RE:Cad programs

"Bob Campbell" <bob@...> wrote:

Fred,

You never seem to mention Rhino 3D. How does Amapi compare to Rhino? Rhino
3D for $795 is a great price for a 3d modeling program.

Bob Campbell

[Rhino has more features than Amapi, but of course that means there's more
to learn. Most people who get into it are quite pleased, though. I still
have a few copies left at a special price ($500). You can download a
working (non-disabled) copy from their site and check it out, if you'd
like. McNeel & Co. are now working on integrating their Accurender
rendering engine into Rhino, unhooking it from AutoCad. In keeping with
their animal theme, this is called Flamingo. For now, purchasers of Rhino
1.1 get to download the beta of 2.0 and Flamingo and work with it, but the
plan is to offer 2.0 as a free upgrade and sell Flamingo as a separate
module.

My feeling is that these programs are hard enough to get used to, that it's
best to find a 3d program that will do everything you want and dig in. But
if you want a freebie, another one is Strata Studio:
http://.www.strata.com/distribution/index.html The Pro version costs
money, but they let you download the regular version for free. While I'm on
the subject of freebies, a heightfield program I actually paid $50 for a
year or so ago is now free as well- Cybermesh, the 2d bitmap to 3d DXF
converter . It will only handle small gray-scale images (smaller than 300
x 300 pixels) but it does work:
http://www.puffindesigns.com/support/downloads.html

By the way, has anyone out there tried Solidthinking? I'm thinking of
distributing it, since it offers some things that Rhino doesn't-
parametrics for example- but I'd like to know if anybody has opinions on it
one way or the other.

Andrew Werby
http://www.computersculpture.com

Andrew Werby - United Artworks
Sculpture, Jewelry, and Other Art Stuff
http://unitedartworks.com