipped with an AMD Ryzen Threadripper CPU and the brand-new high-end Nvidia RTX A6000 GPU, there’s buckets of processing power for all different types of workflows.

NVIDIA RTX A6000 GPU

In workstation reviews like this, the CPU normally gets top billing — after all it’s the heart of the machine — but when you have

performance virtual workstation instances. With 48 GB of VRAM, the Nvidia RTX A6000 has the most memory of any professional GPU – on par with the Quadro RTX 8000, and double that of the Quadro RTX 6000. This is particularly relevant for those working with high poly count models and very high-resolution textures in GPU renderers or real-time visualisation/VR. But more on this later. What’s more, two Nvidia RTX A6000s can be bridged together with an NVLink adapter to create a memory pool of 96 GB. However, sharing geometry between two GPUs can come with a significant performance hit.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST Nvidia’s product design team has really gone to town on the Nvidia RTX A6000 and the card is a thing of beauty, with a minimal angular design and black mirror finish. NVLink, Stereo and Sync connectors are all hidden away behind discrete panels. The board is rated at 300W, so you’ll need a fairly hefty PSU in your workstation. It gets its power from a special 8-pin connector, which is connected to two

a component as impressive as Nvidia’s new high-end workstation GPU, the Nvidia RTX A6000, it’s impossible not to break protocol. The Nvidia RTX A6000 is Nvidia’s first professional desktop GPU based on its ‘Ampere’ architecture. It’s a Quadro in everything but name, with all the features you’d expect from a pro-class GPU, such as support for ECC memory, stereo, Frame Lock for viz clusters and GPU virtualisation. The most notable feature, however, is that is comes with 48 GB of on-board GDDR6 memory. This is colossal amount for any GPU, and plenty for handling complex scenes in GPU renderers, both in terms of high-poly models and highres textures. On test, the Nvidia RTX A6000 didn’t disappoint. In GPU renderers V-Ray GPU and KeyShot 10, we saw double (in some cases more than double) the render performance of the previous generation ‘Turing’ Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000 (24GB). In real-time 3D applications, including Enscape and Autodesk VRED Professional, the leap wasn’t as big, but we still saw a performance increase of between 1.40 and 1.50. In short, the Nvidia RTX A6000 looks to be an amazing GPU for rendering, real-time 3D and VR. We cover this in far more detail in our

in-depth Nvidia RTX A6000 review (see above).

AMD RYZEN THREADRIPPER

Our test machine came with the 32-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X, but other Ryzen Threadripper CPUs are also available, including 64-core and 24-core models. At just under £1,500 (Ex VAT) for the CPU, the 32-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X gives you a huge amount of multithreaded processing power for your money. In KeyShot, for example, it completed our 4K test scene in an impressive 66 secs, second only to the Armari Magnetar X64T-G3 FWL (38 secs) (tinyurl.com/Armari-TR) and Lenovo ThinkStation P620 (47 secs) (tinyurl.com/TR-PRO-D3D), both of which had 64-core Threadripper/ Threadripper Pro CPUs. In the V-Ray 5.0 benchmark, it delivered a score of 34,902 vsamples. As this benchmark is new, we have very little historical data at DEVELOP3D, but you can see comparative scores here (tinyurl.com/V-ray-bench). Changing tack to point cloud processing, the Scan 3XS GWP-ME N1-32T set a new record in our Leica Cyclone Register 360 benchmark, registering our 100 GB dataset in an incredible 2,119 secs. As this

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HARDWARE REVIEW

standard 8-pin PSU connectors via an adapter. It is cooled by two fans, top and bottom. There are four DisplayPort 1.4a connectors nestled below a heat sink.

TESTING THE RTX A6000 We put the PNY Nvidia RTX A6000 through a series of real-world application benchmarks, both for GPU rendering and real-time visualisation. The GPU is simply overkill for currentgeneration CAD and BIM software, so we didn’t do any testing in that regard. However, it’s important to note that it will still be certified for the likes of Solidworks, PTC Creo and Siemens NX, which is useful if you plan to use those kinds of

application is only lightly threaded, the workstation’s fast memory (128 GB of DDR4 3600MHz) and fast storage (PCIe 4.0 NVMe) will also have played a very important role. The beauty of Threadripper is you also get good single-threaded performance, which is essential for CAD and BIM workflows. Amazingly, it completed our Solidworks IGES export test in 81 secs, just 6 secs slower than the current record holder, an Intel Core-i9-10900K (10 core) clocked to 5.0 GHz.

COOL RUNNINGS

The substantial 280W CPU is cooled by an all-in-one Hydro CPU cooler, the Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML360 TR4 Edition. It features a plate/pump that bolts directly onto the processor, with tubes leading to a substantial three-fan radiator attached to the roof of the case. For a CPU of this power, it’s relatively quiet in operation, but fan noise is noticeable. The pitch of the fans also goes up and down, depending on what’s being processed, although this was mostly apparent when processing point clouds in Cyclone Register 360, where the CPU load comes in waves. Acoustics aside, it does an excellent job keeping the CPU running at top speeds. It maintained an impressive 4.0 GHz

applications alongside more viz-focused tools like Chaos V-Ray, Luxion KeyShot and Solidworks Visualize. The full spec of our Scan 3XS GWP-ME N1-32T test machine can be seen below. For comparison, we used a Quadro RTX 4000 and historic data from the Quadro RTX 6000 GPU (457.09 driver), tested in a Lenovo ThinkStation P620 workstation with AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3995WX CPU and 128 GB RAM.

RENDERING WITH RTX A6000 GPU rendering has now reached a stage where it is becoming ubiquitous. While renderers built into CAD applications still tend to rely on the CPU, most of the

when rendering in KeyShot for over an hour, 0.3 GHz above its base clock of 3.70 GHz. In CAD software Solidworks, it hovered around 4.30 GHz under single-threaded loads; and in Leica Cyclone, which is lightly multithreaded, 4.15 GHz.

SUPERFAST STORAGE

For storage, Scan has done something we don’t see very often — an M.2 NVMe SSD for the main system drive and a 2.5-inch SATA SSD for data. The 2TB WD Black SN850 M.2 SSD is based on the new PCIe Gen 4.0 standard, which is fully supported on the Threadripper platform, courtesy of the Asus RoG STRIX TRX40-E motherboard. It means you get vastly superior sequential read/write performance (up to 5,839 MB/s read and 4,827 MB/s write, according to the AS SSD benchmark). This may go some way to explaining the leading scores in our Leica Cyclone point cloud processing test which reads and writes hundreds of gigabytes of data. With 4TB on the Samsung 860 Evo SATA SSD, there’s plenty of capacity as well, but the machine can also be kitted out two more M.2 NVMe SSDs and multiple SATA Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) if required.

THE WORKSTATION

For a machine of this class, it’s not surprising that Scan has gone for a substantial chassis. The Fractal Design Define 7 measures 547 x 240 x 475 mm and weighs 13.45 kg (before you add any components). Our review machine came with a tempered glass window side panel, so you can gaze admiringly at the components inside – if that’s your thing. Joking aside, Scan has done a nice job of the interior, setting the RGB lighting system to all-white. And when you have a GPU as beautiful as the Nvidia RTX A6000, then why not show it off to your colleagues? If you don’t want to brag, then a solid side panel is also an option. Thanks to the Asus motherboard, there’s a whopping number of ports: 8 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (1 Type-C) and 4 x USB 2.0 on the rear; 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type A and 2 x USB 2.0 front top. There’s support for fast 2.5GbE NIC Ethernet, plus built in Intel WiFi 6-AX 200. The system is powered by a 1,000W version of the Corsair RMi power supply, which is 80PLUS Gold rated. However, even though the motherboard can take a second Nvidia RTX A6000, if you do want to double up with NVlink and get a GPU memory pool of 96 GB, you may need a more powerful PSU.

major design viz focused renderers now offer a GPU rendering capability. They can also take full advantage of Nvidia RTX technology, including the dedicated Ray Tracing cores and Tensor cores for AI denoising. As a side note, it’s important to check that your chosen GPU rendering tool supports the new Nvidia RTX A6000. Users of Solidworks Visualize 2021, for example, will have to wait until Service Pack 3 in April 2021 before they can take advantage of any ‘Ampere’ GPU.

CHAOS GROUP V-RAY V-Ray is one of the most popular physically based rendering tools, especially in

Our test machine’s 128GB is split across four super-fast 32GB 3600MHz Corsair Vengeance DIMMs, making the most of Threadripper’s four-channel architecture, and leaving four slots free for future upgrades.

» AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X CPU (32C/64T) (3.7GHz – 4.5GHz)

CONCLUSION

» 128 GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3600MHz DDR4 memory

With a 32-core Threadripper CPU, and the most powerful workstation GPU money can buy, the Scan 3XS GWP-ME N1-32T is a powerhouse for multi-application design viz workflows – CPU-centric or GPUcentric, it really doesn’t matter. And with 128 GB of superfast DDR4 memory (with capacity for 256 GB) there plenty of scope for multitasking, allowing you to chop and change between applications with ease. As with most Scan workstations, this one is very well-built and generally quiet in operation. However, in workflows where CPU load varies, some may find the fan noise distracting. Of course, at £7,500 (Ex VAT) the Scan 3XS GWP-ME N1-32T doesn’t come cheap. On the other hand, if you’re on the look-out for machine capable of making light work of any CPU- or GPU-centric design viz workflow you throw at it, then you can be sure this would be money well spent.

» Nvidia RTX A6000 GPU (48 GB GDDR6 ECC) (461.09 driver)

» 2TB WD Black SN850 PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD + 4TB Samsung 860 EVO SATA SSD » Asus ROG STRIX TRX40-E mainboard » Fractal Design Define 7 case (547 x 240 x 475 mm) » Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML360 CPU cooler » Corsair RM1000i – 80PLUS Gold PSU » Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64-bit » 3 year warranty - 1st Year Onsite, 2nd and 3rd Year RTB £7,500 (Ex VAT) scan.co.uk/3xs

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HARDWARE REVIEW

Enscape 2.6 Museum model

4K (3,840 x 1,080 resolution)

Frames Per Second (FPS) (bigger is better)

1.23

Nvidia RTX A6000 1 Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000

4K (3,840 x 1,080 resolution)

Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000

AMD Threadripper 3790X (461.09 driver)

64.3 43.75

AMD Threadripper Pro 3995WX (457.09 driver)

AMD Threadripper 3790X (461.09 driver)

Chaos Group V-Ray 5.0 benchmark

V-Ray GPU CUDA

V-Ray GPU RTX

vpaths (calculations per minute) (bigger is better)

123

Nvidia RTX A6000 1 Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000

659

Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000

634

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000

AMD Threadripper 3790X (461.09 driver)

1000

1500

AMD Threadripper Pro 3995WX (457.09 driver)

architectural visualisation. We put the Nvidia RTX A6000 through its paces using the new, freely downloadable V-Ray 5 benchmark, which has dedicated tests for Nvidia CUDA GPUs, Nvidia RTX GPUs, as well as CPUs. The results were extremely compelling, with the Nvidia RTX A6000 showing itself to be 2.32 faster than the Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000 in the CUDA test and 1.85 times faster in the RTX test. Considering this is just a generation-ongeneration comparison, it’s a phenomenal leap in performance.

LUXION KEYSHOT KeyShot, a CPU rendering stalwart, is a relative newcomer to the world of GPU rendering. But it’s one of the slickest implementations we’ve seen, allowing users to switch between CPU and GPU rendering at the click of a button. In the Keyshot 10 benchmark, part of the free KeyShot Viewer, we saw similar results to V-Ray. The Nvidia RTX A6000 outperformed the Quadro RTX 6000 by a factor of 1.97.

2000 1

Nvidia RTX A6000 1

Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000

70 1

1,346

AMD Threadripper 3790X (461.09 driver)

1000

1500

One aspect of technology that has long held back GPU rendering is the limited amount of GPU memory available on each card. When a scene, including geometry, materials and lighting, doesn’t fit entirely into GPU memory, the render can fail, slow down (if it runs ‘out of core’ using system memory), or simply fall back to the CPU. There are many established workarounds to help users ensure a dataset fits entirely within GPU memory — such as resizing or optimising textures, simplifying or stripping out geometry, or rendering in separate passes — but all of this takes time to prep. What the user really wants is not to have to worry about GPU memory at all. With 48 GB, the Nvidia RTX A6000 is arguably the GPU that will enable this. And while it’s not the first to offer that much memory (the Quadro RTX 8000 also came with 48 GB) it’s the first to do so at a sub £4,000 price point. Of course, for some workflows 48 GB will be overkill. However, for those pushing the boundaries of realism, using very hi-fidelity textures (such as those captured from real-

2000

8.45 5 2

AMD Threadripper Pro 3995WX (457.09 driver)

Relative performance to reference system (bigger is better) (Intel Core i7-6900K CPU (3.20GHz, 8 Cores)

Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000

99.62 50.48

33.83 0

2500

AMD Threadripper Pro 3995WX (457.09 driver)

GPU MEMORY – WHY 48 GB?

Nvidia RTX A6000 1

923 500

16.75

AMD Threadripper 3790X (461.09 driver)

123

2,490

25.15

vrays (calculations per minute) (bigger is better)

500

Frames Per Second (FPS) (bigger is better)

1.23

Luxion KeyShot 10 benchmark (GPU)

Nvidia RTX A6000 1

1,531

AMD Threadripper Pro 3995WX (457.09 driver)

Chaos Group V-Ray 5.0 benchmark 123

4K (3,840 x 1,080 resolution)

22.05 0

Automotive model (Anti Aliasing - Ultra-high)

Frames Per Second (FPS) (bigger is better)

Nvidia RTX A6000 1

1.23

Autodesk VRED Professional 2021

Automotive model (Anti Aliasing - Medium)

0 1

Autodesk VRED Professional 2021

AMD Threadripper 3790X (461.09 driver)

20 2

100

AMD Threadripper Pro 3995WX (457.09 driver)

life scans) or colossal engineering accurate datasets, it should open up a wealth of opportunities. Luxion, for example, has in the past reported ray tracing a KeyShot scene with 1.37 billion unique triangles using two Quadro RTX 5000 cards and NVLink for a combined 32 GB of memory. Indeed, despite its designer-friendly workflows, KeyShot is doing much to break new ground. A new feature in KeyShot 10 called RealCloth 2.0, for example, allows users to generate visually accurate woven materials using thread geometry. However, this can be incredibly memory-hungry when using the option to represent each individual thread as a geometric entity, even with relatively small scenes. Previously, we’ve explored this feature in our KeyShot 10 review (tinyurl.com/ KeyShot10). Using a 16 GB Nvidia Quadro RTX 5000, however, we quickly ran out of memory, with the scene falling back to the CPU to render. However, we can report that things were entirely different with the Nvidia RTX A6000.

1 KeyShot 10: ●

RealCloth 2.0 with coarse weave (uses 6.8 GB/48 GB VRAM) 2 KeyShot 10: ●

RealCloth 2.0 with a much finer weave (uses 38.2 GB/48 GB VRAM)

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With 48 GB to play with, we were able to much better match the scale of the weave in KeyShot to that of the physical fabric. As you will see from the images below, the difference in accuracy, in terms of how the material is represented, is quite incredible. Of course, RealCloth 2.0 is quite a niche example. However, there will certainly be some architectural or automotive visualisers out there that would benefit from 48 GB (or even 96 GB with two RTX A6000s over NVlink) now or in the future. You’ll know who you are.

REAL-TIME 3D While GPU rendering is a major play for the Nvidia RTX A6000, real-time 3D using OpenGL and DirectX continues to be a very important part of visualisation, with applications including Autodesk VRED, Lumiscaphe, Unreal Engine, Unity and others. And, of course, the boundaries between real-time 3D and ray tracing continue to blur. To test frame rates, we used FRAPS in combination with a 3DConnexion SpaceMouse to ensure the models moved in a consistent way every time. We only tested at 4K (3,840 x 2,160) resolution. At FHD (1,920 x 1,080) resolution, this level of GPU simply isn’t stressed enough.

ENSCAPE Enscape is a real-time viz and VR tool for architects that uses OpenGL and delivers very high quality graphics in the viewport. Enscape has used elements of ray tracing in its software for some time. Newer versions of the software are RTX-enabled, so full ray tracing can be toggled on and off. For our tests, Enscape provided a large architectural scene of a museum and its surrounding area. At 7.5GB, the GPU memory requirements of this model are relatively high, but Enscape models can take up much more and this is a drop in the ocean for the Quadro RTX A6000. In terms of performance, the Nvidia RTX A6000 delivered a phenomenal 53

3 frames per second (FPS) for an incredibly smooth experience. This is around 1.39 times faster than the Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000 and 2.79 times faster than the Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000.

AUTODESK VRED PROFESSIONAL

3 Nvidia RTX A6000 ●

inside the Scan 3XS GWP-ME N1-32T

4 Four DisplayPorts ● 5 Top fan ● 6 Hidden connectors ● 7 Bottom fan ●

Autodesk VRED Professional is an automotive-focused 3D visualisation, virtual prototyping and VR tool. It uses OpenGL and delivers very high-quality visuals in the viewport. It offers several levels of real-time anti-aliasing (AA), which is important for automotive styling, as it smooths the edges of body panels. However, AA calculations use a lot of GPU resources, both in terms of processing and memory. We tested our automotive model with AA set variously to ‘off’, ‘medium’ and ‘ultra-high’. The Nvidia RTX A6000 was significantly faster than the Quadro RTX 6000 delivering between 1.46 and 1.50 more frames per second in all of our tests. Most notably, the card delivered a very smooth 25.15 FPS



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The GPU rendering performance has doubled. And, in realtime 3D, with a 1.4 to 1.5 times boost, it’s hardly dragging its heels



when AA set to ‘ultra high’, which is unheard for a model of this complexity. This is 2.97 times faster than a Quadro RTX 4000.

CONCLUSION Nvidia has put a huge effort into developing its hardware-based ray tracing technology and it’s now really starting to see the fruits. It’s quite incredible to think it has managed to double the GPU rendering performance, generation on generation (Turing to Ampere). And, in real-time 3D, with a 1.4 to 1.5 times boost, it’s hardly dragging its heels. Rendering has become the big battleground for hardware manufacturers and, with the 64-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper CPU, competition between GPU and CPU has never been so fierce. CPUs have always had the lead when it comes to addressable memory and there’s an ongoing debate about rendering performance versus accuracy. But with 48 GB per GPU, and the ability to scale up cards as and when required (the new Supermicro SuperWorkstation 5014A-TT can support up to four Nvidia RTX A6000s), the argument for GPU rendering has never been more compelling. In many ways, the biggest competition for the Nvidia RTX A6000 is from Nvidia itself. The consumer-focused Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 should offer roughly the same performance for one third of the price. It does have half the memory (24 GB), but with support for NVLink, two can be linked together to create a virtual 48 GB render resource. The downside is that it’s nigh-on impossible to get hold of a board right now and prices are inflated accordingly. Of course, for some firms, it will always need to be Quadro all the way. Or should we say Quadro in features, warranty, reliability and certification, but not in name. It’s going to take some time to get used to the rebranding.

03/03/2021 17:37

THE LAST WORD

‘Shift’, ‘disrupt’, ‘game-changer’, ‘convergence’, ‘paradigm’: All buzzwords that appeared in Al Dean’s email inbox this month. But, he wonders, can anything truly be considered ‘new’ these days?

‘‘

No matter how many baffling, social media-like ‘collaboration’ services you layer on top of it, or how much you charge per 10 GB of storage, it’s just the same CAD system (give or take), running on someone else’s computer

’’

immediately jump on the bandwagon is either a laggard or a Luddite? Just this month, I’ve had press releases proclaiming the coming revolution, trumpeting that a paradigm shift is taking place. On the face of it, the marketing folks are doing a stellar job of taking a product release and spinning it up as The Second Coming. But the reality is that, just as Sutherland discussed with the Wheel of Reincarnation idea, many of the ‘advances’ we see today and perhaps marvel at aren’t really advances at all, but rather, a reworking of existing ideas. Want an example? You’re in luck. I have two. The iPad revolution & CAD: I love Shapr3D. I think it’s ace. When running on Apple’s hardware, the combination of tablet and pencil really sings. It’s a portable, clean and efficient way of sketching out ideas and thinking in three dimensions. Is the team at Shapr3D doing an excellent job keeping of the systems clean and efficient as features and functions increase? Absolutely. But is it a platform shift? Not really. Is it something brand new? Absolutely not. Anyone who’s been in the tech industry long enough knows that pen-based input has been around since the dawn of computing. It’s been an established part of interacting with CAD for decades. The same goes for tablets. Yes, they’ve got slicker. Yes, they’ve (arguably) got cheaper. Yes, your Gran could probably use one. But new? Nope. CAD on the cloud: I’m sure we’ve discussed this one before. Whether you call it cloud CAD, cloud-based design, software-as-aservice (SaaS) or something else entirely, you can’t escape the idea that unless you’re running your CAD system permanently connected to remote computing infrastructure, then you’re somehow living in the Dark Ages. Don’t get me wrong: I love me some Fusion 360 or some Onshape. I love logging into that fresh Azure instance and firing up a CAD system. But this really isn’t a revolution. It’s not even a slow rotation. As a good friend of mine (hi, Sean!) said recently, “It’s just

TWEET COURTESY OF @CASUALEFFECTS

came across a marvellous Twitter thread recently. It hooked me in with a single tweet, and then unrolled with some really great content – not just a plug for somebody’s SoundCloud. If you use Twitter, you’ll know what I mean. If you don’t, let me explain. Morgan McGuire (@CasualEffects) was tweeting about Ivan Sutherland, a true titan in the graphics computing industry. Sutherland’s research ran the gamut of pioneering graphics, pen-based input, early CAD with Sketchpad (aka Robot Draftsman), geometric constraints and more – all covered in his PhD thesis, written in the early 1960s. He went on to explore virtual reality headmounted displays and founded one of the first graphics processing-specific companies, Evans and Sutherland, in the late 1960s. Morgan’s Twitter thread also discussed “the graphics wheel of reincarnation”, first described by Sutherland and his colleague Theodore Myer in the late 1960s. As McGuire so eloquently puts it, this concept observes that, “every ten years or so, the same ideas come back into popularity in graphics. Such as: fixed function shading, vector processing and ray tracing.” Of course, this got me thinking about the tools and technologies we write about each month and that you, our readers, use on a daily basis. How many times have we all, as a collective, been told that the Next Big Thing is coming down the line; that we need to prepare ourselves for revolution it will trigger; and that anyone who doesn’t

a CAD system, but one that’s running on someone else’s computer.” Again, these things have all been seen and done in the past. Perhaps less efficiently and certainly less cost-effectively, but the idea of accessing a CAD system via a thin client, and relying on centralised storage and data management, isn’t the paradigm shift the software vendors like to pretend it is. No matter how many baffling, social media-like ‘collaboration’ services you layer on top of it, or how much you charge per 10 GB of storage, it’s just the same old CAD system (give or take), running on someone else’s computer.

The work and thinking of graphics and VR pioneer Ivan Sutherland, as showcased on Twitter by @casualeffects

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