AutoSurf
Mark,
I've been using AutoSurf for a few months now, mainly to model cars.
An expert witness I work with bought a copy (~$6K w/ Acad and the IGES trans
and the training (2 people for 40 hours)). I'm not sure how that breaks
down. Its a seperate program, but I believe it will be an option to AutoCAD 13
(like AME is currently).
The tools in AutoSurf are very nice and quite robust. Massivly superior to
what AutoCAD has now. It uses NURBS, and so you don't deal with polygons until
you convert it
into another format which requires them. You can do things like extending one
curved
surface until it intersects another, trimming a surface against another
surface,
offsetting a surface, adjusting a surface using 'handles' – pulling it around
in real time, filleting surfaces, creating surfaces from arbitrary spline
cross sections (without regard to the number of nodes)… I think its really
quite impressive.
All the models I've created with it I've imported to 3ds. You currently run a
seperate
program to convert from AutoSurf's native format to IGES. Then you run the
IGESIN
command to load it into AutoCAD. From ACAD, you DXF it out. Then
read the DXF into 3DS. Then you delete the all the damn intermediate files…
The IGES translator requests an allowable 'chordal deviation' from the NUBRS
surface to the
polygon mesh approximation. The first time I ran it, I accepted the default of
0.01"
or something <g>. This created a preposterous number of faces. When I set it
for 1/8", it was much more reasonble. The cars I've done look great in 3DS.
I think for this kind of modeling, the two together make a nice solution.
I think I will pick up a copy for myself when its an AutoCAD option, and when
Autodesks'
"all over the place" pricing structure offers it for a fraction of its normal
cost <g>.
Mark