Autodesk Manufacturing & Digital Prototyping Solutions

60 Second Visualisation with Autodesk Showcase

I thought I'd share with you these couple of images that I created using Autodesk Product Design Suite.

The test jig itself was engineered by one of our US based customers using Autodesk Inventor and I re-used their dataset in Autodesk Showcase to create the images.

I didn't have to apply any colours or materials in Showcase, they were automatically applied to the model based on what was assigned by the design engineer in Inventor; and there was no rendering time as Showcase has a real-time rendering engine. All I did was set the environment, which is a 360 degree HDRI environment (High Dynamic Range Image) so contains all of the relevant lighting information, and then make a couple of tweaks to the camera angle.

So all in all, I spent about 60 seconds creating these images in Showcase:

You can find more images like these in the Autodesk Manufacturing Gallery on Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/autodeskmfggallery

PS: If you noticed the new header image of the blog, you'll see why I created these images :-)

First Post of 2012: Autodesk Inventor and Showcase

I've finally got round to posting my first blog of 2012!! But before I get into all of the Autodesk Inventor and Showcase goodness may I wish you all a very Happy and Prosperous New Year and hope that you had a great Christmas break. For me, it was a really good two weeks spent with friends and family.

So whats my first post of 2012 all about.......

Just before Christmas I had a question asking whats the best way to update the 3D geometry data in Autodesk Showcase if the design has been changed? If you take a design from say Autodesk Inventor, insert it into Showcase, apply your environment, materials, create shots, alternatives and storyboards - the last thing you want to do is have to re-create all of that if their is a design change within Inventor.

The good news is, you don't....and this is how you do it....

So here's the design of a glass coffee table in Autodesk Inventor that I want to visualise in Showcase for one a Sales colleagues to show a potential new customer:

I can insert the native Inventor geometry into Autodesk Showcase without the need for any translation and can set options for which Inventor Project file (.ipj) I want to use, and also the name of an assembly constraint that I wish to drive/animate:

In this case though, there are no moving parts and I just want add an environment, create some shots, alternatives etc that my Sales colleague can use to help sell the design during their meeting/presentation:

It might be worth noting that the materials, colours and textures that were applied within Inventor to the model are the same in Showcase - they are automatically translated.

Just as my Sales colleague was about to leave for the meeting with the new customer, there was a request for design change which I was able to quickly do within Inventor - but what does that mean for the work that I have done in Showcase? Well all you need to do in Showcase is go to File > Import > Import Status Window...

In the Import Status Window it will list the geometry that has been imported into the current window. Just right mouse click over the geometry you want to update, select Replace and browse to the updated Autodesk Inventor document:

Your geometry within Autodesk Showcase will be updated to show the new design changes that were made in Inventor but all of your materials, environments, shots, alternatives, storyboards will all remain intact and usable. There's no need to re-create any of them.

Both Autodesk Inventor and Showcase are part of Product Design Suite Premium and Product Design Suite Ultimate along with other applications.

Autodesk Product Design Suite: Colours, Materials & Textures

Since the release of Autodesk Product Design Suite 2012 earlier this year I've been asked a lot about interoperability between the products int he Suite and in particular how colours and materials are transferred. With that in mind, and whilst updating one of my old modelling projects, I decided to run some tests and share them with you.

This is a model of my sons wooden fork lift truck toy which I originally modelled in Inventor R11 and have just updated it to Inventor 2012:

I have turned on the shadows but have not turned on ray tracing. All of the materials, textures and colours are the same as they were applied in Inventor R11.

This next screen-shot is the same data in Inventor 2012 but with the new ray tracing option turned on:

I was always impressed with the texture on the string, even back when I first modelled this back in Inventor R11 but now with the new ray tracing option in Inventor 2012 it looks even better, here's a close up:

I then decided to open the Inventor model into Showcase to see how the materials etc transferred across. The next two screen-shots show the model as it first comes into Showcase, and the second is when I turn the ray tracing on in Showcase and set options for the shadows:

I then did the same thing with 3ds Max Design, the first shot shows how the data comes into Max with the correct colours and textures, and the second shot is what I got by clicking on the Render option. I didn't do anything else other than ask 3ds Max Design to render the Inventor model I had opened:

I was then wondering how I could use the same data in SketchBook Designer but thought to myself that surely a sketch, paint and illustration tool would be used at the upfront phase of the design process for concepts, not after it had been designed - or would it?

In this case, I created a 2D drawing of the toy fork lift truck in Autodesk Inventor and opened the DWG in SketchBook Designer so I could add colour and produce some presentation material:

It was then really easy to duplicate the content in SketchBook Designer and produce further colour schemes and designs for consideration:

Because I used a DWG file to document the Inventor design the 2D geometry was recognised in SketchBook Designer as vector curves that can be edited using the vector tools available. These allow me to push, pull, delete, add points to curves, blend curves etc. All from the 2D geometry that originated in Inventor from the 3D model:

Finally, I wanted to make sure my 6 year old son could take apart and re-assemble the fork lift truck toy so inserted the data into Inventor Publisher 2012 (not part of Product Design Suite) so I could create some interactive assembly instructions for him. Once again, the colours and textures from the original Inventor model were shown in Inventor Publisher:

...and I could use the tools with Inventor Publisher 2012 to create the required technical line art documentation with a parts list:

...and then publish this to Inventor Publisher Mobile (availble free for Apple iOS and Android) so he could access the interactive assembly instructions wherever he is (with my iPad) and still see all of the colours and textures where applied:

Hopefully that shows exactly the work the Autodesk develoment team have done with the tools within Product Design Suite 2012 so that users can quickly and easily move data between the different applications within the suite (and products outside of the Suite) and not have to spend time re-applying colours, textures and materials.

If you're interested in how colour, materials and textures transfer between Autodesk Inventor and Autodesk Revit Architecture you might want to read this post....