Concepts speeded by power to change

Design software from Alias Wavefront that allows amendment of features, or even major proportions, without upsetting those aspects of the design that users want to maintain fixed. Concepts can be studied in 2D or 3D, with images projected onto 3D engineering models, and designers can use the system to investigate multiple alternatives, ensuring that their considered intent goes through to the engineered design. Alias Wavefront produces the world’s leading tools for concept graphical design. While the most striking renditions grace Hollywood films, none of which we are able to reproduce, products ranging from hand tools and domestic utensils to sports cars often owe their flowing lines and curves to ideas modelled with this software. The latest version of StudioTools, V11, greatly enhances this capability, by removing a number of logjams in the design process that CAD users have previously accepted as impossible to get round. It also comes alongside a totally new package called ImageStudio, which accelerates the process of producing a visual rendition of what a proposed product might look like in a user setting. While function is the basis of any product, visual appearance is very often the factor that clinches the purchase. Further, before an idea even gets to the point of being turned into a product for sale, the designer usually has to first sell the idea to company managers, backers, distributors and/or investors. Sketching in StudioTools now includes the ability to move 2D images round a rotation point and skew them, to create different perspective views. They can also be deformed locally. It is, for example, possible to drop in a circle and scale it on a sketch of a car, position it to mark a front wheel to be moved, and to do the same to the back wheel to indicate that it should stay where it is. It is then possible to move the front wheel relative to the back, distorting all intervening parts of the image to investigate the overall visual effect of repositioning. Users will be impressed by the company’s new ImageStudio, intended to generate renditions fast. It comes with prepared materials, scenes and lighting environments, some from the web, others in the package. Models can be imported from StudioTools, Maya and other CAD packages via IGES. The first release is focused on models with hard surfaces or metal or plastic, soft surfaces are to come later.