heard abt Autocad’s reduction in China from 35000 RMB to 6000 RMB? this move is believed to last till Jan.2010. any opinion?

That’s allegedly a whopping 82% discount. Check out this page on the Autodesk China web site. I don’t understand Chinese and neither could I find an English page explaining this offer. So if someone can make sense of this offer, I would appreciate it you left a comment explaining it. From what I am given to understand, the numbers on the banner are part of a countdown clock.

Update (3-Nov-2009)

Click this link to read article regarding Autodesk’s offer. The article is in Chinese and the link will pass it through Google Translate. So do bear that mind.

Update (5-Nov-2009)

And here is ZWSoft’s response.

Inventor Fusion Technology Preview 2 – Part 1: Me bitching about Technology Preview 1 and the weird PR strategy used to promote it. Frankly, I am surprised that Autodesk chose to show me TP 2 after what I wrote about TP1.

Inventor Fusion Technology Preview 2 – Part 2: Some screenshots of the demo given to me by Kevin Scheider showing something that everyone (including me) thought was impossible.

Inventor Fusion Technology Preview 2 – Part 3: Explaining the Change Manager. It may be important to note that at this point I still didn’t have access to the software. Its odd how much you can write about a technology just by attending a web meeting and asking a few questions.

Inventor Fusion Technology Preview 2 – Part 4: Bits of my conversation with Kevin Schneider during the web meeting.

Inventor Fusion Technology Preview 2 – Part 5: Here is where I finally got to try the software. In this part I explain the extremely messy packaging of the technology – two separate applications using two different file formats.

Inventor Fusion Technology Preview 2 – Part 6: Investigating whether Inventor Fusion secretly tracks direct modeling operations. It does not. However it does track the features created in Fusion and uses that information to help the Change Manager.

Inventor Fusion Technology Preview 2 – Part 7: Explaining what happens when the Change Manager fails.

Inventor Fusion Technology Preview 2 – Part 8: Showing how the Change Manager fails to analyze a simple model.

Inventor Fusion Technology Preview 2 – Part 9: Showing how the Change Manager succeeds in analyzing the simple model in the previous part, but only after doing things sequentially. Here I explain why I think the Fusion technology is a success but the way it is packaged is a total disaster.

Inventor Fusion Technology Preview 2 – Part 10: Comparing Fusion with SolidWorks Instant3D. Or rather the inability to compare them.

WordPress tells me that the ten posts in this series contain 7576 words in all. I think I need to remind myself that nobody is paying me to write any of this and that there are probably much better things that I could do with my time. Maybe stuff like writing software.

So as usual let me explain my point of view using a simple example. Lets start with the simple 3″ x 2″ x 1″ box I used in Part 6.

I brought the the part into Inventor Fusion and subjected it to a series of direct modeling operations. Throughout this series I have used the word “thrash” when referring to performing direct modeling operations in Inventor Fusion. The following image shows you exactly how much I thrashed the original 3″ x 2″ x 1″ box.

As you can see I used a combination of extrudes, fillets and chamfers and punched holes wherever it pleased me. I created features that depended on other features which in turn depended on other features. Obviously this model is nowhere close to a real life part, but my point was to find out how far I could push Inventor Fusion. In order to understand a technology, I normally play around with simple parts. I guess this is the other extreme.

So lets see what happened when I open this “thrashed” model in Inventor 2010. Remember this was a simple 3″ x 2″ x 1″ box when it started out from Inventor 2010 and now it is basically one big mess. The Change Manager kicked in and showed me a list of 18 changes and recommended treatments for each change.

I was quite surprised to see that Extract Faces was not the default treatment for any of the 18 changes. This meant that the Change Manager actually thought that it could come up with a clean feature tree without any sculpt features. If it actually did, I would consider this to be a miracle. The graphics window showed me all the changes that the Change Manager managed to deduce.

As you can see, a complete train wreck. I clicked the Apply All button to apply all the changes and braced myself for a crash. Imagine my surprise when the Change Manager told me that all treatments had been applied. So did I just witness a miracle? I closed the Change Manager and proceeded to inspect the model in Inventor 2010. This is what it looked like.

Exactly how I left it after thrashing it in Inventor Fusion. But wait. What about the feature tree? This is what the feature tree looked like.

Hallelujah! This was a miracle. Not a single sculpt feature. The feature titled Extrusion1 refers to the original box which was the only item in the feature tree before I took the model to Inventor Fusion. The Change Manager added the 18 features below it.

I started this post by saying that I would compare Inventor Fusion with SolidWorks’ Instant3D. How can I? Instant3D does not add any new features to the feature tree. This is precisely the misconception that people have when they say that SolidWorks already has direct modeling capabilities.

As Matt Lombard so eloquently put it in this blog post:

Instant3D is NOT direct editing. Instant3D is an interface gimmick, using parametric methods on a purely history based model. The fact that it looks like direct editing is entirely coincidental. When you use Instant3D to change a part, you are NOT making direct edit type of edit, you are making a parametric, history based edit.

In Part 4 of this series, I asked Kevin Schneider whether Autodesk and SolidWorks were converging to the same solution but using different directions? I was referring to Instant3D. I had a reason for asking that question. Imagine this. Suppose SolidWorks ties in a technology similar to Fusion’s Change Manager to Instant3D. Then just like how the Change Manager computes changes in underlying parameters and sketches, Instant3D could also carry out similar modifications to the feature tree by either editing existing features and sketches or creating new features, similar to how 18 new features were added to the tree in the experiment above.

So when SolidWorks says that they will continue to “improve” Instant3D, do they mean that they will give it the ability to add new features? And by new features I mean real features, not messy Move Face features appended to the bottom of the feature tree. Or will they simply improve Instant3D’s ability to edit existing features? I don’t know. I guess time will tell.

I hope you enjoyed reading this series as much I did in writing it. New technology is something that interests me a lot. Maybe because I am a programmer first and a user second. I wish the Fusion team at Autodesk all the best and commend them for their efforts. I sincerely hope that they integrate the direct modeling part into Inventor instead of making users do it in another application. If and when they do so, they will then be in a position to let the Change Manager do its magic automatically after every direct modeling operation, something which I believe will greatly reduce its chance of failure.

I look forward to Inventor Fusion Technology Preview 3.

In this part we will see how the Change Manager succeeds in giving us a decent feature tree, without any sculpt features, for the same hole + chamfer case which failed in Part 8. Lets rewind and do things a bit differently this time. I create the same cube in Inventor 2010 and get it into Inventor Fusion where I cut out a hole. But instead of adding a chamfer, I save the model to a DWG file and open it back in Inventor 2010. The change manager kicks in and sure enough it reports one change and recommends a Create Extrude treatment for creating the hole.

I click the Apply All button and a second extrusion feature gets added to the feature tree. The first extrusion was for the cube and the second for the hole. I save the Inventor model and overwrite the original IPT file. So as you can see I just completed a round trip by taking the original IPT file to Inventor Fusion and bringing a DWG version of it back to Inventor 2010 and overwriting the IPT file.

Next I open this updated IPT file in Inventor Fusion and add a chamfer. I again save a DWG and open it Inventor 2010. The Change Manager kicks in and reports a single Create Chamfer treatment.

Again I simply click the Apply All button and the Change Manager adds a chamfer feature to the feature tree.

As you can see we have two extrusions and one chamfer, no sculpt features. This is precisely the feature tree that the Change Manager failed to cook up with in Part 8. The only thing we did differently this time was that we performed a round trip after creating the hole.

This very simple example only goes to illustrate a larger systemic problem with the way the Inventor Fusion technology has been packaged. Since users have to deal with two applications (Inventor 2010 and Inventor Fusion) they end up asking the Change Manager to deal with far more changes that it can handle. This often leads to undesirable results. Sometimes sculpt features are added as a last ditch attempt to accommodate the change in the feature tree. Sometimes, even that is not possible and you have no option than to ignore the change. I believe this is huge drawback especially if the change was a required one. And then sometimes, the Change Manager simply cannot handle it and crashes, taking Inventor 2010 down with it.

Its like asking a Magician to do ten magic tricks all at the same time. What makes is worse is the fact that the output of one trick is actually the input to the next. All we are interested is in the output of the last trick and instead of letting the magician perform the tricks in a sequential manner, we are unnecessarily forcing him to do them all at once. He is bound to goof up.

If Autodesk had changed Inventor’s UI to allow direct modeling right inside Inventor 2010 itself, then after every direct modeling operation, the Change Manager could be invoked automatically in the background. It would do its magic (just one trick) and edit the feature tree. When the user performed the next direct modeling operation, the Change Manager would again kick in and tweak the feature tree a little more. Since the Change Manager has to perform one trick only, the chance of its success would be way more than if it was asked to do a bunch of tricks all at the same time. And if it failed, then the user could be asked to choose from a list of treatments just like he is asked now. Quite similar to how the user is interrupted when a build error occurs if he edits a feature that the modeling kernel cannot handle.

During my tests on real world data, the Change Manager failed numerous times. In each of these cases, I restarted my experiment and made a round trip after each individual direct modeling change in Fusion. Almost always, it worked as it was supposed to. Quite similar to how the hole + chamfer change worked above and failed when I tried to do it all at once in Part 8.

This is why I said in Part 8 and the Fusion technology is a success, but the way it has been packaged in a total disaster. The sad part is that not all people trying out this technology are going to do what I did – make round trips every time they perform a direct modeling operation in Fusion. They will open their IPT file in Fusion, thrash it to their hearts content, get it back into Inventor 2010 and the Change Manager will most probably fail. In fact, I am surprised that it actually works when it does. It is quite clear to me that Autodesk has developed some wonderful technology that is capable of doing some really wonderful things. But to see it packaged this way is quite disappointing.

In his review on the DEVELOP3D blog, Al Dean wrote:

What it boils down to is that because of the nature of whatever Autodesk is doing with Fusion and the edits it makes, there are at present, very explicit limitations in terms of what can and can’t be done when you’re moving data between Fusion and Inventor and hoping to have the history and feature tree reconciled and maintained.

This was after the Change Manager failed to come up with the correct solution after he asked it to accommodate four changes that he made in Inventor Fusion into the original feature tree. In a way Al is right. Of course there are limitations to what you can do with the technology. But unnecessarily over burdening it by making it accommodate all changes as once only goes to limit it even further, often to a point where it fails.

Whats ironic is the fact that users do not perform all direct modeling operations at once. But the poor Change Manager is being forced to perform a bunch of interlinked magic tricks simultaneously. I mean, in my experiment above, I first created the hole and then applied the chamfer. There was a time a time difference involved here, which could easily be used by the Change Manager to accommodate my individual direct modeling operations into the feature tree. As of now, this is not possible because of the way this technology has been packaged – two separate applications and two different file formats.

In the concluding part of this series I will compare Inventor Fusion with the Instant3D technology of SolidWorks.

Let me repeat myself. I believe that the Fusion technology is a success. However, the way Autodesk has packaged it is a total disaster. To completely understand what I mean by this, you will need to bear with me, while I try to explain myself.

As always I will try and explain my theory by means of a simple example. Lets say that I create a simple 1″ cube in Inventor 2010 and save it to an IPT file. I open the IPT file in Inventor Fusion and create a hole on one of its side faces. I then chamfer the circular edge of the hole and save it to a DWG file. So I made two changes in Fusion: (1) created a hole; and (2) added a chamfer.

I open the DWG file in Inventor 2010 and the Change Manager kicks in. Sure enough I see two changes, neither of which have Extract Faces as the recommended treatment. So I know I am good.

I click the Apply All button and am surprised to see that nothing happens. These two changes were very simple ones and should have worked. But the Change Manager failed. So with nothing else to do, I click the Apply Treatment button to apply the treatments individually and the following error message pops up.

The Create Extrude operation refers to the creating of the hole. So I select the only other available treatment (Extract Faces, the last lifeline) and apply it. It works this time but notice what happens to the feature tree.

The feature called Extrusion1 is the box and then we have a sculpt feature called Sculpt1, which is a combination of the the hole and the chamfer as can be seen highlighted in the following image.

Clearly this is not what was supposed to happen. There should have been two extrusions, one for the cube and the other for the hole, and then one chamfer. What we have is one extrusion for the cube and a sculpt feature for the hole + chamfer. The Change Manager has failed in giving us a decent feature tree.

So if Fusion cannot do such a simple thing why on earth am I calling the technology a success? I will explain in the next part.

The purpose of this part of this series is to determine how useful this technology is when it fails. I know this sounds like an oxymoron and maybe it is. But I believe that any new technology should not have any show stoppers. By show stoppers I mean, things that prevent you from going forward. Show stoppers in new technologies have the capacity to put people off, more so when people are already skeptical about the technology to begin with.

In this part we will see what happens when the Change Manager fails to do its magic. Does it leave the user stranded? Lets us start with the simple 3″ x 2″ x 1″ box that I used in Part 6. I open the Inventor 2010 model in Inventor Fusion and make what seems to be a very simple change. I rotate the top face by 20 degrees using Fusion’s triad.

That’s it. Just the one change. I save the DWG file, open it in Inventor 2010 and sure enough, the Change Manager kicks in.

As expected, the Change Manager detects the single change and recommends an Edit Feature treatment. I can see the change highlighted in the graphics window.

So I click the Apply All button and expect the treatment to be applied. But nothing happens. So I click the Apply Treatment button and get this error message.

I think this message should have popped up when I hit Apply All. Maybe its a bug. Anyways, the point is that the Edit Feature treatment failed and I am being asked to either choose a different treatment of ignore the change. I don’t want to ignore this change because I know I need it. So I proceed to select another treatment. I drop down the list of treatments and find one called Extract Faces.

The Extract Faces treatment is like your last lifeline. When all else fails you can use this treatment to continue working. So what exactly does the Extract Faces treatment do? To put is simply, it compares the original geometry with the new changed geometry and adds sculpt features to the feature tree so that the preferred treatment that failed is accommodated in the feature tree. You can get more information on sculpting here.

So I select the Extract Faces treatment and click the Apply Treatment button. This time it works. I quit the Change Manager and proceed to see what happened to the feature tree.

Two Sculpt features were added to the feature tree which have been highlighted in the following image in cyan.

As you can see the extrusion feature remain unchanged but two sculpt features were added further down the tree. One of them added a prism to the extrusion while the other removed a prism from the extrusion. One can argue that this is not very different from how other MCAD systems offering direct editing tools add features to the bottom of the feature tree. The difference is that in Fusion this is the last option, and not the only option.

Another thing, the two sculpt features added are independent of each other. This means that for whatever reason I can delete one of them if I want to, as can be see in the following image.

I believe as the technology improves, the need for using the Extract Faces treatment will be reduced. Obviously the aim is to eliminate the need for it completely. But till Autodesk gets there, the Extract Faces treatment will be crucial in helping users test the technology.

I am now going to subject Inventor Fusion to some stress tests and see how well it holds up.

As I mentioned earlier I do not have access to any inside information about the technology. All I have is Inventor 2010 with the Change Manager add-in and the standalone Inventor Fusion application. I know I could use low level system tools that scan memory and track file I/O to sniff out what the Fusion application is doing internally while the user carries out direct modeling operations. But using that approach would be more like a hit and miss. So, I decided to use an approach that was borderline crazy but completely foolproof. I decided to carry out the direct modeling operations in a software other than Fusion. If the Change Manager could come up with the changes and treatments without me using Fusion’s direct modeling tools, then I would know for sure that Fusion had nothing to do the Change Manager’s ability to cook up the changes and treatments.

But there was a problem. The Change Manager can understand only Fusion-flavored DWG files. So how was I to create a DWG file that was Fusion-flavored and yet not use Fusion’s direct modeling tools? As you will read below I actually managed to pull it off.

I started by creating a 3″ x 2″ x 1″ box in Inventor 2010 by extruding a 3″ x  2″ rectangle by 1″.

My aim was to convert this box into a 3″ x 3″ x 3″ cube. This meant that the sketch would have to be modified to be a 3″ x 3″ square and the extrusion distance would need to be increased by 2″. That’s two changes. I saved this model as an IPT file and opened it in Fusion. I immediately saved the model to a DWG file and closed the document. I did not use any of Fusion’s direct modeling tools. A simple File->Open and File->Save which ended up giving me a Fusion-flavored DWG file.

I opened the Fusion-flavored DWG file in AutoCAD 2010. Yes, AutoCAD 2010, not Inventor 2010. Not surprisingly it contained the 3″ x “2 x 1″ box. And this where things started to become a bit messy. As it turns out, you cannot simply edit the model in AutoCAD, save the DWG file and open it in Inventor 2010. If you do so the Fusion-specific information will be lost. By digging deeper, I figured that a Fusion-flavored DWG file contains a single block called ACAD_FREEWAY_COMPONENT_1 which contains a single AutoCAD 3D solid. At least for this experiment this was how it was set up. I somehow needed to maintain this structure so that Inventor 2010 would think that this was a Fusion-flavored DWG file. So I exploded the block in AutoCAD to expose the 3D solid. I then used AutoCAD’s Move Face tool to move a side face and the top face of the box so as to get a cube. I then redefined the AutoCAD block to contain this cube and not the original 3″ x 2″ x 1″ box and then saved the DWG file.

So basically I did the equivalent of what Fusion would have done if I had pulled the box faces using Fusion’s direct model tools. Just that I did it in AutoCAD and maintained the Fusion-specific information in the DWG file. So now was the time to check if Inventor 2010 still recognized the DWG file saved from AutoCAD as an Fusion-flavored DWG file and kicked in the Change Manager. It did! I opened the DWG file in Inventor 2010 and the Change Manager started.

As you can see from the image above the Change Manager recognized two changes and recommended two treatments both of which involved editing a feature. The changes were highlighted in the model view.

As you can see from the image above, I was going to end up with a cube. But the real question is how this cube will be created. Will the 3″ x 2″ rectangle in the sketch be modified to 3″ x 3″ square? Will the 1″ extrusion distance be increased by 2″? To find out I clicked the Apply All button and both the Edit Feature treatments were applied. I quit the Change Manager and observed the sketch and feature tree. As you can see from the figure below the rectangle in the sketch is now a square.

And the extrusion distance has been increased by 2″ and now stands at 3″.

So this simple experiment proves without a shadow of a doubt that Fusion does not secretly keep track of direct modeling changes which could be then used to guide the Change Manager. In this experiment the direct modeling changes were not done using Fusion at all. For further confirmation you can try out the things Kevin Schneider from Autodesk mentioned in this comment to Part 5 of this series.

Like I said earlier, my purpose for writing this series is not to see how well Inventor Fusion can create a cube from a box. Rather it is to get a better understanding of how this technology works. I understand that users are more interested in knowing whether a software can do something and not how it does it. That’s why I urged you earlier not to take this series as a review of Inventor Fusion. This is more like a technology review, not a product review.

In the next part we will see what happens when the Change Manager fails to come up with a solution. What options does the user have? Stay tuned.

As you may have noticed, Autodesk has made Inventor Fusion accessible to the general public who happen to reside in select countries. As I mentioned earlier, the download consists of Inventor Fusion (the standalone direct modeling application) and the Change Manager add-in to Inventor 2010. The thing is that the Change Manager add-in works only with the Subscription Release of Inventor 2010, which means that not everybody in the select countries can try it out. You need to be an Autodesk customer and that too have an active subscription of Inventor 2010. So I get the feeling that Autodesk wants to have a certain degree of control over who gets to experience the real “fusion” in Inventor Fusion. And since this experimental technology in its early stage, I guess it makes more sense to do so.

In this post, I will explain how data flows back and forth between Inventor 2010 and Inventor Fusion. For that lets step through a typical workflow. I start by creating a history based parametric feature model in Inventor 2010 and save it to an Inventor part file with an .ipt extension. I then open the IPT file in Inventor Fusion and thrash it around using Fusion’s direct modeling tools. When I proceed to save the file, Fusion does not overwrite the IPT file. Instead it prompts me to save it as a DWG file. Fusion then creates an AutoCAD 2010 DWG file, which Autodesk refers to as a Fusion-flavored DWG file because it write some special Fusion related information to it. To complete the roundtrip I then open this DWG file (not the IPT file)  in Inventor 2010. Upon doing so, the Change Manager add-in kicks in because it recognizes the DWG file as a Fusion DWG file. It then loads the original IPT file and compares the geometry with the changed geometry in the DWG file. It then cooks up a the list of changes and the recommends treatments for each change which when applied will modify the history based feature tree of the IPT file (refer Part 3) to make it seem as if the direct modeling changes were carried out in Inventor 2010 itself.

Among other things, Fusion stores the associated IPT file path in the DWG file. That’s how the Change Manager knows where to look for the original IPT file. If it does not find the IPT file at the specified path, Inventor 2010 proceeds to open the DWG file like it normally does without kicking in the Change Manager.

The most important part of this whole Fusion technology is the part where the Change Manager cooks up the list of changes and recommends the best treatments that ought to be applied for each change. Its like finding your way back from some place without knowing the path you took to get there. However, if you kept track of the path you took, then maybe tracking back may not be that difficult a task. So I wanted to know whether Fusion was secretly recording the direct modeling operations in some place which could then be used to guide the Change Manager later. I could think of two places where such data could be recorded – the IPT file and the DWG file. Or maybe Fusion could store this information in a temporary location on the computer or maybe not anywhere on the disk but in memory.

In the next part we will determine whether the Change Manager actually modifies a history based parametric feature tree by comparing a dumb solid in a DWG file with the original parametric model in a IPT file. Or does it use some sleazy method of keeping track of the direct modeling operations carried out by the user in Fusion and then use this data to cook up the changes and treatments. I can assure you that the results of this investigation will be very interesting. Do stay tuned. I have only got started.

Clicking the button started an Adobe AIR installer but stopped with an error message stating: “The application could not be installed. Try installing it again. If the problem persists, contact the application author“. The error number reported was “Error#2032“.

I tried everything, but no joy. I even uninstalled Adobe AIR, got the latest version from Adobe and tried installing TweetDeck again. Nothing.

Then I did something that I should have done before – turn to Google. Someone else facing the same problem solved it by bypassing the part which causes the error window to pop up. He did so by downloading the .air file from TweetDeck.com and running it locally on his computer. In guess, internally that’s precisely the same thing that happens when you click the “Download now, it’s free” button, but something between that click and installing the .air file is probably coming in the way.

So for those who may be facing the same problem, you can download the .air file from http://downloads.tweetdeck.com/TweetDeck_0_31.3.air and simply run it locally on your computer. Note that you may have to adjust the name of the file depending upon the version of TweetDeck. Today (28th October 2009) the file is called TweetDeck_0_31.3.air, which stands for version 0.31.3, as can be seen from the first image above. Hopefully by the time you are reading this TweetDeck does not change the location where it keeps the .air file. And hopefully someone at TweetDeck will solve this problem before that and you don’t need to read this to begin with.

Happy tweeting!

You can read all about McNeel’s new release process here. To sum it up, basically McNeel has three stages in their development cycle.

Phase 1 – Work-In-Progress: This is the pre Beta phase where the software is not production ready and new features are only prototyped. This stage can go on for 6 months. Rhino 5.0 is currently in this stage.

Phase 2 – Beta: Once most of the new stuff is production ready they release a Beta, which customers may start using in their production environment. In case of other CAD vendors this is the stage when beta testers and third party developers first access the new version and start reporting problems.

Phase 3 – Release: This is the final software and is released only after Beta users tell them that is is fit to be released. That’s why McNeel does have a fixed time of the year when it releases a new version of Rhino. Service Releases then follow which sort out bugs and even contain new functionality being worked upon on Rhino Labs.

I am pretty sure McNeel’s customers like this approach. As a plug-in developer I think its fantastic. Usually we get access to new versions of CAD systems in the Beta stage, which is not a bad thing. We usually get enough time to port our plug-ins and test them on the new version. However, by the time the Beta release is out, most CAD vendors pretty much freeze enhancements to their API or limit major changes to it. So if there is a new feature and we would like greater control over it through the API, we most probably need to wait for the next version.

However, with McNeel’s approach of giving access to the new version at the WIP state itself, not only do customers get a chance to have their say in the new version, but even plug-in developers can start porting their plug-ins much earlier in the release cycle and have their requests for API changes granted in the release being currently developed.

For example, McNeel decided to add 64 bit support to Rhino 5.0. Not only can Rhino users immediately start using Rhino 5.0 WIP in a 64 bit environment, but plug-in developers like SYCODE can immediately port their Rhino plug-ins to 64 bit as well, which is precisely what we have been working on the last couple of weeks.

All our Rhino plug-ins have been ported to support Rhino 5.0 64 bit. I urge all our existing customers who are using the 64 bit versions of Rhino 5.0 WIP to try them out and report any issues. The links to the individual product pages are given below:

Utility Plug-ins

• Mesh To Solid for Rhino – Mesh to solid conversion plug-in
• MeshCAD for Rhino – Mesh modeling plug-in
• Point Cloud for Rhino – Reverse engineering plug-in
• TerrainCAD for Rhino – Terrain modeling plug-in

File Import Plug-ins

• ESRI Import for Rhino – ESRI Shape file import plug-in
• NC Import for Rhino – NC Program file import plug-in
• PLT Import for Rhino – HPGL Plot file import plug-in
• SAT Import for Rhino – ACIS SAT file import plug-in
• VTK Import for Rhino – Visualization Toolkit file import plug-in

File Export Plug-ins

• PLT Export for Rhino – HPGL Plot file export plug-in
• VTK Export for Rhino – Visualization Toolkit file export plug-in

If you encounter any problems, please create a support ticket at the SYCODE Support Center. Support is free. After all you are helping us improve our software, right? Please don’t get me started on CAD vendors that charge their paying customers to download service packs that contain bug fixes. I really want to end this post on a positive note.