anyone suggestion?

er we use maya but to be honest they are all pretty similar

Well, as you can see from the response from comp.cad.pro-engineer, 3D gamer type animation is not much of an issue with us. When we speak of 3D, we are talking about the geometry of solids. When gamers talk about it, they mean an animated illusion produced on a flat screen. The difference lies in what you can do with it, the terminus point: with 3D animation (Maya, Rhino,

3dsmax), the point is a visual image on a screen, brought to 'life' with life-like rendering (shading, perspective, depth of field coloration) ~ a step towards more 'realistic' fantasy; with solids modelling, the point is a physical product or process (realistic tooling, rapid prototyping, physical properties like mass and inertia, cnc machine code, stereo lithography models) ~ a step towards reality. What comes out of 3D animation is movies. What comes out of 3D modelling, which is what we talk about at comp.cad.pro-engineer, is the processes and products of manufacturing.

David Janes

David,

I do not agree with this because Pro/e is not a solids only package, most of all my (and most users I know) designs where created with curves/surfaces in Pro/e, and parts do not have to solid to be created/manufactured.

Rhino (nurbs based has just as good or better accuracy than Pro/e, solids, surfaces, wireframe, 2D..), Max (has nurbs), Maya (has nurbs), Cinema4D(has nurbs), Realsoft (has nurbs), TrueSpace3D (has nurbs) or even LightWave (mesh only) can and do produce real physical 3D parts. Anyhow, if it is meshed at a high resolution or within an acceptable tolerance for the process or depending on the process (like STL's), it is really not a issue. Those programs don't just create movies and they can and do physical produce props (mesh or nurbs and if they need the mesh data to be nurbs, they may be reproduced back into nurbs surfaces (with some work)).

Rhino3D is more than capable of producing high accuracy parts for manufacturing.

Bottom line is Pro/e animation is too rigid and time consuming compared to other render/animation tools so most of us export our models into more productive packages like the ones above.

Anyhow, to answer the guys question,.. Rhino3D would be a very good option but it just recently added Bongo (animation) and there are other tools like Max/Cinema4D/LightWave/Truespace,... which are much better at animation and rendering.

For animation, I would suggest Cinema4D or TrueSpace (and maybe RealSoft but never really used it) since they are fairly inexpensive.

..

David Janes wrote:

"Paul Salvador" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@verizon.net... : David, : : I do not agree with this because Pro/e is not a solids only package, : most of all my (and most users I know) designs where created with : curves/surfaces in Pro/e, and parts do not have to solid to be : created/manufactured. : True, true, people use, or try to use whatever tools they can get their hands on and whatever ones they know, to do the job they're faced with. For example, in support of what you're saying, I interviewed at a boat building place that used Pro/e surfaces for hulls and decks, but had one guy who knew Rhino to do the styling. It didn't hurt a thing since they exported everything to iges so they could machine the molds from foam. The Rhino guy just modified the iges files to add the styling.

: Rhino (nurbs based has just as good or better accuracy than Pro/e, : solids, surfaces, wireframe, 2D..), Max (has nurbs), Maya (has nurbs), : Cinema4D(has nurbs), Realsoft (has nurbs), TrueSpace3D (has nurbs) or : even LightWave (mesh only) can and do produce real physical 3D parts. : Anyhow, if it is meshed at a high resolution or within an acceptable : tolerance for the process or depending on the process (like STL's), it : is really not a issue. Those programs don't just create movies and : they can and do physical produce props (mesh or nurbs and if they need : the mesh data to be nurbs, they may be reproduced back into nurbs : surfaces (with some work)). : As with many questions we answer here, we are playing detective when someone doesn't tell us what they are doing with the software. I was just guessing what someone would be doing with AutoCAD and Rhino/3dsmax. The choice had nothing to do with accuracy, but what the intended outcome is. And, while 3dsmax may be capable of enough accuracy for plastics modelling, it doesn't seem to have the tools built in for guaranteeing curvature continuous suface blends. While Maya/Studio Tools and Rhino, also nurbs based as you pointed out, can be used for animation and certainly are, they aren't limited to that, IMO, principally because they are much more concerned with surface continuity. They have the tools to deal with it. Max, though, seems, to be focused heavily on gamer type animation with built in processes for particles, easy creation of articulated human forms with joint definitions, animated human motion sequences in fully rendered scenes and much more that seems like it was designed specifically to produce game type animation. That's not to say that no one uses it for product design, just that they will come up against the same kind of limitations that are faced by SolidWorks users who are trying to do class a surfacing with a product never meant to do them. And while you may be able to 'trick' the software into giving you what you want, you've got to breathe a sigh of relief and give yourself a big pat on the back when it works because, more often than not, it doesn't. In other words, it's not something you can count on.

: Rhino3D is more than capable of producing high accuracy parts for : manufacturing. : : Bottom line is Pro/e animation is too rigid and time consuming compared : to other render/animation tools so most of us export our models into : more productive packages like the ones above. : Bottom line is no one could or would use Pro/e for gamer type animation; in Pro/e, parts get animated, not features of a model. And even then, smooth, fluid movement of a human assembly model would be so monumentally difficult, so mathematically intensive in a Mechanism Design situation as to make practically impossible. Design Animation is somewhat easier because it intepolates movement between frames and extremes of position, but is still so awkward and the result so unsatisfactory that no one would think of using it for things that Max does effortlessly. Point being that a lot of things get called animation these days, but there are different types related to different intended results. My original post generalized, overly so, as Paul has pointed out. But the distinction I originally made between different types of animation and different intended uses and audiences for the animation are still, IMO, valid.

David Janes

I hear ya and you're right, I was clearing up the generality, which, believe it or not, people think generally about tools like Pro/e.. i.e., it's a solid modeler (personally, I don't like that term because it's generally narrow in scope.). I agree, I would not be using those other tools for manufacturing, even though it is possible and there are people who have and do use them (nothing really wrong with them).

Animation and rendering are those areas that the MCAD world still sux at (it's getting better)... so,.. we still have to use non associative alternatives. Call me lazy but going thru all the hoops is just a pita.

later..

David Janes wrote:

: Animation and rendering are those areas that the MCAD world still sux at : (it's getting better)... so,.. we still have to use non associative : alternatives. Call me lazy but going thru all the hoops is just a pita. : And some things are just plain impossible inside of Pro/e. I saw a real nice rendering of a Harley or Indian cycle, showing it in front of an office building with a couple people standing around admiring it. Looked very realistic. Now, imagine that same model riding through the city and pulling up in front of that office building. You might be able to get your mechanism of a motorcycle going (except for chain and sprocket which still can't be done in MD). You could even capture this to an mpeg. But, Pro/e doesn't have frames and scenes, you can't make movies with it, so you have go outside of Pro/e to the cgi people. You can't even put your moving mechanism or design animation in a rendered scene.

David Janes

paul

lets not forget here what we do

i believe from previous post i have seen you participate in that you are from a predominantly industrial design based industry or disciplines(me too) i was trained in industrial design,however my role is now more engineering based, i wamted to be an engineer but was far too creative to be stifled by the rigidity and career path of this industry however design die hards need to communicate better than drawings alone can provide and whilst engineering programs are good at defining engineered components dimensions etc what i think we have done is push back the boundarys of enginnering or design communication by using and openly embracing third party tools Putting across concepts or ideas in a better fashion than a plain old cad drawing these tools are kind of integrated into cad packages at a mediocre(at best)leveland therfore truly innovative enginners may find and use these tools if they have the time and inclination to put them to use..

i think you you yourself have found simalarily to me that the tools available to do such tasks can provide better results thus placing the finished result at a higher level than was previuosly possible.

what i found was that the animation programs wouldnt allow manufacturing data wand was as as stated a visual representation of the idea therfore i can only be hapy that i am at the engineering data end of the line and push my data through a pipeline that lets me communicate my ideas better than the competition my company faces

all i can say is keep up the good work ,accept criticism gracefully and keep pushing so in the end you are regarded as a leader rather than a follower