What a Mesh

Product Design Suite in Buenos Aires

I'd like to share a great experience done at the Autodesk Design Center in Buenos Aires. First of all, what is the Autodesk Design Center? It's a facility located at the offices of SONDA, Autodesk's distributor for MCO (multi country organization that includes most of Latin America, with the exception of Mexico and Brazil). They created an extremely well designed space where Autodesk's technology is showcased, and where customers can go and get in contact with our products.

Since I was in Buenos Aires for Autodesk's Launch of the 2012 Portfolio at the HIlton Hotel, it sounded like a good idea to do a small workshop in this facility.

First of all, I'd like to thank all of the people involved in this workshop, starting with our guests. Eduardo Chiaramonti and Nicolas Cubitto, who came all the way from Mendoza. They are both engineering students at UTN, probably one of the best universities in the region. It was a honor and a pleasure to have two very curious, talented and committed students in this event. Thanks also to their professor, Nicolas Putignano, who has definitely been an inspiration for them and many more students. Thanks to Uriel Cukirman (Secretary of UTN) and Horacio Pessano (dean at UTN) for sending Eduardo and Nicolas all across Argentina for this event.

On Autodesk's side, very special thanks to Jaime Abella, who made this whole thing happen. Once he knew about the idea, he immediately made all the contacts in order to get UTN excited about this workshop. And obviously, no workshop can be done without the right talent. Sebastian Zaje, the Technical Specialist for MCO also supported this event from the very beginning, and made a great job at setting the right expectations and then also thrived with Alias Design at the workshop itself.

Finally, thanks to Diego Padovani, Tomas Meli and Guillermo Cabello from SONDA, for all their help.

 

So, what did we do? The whole idea was to develop a design from concept to completion using Autodesk Product Design Suite Ultimate. They brought a dish dryer already created in Inventor and rendered with Inventor Studio. We wanted to explore some design alternatives, and make the best use of all Autodesk products for manufacturing.

We decided that doing some work on the door was the best way to go. The rest of the dryer needs to be quite simple, but we could add some design intent on the front.

So it was the time for doing some sketching. I showed them how to import an image into Autodesk Sketchbook Designer, and create some vector and raster sketching. Vector sketching is extremely powerful, and even more so if you can draw with a stylus over a screen. I used a Wacom Cintiq for this task.

The final result was a mix of vectors and raster content. We exported the vectors as a dwg, so they could be consumed in AutoCAD. Once in AutoCAD, we worked with surface modeling doing some conceptual design. The curves from Sketchbook Designer need to be taken from Paper Space into Model Space, and then it is also important to check the number of control vertices. We showed the CVs, and used the Rebuild command to get more rational curves. The amount of CVs depends on the method used inside Sketchbook Designer, since this application has a nice feature that tries to infer different curves from your stroke. If you try to create a circle, it will suggest a perfect circle. Same with general strokes, which can become splines, arcs or even straight lines.

Now we wanted to create some more complex surfaces, so we decided to import the dwg file into Autodesk Alias Design. Sebastian took it from that point, and worked with Eduardo and Nicolas on getting the best surfaces possible, which could then be made manufacturable inside Inventor.

Sebastian then opened the wire file (Alias' native format) in Autodesk Inventor, and both Eduardo and Nicolas did some work in Inventor in order to replace the existing door with the new one. They also created a constraint that would become a Behavior in Showcase.

Now it was time for creating a presentation and some final renders. We worked in Autodesk Showcase for a very quick presentation that involved some material alternatives and some behaviors. The presentation can then be converted into a video, if necessary. Showcase is a great tool for getting a lot of geometry from different places into an environment optimized for creating a presentation.

I'll talk a lot about Showcase in future postings. For the time being, check out some of the results.

In the image above, I'm working on preparing the dish dryer. The door is hidden right now.

You can see the door in the laptop's screen. We were installing Autodesk Inventor Publisher, which is not part of the Suite, but it's definitely a great tool for creating a publication. You can also access the result from a mobile device.

The image above displays the final result in Showcase. It took around 15 minutes to prepare the file. It does help that Autodesk has consistent materials across applications.

Then we sent all the geometry into Autodesk 3ds Max Design for some rendering. Again, this was an easy task, since all materials come through nicely. We used both the traditional mental ray renderer, and also the screaming fast iRay. With the HP Z800 in the room, this was really fast.

This was a great experience not only for Eduardo and Nicolas, who spent around 8 hours split in two days working with technology new to them, but also for us. We had the chance to try workflows, and validate many of the best practices we talk about.

This blog is about Suites and about the products in them, but I really want to make it about workflows between applications. Getting more products in a package is awesome, but when you realize the value of each of them, and decide which ones make sense in different parts of the design process, then things get really better.

Eduardo and Nicolas left with those concepts really clear. I hope that the enthusiasm they showed during these two days will be contagious among their peers at UTN. I definitely think that this experience is worth replicating many more times.

If you are based in South America and are curious about the Autodesk Design Center in Buenos Aires, feel free to contact the Autodesk office in Buenos Aires, and you can get more information.

Thanks again to UTN, SONDA and Autodesk (Seba and Jaime) for this awesome experience.

 

Surface Modeling in AutoCAD - my AU 2010 class - Part 3

Continuing with the surface modeling explanation, after some weeks of very intense trips. 

Select the LOFT command in the Create panel on the Surface tab, and then you can select curves for lofting. By using Ctrl, you can also select a surface’s edge. As usual, Ctrl enables access to subobject level, and in the case of a surface, to its edges. We need to select the edge, in order to get access to the option for continuity.

If we select a spline coincident with the surface edge, we can create the loft, but it will work as a G0, since the command does not detect the adjacent surface when choosing the spline. Once you finish selecting profiles, you will get several options. Let’s focus on Continuity.

The options for Continuity are G0, G1 and G2.

G0 (position) continuity means that there are no gaps, but there’s a sharp angle.

When you create G1 (tangent) continuity, it means that the surfaces have equal angles in their tangency.

When you create G2 (curvature) continuity, there’s not only equal tangency, but also equal radius in the curvature on both surfaces. These are the surfaces that don’t show any flaws when lights are reflected on them. That’s why Zebra analysis is so important in these cases. When the stripes in the Zebra analysis are continuous, then you have good continuity. 

You will also notice that when you click on the loft, you’ll get a couple of new icons. If continuity among surfaces is involved, then you will get at least three of them.

The one depicted below (the one to the right) will define the continuity. This is the one that will only appear if at least one surface edge is selected as start or end profile. Please remember that you can change this setting at any time.

The following icon provides different options for the loft operation.

 You can decide between a smooth fit and ruled loft (the latter will have G0 continuity between all internal profiles). 

You can also define if the loft is normal to any of its sections.

Draft Angle can also be triggered from here, although we’ll see that the last control is basically a Direct Manipulation element for Draft Angle.

The last option is to close the surface or solid, which can also make a periodic surface (more on this later).

The control for Draft Angle can also be accessed via Direct Manipulation. Once you click on the triangle, you will get a handle that will control the magnitude of the draft angle, and reach very interesting results.

 

Surface Modeling in AutoCAD - my AU 2010 class - Part 2

Let’s continue with the exercise we started last post, and work on the modeling.

The first surface we’ll do is the Network Surface. You need to select two sets of curves, which have different directions. Once you finish selecting the first set of surfaces, you’ll click enter (or whichever method you have for this), and then the second set of surfaces.

Let’s take a look at the Ribbon. The option for Surface Associativity is on. This means that if you change the position of the elements that originated the surface, the Network Surface will also change. The control lies within the original curves. This is a great differentiator with strict NURBS modelers, which create a NURBS surface once you click OK. Please note that you can also do this, by selecting NURBS Creation. In this case, all associativity is lost.

Let’s create our first surface using the Network command on the Create panel in the Surface tab. Remember to select the first set of curves in one direction, and then the other set of curves, after clicking Enter.

If you have Properties open (if not, you can get it in many ways, but a simple one is through the Quick Access Toolbar), you will notice that if you select the surface, it is not only a Surface, but it’s called a Network Surface. AutoCAD’s surfaces (if not created with the NURBS Creation option) are explicit surfaces. It means that at any time, they keep the properties of the method they were created with. We’ll see more value to this when we check the loft and the patch.

So we have the base of the case, but we now need the sides. We’ll use the Loft command. LOFT has been around since 2007, but it has been enhanced, so let’s check some of these enhancements. In our example, we are going to use a curve and a surface’s edge. In the past, loft was only possible with open or closed curves, and they had to be planar, at least the initial and final profile.

Starting in 2011, we can loft non planar profiles, and when one of the profiles is a surface’s edge, we can control the continuity.

Let's wait for next post to learn all about LOFT and continuity. Next time, I'll post from Mexico City, while doing the training for the channel, on both AutoCAD and Suites.

 

Surface Modeling in AutoCAD - my AU 2010 class - Part 1

Submittal for AU 2011 is reaching its deadline, and of course I have not sumbitted yet. However, I do have a plan around what I'll propose, so I know what I won't be talking about. This is why I wanted to share the document from a quite successful class I did on the AutoCAD 3D Power Track last year.

I'll post it in chapters. After finishing these posts, I'll add some more around enhancements on surface modeling in AutoCAD 2012.

So here goes part 1:

 

AutoCAD 2011 introduced Surface Modeling, bringing unprecedented power and flexibility into AutoCAD. Between meshes, solids and surfaces, you can have different approaches to modeling. And what is even better, there are workflows between them.

 

There are some aspects to keep in mind when talking about surface modeling in AutoCAD. We need to talk about the many object types, but the main guiding principles when we built the feature were: explicit surfaces, associative surfaces, and direct manipulation. Any surface created with the option NURBS Creation on, or converted into a NURBS surface will be defined only by the grid of UVs.

 a. Explicit Surfaces

However, you may prefer to work with Explicit surfaces when the method of creation is clear, and there is no need to change it (Revolve, Extrude, Loft, Blend, Patch). These surfaces maintain the relationship with the method used for their creation. For example, a revolved surface will let you change the angle of revolution any time after its creation. If it was a NURBS surface, this would not be possible that easily.

 b. Surface Associativity

But we also have Associative surfaces. An Explicit surface could have been done without the Surface Associativity option. In that case, a change in the geometry that originated the surface will not change the surface. An associative surface is controlled by the original geometry. This means that if you used two splines to generate a loft, the control for the edges of the loft will not belong to the surface, but to the splines used for its creation.

Summarizing, a surface can be both Associative and Explicit at the same time. It can also be Explicit only. A NURBS surface can’t be associative.

c. Direct Manipulation

Most of the interactions with surfaces and splines are done through the canvas, and not involving dialog boxes, which tend to disrupt the process. You can see direct manipulation in the multi-function grips on splines, on selection cycling, and in the controls for surfaces. All these will be covered in the following example.

 d. Example of surface modeling

Even more important than learning the commands and different surface objects, is to know when to apply which surface. Let me explain the whole process by showing you the final result and identify the surface types.

 

The first surface we’ll do is a Network Surface using the three longitudinal curves and the two curves we did between them. A Network Surface needs curves on both directions, and they don’t even need to be intersecting. Of course, if they intersect and have coincident vertices, then the surface will look exactly like we want. If not, there will be some interpolation done by the computer, which we won’t exactly control.

 

Now we’ll complete the sides. We will use a Loft for this purpose, and we’ll consume the remaining spline, and the edge of the surface we just created. Why? Because the selection of a surface edge will allow us to control the continuity between the surfaces. In this case, we want a perfect curvature between these two surfaces, so we’ll need G2 continuity. If we had selected both splines for the loft, we would not have had the chance to define continuity. That’s also the reason why we needed the Network Surface first.

The next operation is a loft, but in this case we can use the splines (the top spline and the top splines from the sides). Why? The answer is simple. We just need to have coincident edges, but not continuity, since this top surface will be a second part of the cover. We can also use the surface edge with G0 continuity. If we do this, we’ll have associativity between the surfaces.

 

The last operation will consist in closing the gaps on both ends. This will be done with Patch Surface. Patch can operate with surface edges or curves, but in this case we’ll use surface edges, even though we’ll force the solution to be a G0 (with no continuity in curvature or tangency).

 

In part 2, we'll go through each section in more detail.

Video about vector sketching

This is a video of the workflow I explained in last post.

 

Vector editing and sketching between AutoCAD and Sketchbook Designer 2012

Sketchbook Designer is a great value added to some of the new Suites. You will find it in the three tiers of Autodesk Design Suite, Product Design Suite and Building Design Suite.

Sketchbook Designer installs a standalone version and also a plug in for AutoCAD. It is a phenomenal application for sketching and illustration, and I hope to do some justice to it in a series of examples around its use.

If you have ever used the previous version, called Alias Sketch, you will notice some changes. Most of the editing was moved into the standalone version, leaving very few features inside AutoCAD. They replaced this with a very powerful one click workflow.

The first example I want to show is around the use of 2d data from AutoCAD. We’ll do some edits inside Sketchbook Designer. In later posts I’ll get a little more creative with a bigger example, but this is simply for explaining some key concepts.

We’ll start with a simple detail: a balcony with a lighting fixture, where we’ll try to change the curve appeal. Let’s say that we want to use a solution that allows for freehand sketching, but we also want to reuse this information as efficiently as possible. If you are in Suites, you then have the best of both worlds. Let’s draft in AutoCAD and sketch in Sketchbook Designer, and reuse the data from one application into the other. The solution is a simple one click workflow.

Once you isolate the detail you want to sketch on top of, we’ll create a canvas. This is a simple operation that is done from the Sketchbook Designer tab in the Ribbon.

Select New Canvas and you’ll get a window with some grips in order to create your canvas. The Canvas will define the area where the plug in will operate. There are options for Fixed and Free, and the first one constrains the aspect ratio. If you want to have more freedom, you probably want to change into Free. Now, let me share a tip. Sometimes, you will see that Free is displayed by default, but the canvas behaves like Fixed. Simply go back to Fixed and change again to Free, and all will be good.

With your canvas done, you now want to let Sketchbook Designer know what to do with the AutoCAD layers. By selecting Create Vector Underlay On, the layers will be transferred, and will then be able to be converted into raster or vector layers inside Sketchbook Designer. Preserve layers ensures that you will see all layers, and they won’t be merged into a single vector layer. If you only want to operate with the lines inside a couple of specific layers, Preserve Layers is the right thing to do.

Once you finished, you can Apply the changes and then click on the Sketchbook Designer button in the Ribbon, which will start the one click workflow. The standalone application will start, and you will see the same canvas you had in AutoCAD. Note that the limits of the canvas in AutoCAD are the limits to any work you can do in Sketchbook, so keep this in mind when creating the limits of your canvas.

Also note that when Sketchbook Designer is linked to AutoCAD, you won’t be able to work in AutoCAD. If you don’t know this, you may think that AutoCAD has frozen.

You can see how your AutoCAD layers are now Sketchbook Designer layers. Simply select one of them, and you will see the option to convert it into a raster or a vector layer. Right now we want vectors, so as to use the cool and really sophisticated features from Sketchbook Designer.

Select the line, and see how you can create a curve by simply adding knots to the spline. There are other very useful commands, but I’ll only mention one more. Restroke Curve allows you to simply stroke next to the spline, and the curve will readjust to those strokes. If you have a tablet, this is a great way of getting closer to what you really want, as opposed to simply adding or removing knots. This is much closer to the kind of design intent that you can apply when hand sketching.

With the curves already with the shape you wanted, you can now export them as a dwg into AutoCAD. You can export a selection, if you simply want a couple of splines and not the whole set of curves. Once you do this, it’s time to go back to AutoCAD.

As soon as you close Sketchbook Designer, AutoCAD will be back to life, and you will see your edits. But wait a minute. Those edits are on the canvas and not real dwg vectors. Open the dwg file created in Sketchbook Designer and you will see your curves in Paper Space. Cut them and paste them into the drawing. You will probably have a different scale, but that’s easy to fix.

As you can see, in a couple of clicks, you could go from AutoCAD into Sketchbook Designer, and edit a detail, adding some design intent with tools more appropriate for this. As I said before, this particular example is really simple, and some may argue that they could have done this in AutoCAD alone. Sure. But the point was to show the concept around the one click workflow.

In following postings, after presenting some other features, we’ll move into more complex examples.

Viewport controls in AutoCAD 2012

There have always been great stories of interoperability around AutoCAD and 3ds Max. I remember starting to work on 3D in AutoCAD in order to get renders in Max back in the AutoCAD 12 – 3D Studio R2 for DOS. After exporting 3ds from AutoCAD, trying to figure out how many normals were flipped and then applying materials and lights, you got pretty good results. Of course, any change in AutoCAD would mean redoing the whole process again, at least for the edited pieces.

We’ve gone a long way since then. In the future I’ll talk a bit about the File Link Manager in 3ds Max Design, which for some reason does not get that much attention from some users.

But today I wanted to talk about a somehow minor feature in AutoCAD that will help a lot in creating more consistency across applications. Especially in the new context of the Suites, when we ship AutoCAD and 3ds Max together in Autodesk Design Suites Premium and Ultimate, we want users to feel in a familiar environment. You always have an application where you spend most of the time. If this application is AutoCAD and you use 3ds Max Design every once in a while, then any help to make the interfaces more familiar is a good thing.

The viewport controls for AutoCAD are new in AutoCAD 2012, and are a great time saver if you work in 3D and change visual styles and views very frequently. Having been using these controls from the early prototypes, every time I had to go back to AutoCAD 2011, it felt really bad not to have these guys on the top left of your viewport. This is how I normally realize how useful a feature is. Just go back one release, and feel how the number of clicks to do something grows.

So what can you do with these controls? Basically they allow you to change the configuration of viewports, the views within them and the visual styles.

Check out how easy it is now. No need to go to the View tab in the Ribbon. Or you don’t use Ribbon? Then you can turn off your View toolbar, and get some more real estate.

Now in 3ds Max Design, you got the same control. Slightly different options, but we’re talking about two apps with different targets anyway. The good thing is that there is no doubt that in both cases, you are going to the same place in order to look for visual styles. And yes, it’s been like this in Max for a long time, so now, for all of you people using both AutoCAD and 3ds Max Design, you get to exercise some muscle memory and definitely work a little faster.

As you can see, same is happening with the Views. AutoCAD displays the available views, same as 3ds Max Design. Max does offer more options like Lights and Cameras. Now, if you add a camera in AutoCAD, you’ll see an extra option for displaying cameras in this same control.

 The first option lets you switch from a single viewport into a multiple viewport configuration. This was quite difficult in AutoCAD before, and now it’s just a double click away. You can also access ViewCube, NavBar and Steering Wheel options from this same place. Guess what.  Same in Max.

If you go back and forth from single to multiple viewports, you'll see that your visual styles are maintained. 

By the way, I want to share a small tip. When you click on this control, stay on top of it until you get the drop down menu. If you click and move the mouse, you won’t get anything. Is this a bug? Well… not really. This is a way to avoid people clicking close to the control by accident and displaying the drop down when they don’t need it. In these occasions, the user will be probably moving the mouse around, so there are no chances of getting the menu by accident.

In a nutshell, a small improvement that saves big time, and provides more consistency when working between AutoCAD and 3ds Max Design. Now that they are shipped together in many of the new Suites in the Premium and Ultimate flavors, it is even more critical to decrease learning curve and share as many components as possible.

In the future we’ll also talk about the Autodesk Materials and File Link Manager.

 

Periodic Splines in AutoCAD 2012

You may remember that I did some posts around splines for AutoCAD 2011. If you believed that a lot of progress was made, you are right. However, there were a couple of aspects we wanted to enhance. The most important one was to get periodic splines in AutoCAD.

So what does this mean to you?  Let’s say you created a spline in AutoCAD 2011 (or previous), and came up with something symmetric. I just created one in AutoCAD 2012 using the corners of this square. Note that I can close with right click menu, and not have to define end tangency.

If I select the spline and show its properties, I can see 4 control vertices.

In the past, you would have seen 5 control vertices. Nothing shocking until you wanted to rebuild the spline. At that point, the shape would become asymmetrical, with a concentration of CVs (control vertices) around the place where you closed the spline.

As you can see, in AutoCAD 2012, even after rebuilding the spline, we get the right shape and the right amount of control vertices (in the right place).

This will also directly impact (in a good way) any shape you create based on these periodic splines. I just copied the spline along the Z axis, and scaled one of them, so as to get a nice loft. By the way, have you noticed that the loft is giving a real time preview as you select cross sections? This is just another enhancement in AutoCAD 2012.

After getting the loft, I just made another exercise.  By converting the loft into a NURBS surface, and showing the CVs, you can see the same symmetry from the splines.

 

The Suite Life

What a Mesh! is back into action. A year has gone by, with a
big change for me, moving from Product Management in AutoCAD into Product
Management within Suites. The teams I work with are developing common
components and standards to be used across all applications, in order to ensure
more consistency, a smaller learning curve, and better interoperability. It’s
definitely a buy life.

As you may have heard, Autodesk has just released new
Suites, trying to target solutions for specific workflows instead of just being
a collection of applications put together in a bundle.

In the upcoming posts we’re going to see improvements in
interoperability from design applications into visualization applications.
We’re also going to focus in particular in some applications that may not be
too well known, but are present in pretty much all tiers and flavors of the
Suites. Sketchbook Designer and Showcase deserve a lot of attention, since them
alone can bring unprecedented value to your work in AutoCAD, Revit or Inventor.

What a Mesh! used to be very focused around AutoCAD. I’ll
keep posting some interesting tips around AutoCAD, even though the focus will
now be more around the use of several applications together.

Stay tuned for the following posts. Whenever I include
videos, they will be hosted in my YouTube channel, and everything will be
posted both in English and Spanish.

Guillermo @ AIA Miami

Hi, 

if you happen to be at AIA in Miami, and want to see cool modeling in AutoCAD and its potential for interoperability with Revit, please pass by Autodesk's booth, and I'll be glad to show you some amazing stuff.

I'm also doing a presentation on Friday at 4, cohosted with my friend Scott Davis, around AutoCAD - Revit interop when using AutoCAD as conceptual design.

See you there!