March 07 Newsletter is Out

As usual our monthly newsletter was sent out late at the end of the month. Every month I make plans to be ready by the middle of the month and every month something gets in the way. Not that I’m complaining about it. Writing the newsletter is a very interesting activity. It gives me the opportunity to look back at the previous month, to go through the brands and products we added to our catalogue, search for new case studies, and to write or select a new tutorial. Overall, the newsletter is a rewarding endeavor for me, and this month is no exception.

The content of the March issue is:

Featured Product

This month we feature the new 4.0 release of Rhinoceros. After a few years of development Robert McNeel and Associates replaced the glorious and well known Rhino 3.0 with this new version. It includes over 800 user driven enhancements, the result of a tight collaboration between the development team and the Rhino 3D community. While McNeel is already working on a future version of Rhino, we strongly recommend upgrading your old copy of Rhino to the current version.

Tutorial of The Month

Designing a car body is not an easy task. When the car is a stylish Alfa Romeo 147, the task can be even more challenging. Tibor Toth was not intimidated by this challenge and created a complete tutorial. To accomplish this task he chose two powerful and complimentary tools: Maya Complete and T-Splines.

Selected Case Study

Many artists believe that art is the creative process of designing an artifact and the artist doesn’t necessarily have to be directly involved in the process of manufacturing it. Today artists can benefit from available technologies and use powerful tools to invent new forms of art. Read this case study to learn how the Australian artist Michael Keighery creates art using Rhino and the Roland MDX-20 as a scanner and milling machine.

Featured Gallery

Rumors have been circulating for a while about the incredible power of Maxwell Render. Now this fantastic rendering engine is available. Next Limit Technologies believes that Maxwell Render is a perfect match with the new Rhino 4.0, and is promoting the two products bundled together. You don’t have to believe my words, just look at this gallery of extremely realistic images created with Maxwell.

Free Download

Autodesk is trying hard to promote DWF as the preferred file format to exchange technical information. To better compete with similar products like the new Adobe Acrobat 3D they are proposing the full featured version of Design Review, formerly known as DWF Viewer, for free! Regardless of the reason for this Autodesk offer, this is great news for all CAD users. You can download your copy of Design Review from the Novedge website.

Book of the Month

To design doesn’t just mean to create shapes and combine them into an assembly. It also means to be sure the shapes have the correct size for performing the functions they are designed for, and that they can interact with each other in a predictable and adequate way. For all these tasks designers need powerful mathematical systems, like MathCAD, able to solve equations, to find solutions to complex numerical problems. This month we feature a recent book about MathCAD. If you are a designer, you should really take a look at the book.

User Review

The Novedge website offers an incredible number of user reviews. Almost every single product in our vast catalogue has at least one user review. The most popular products, like Rhino, feature dozens of reviews. Just a few days after adding the new Roland scanner and milling machines to our catalogue we received this positive review written by Jim Mitchel. Take a look at Jim’s experience with the Roland MDX-20.

Selected Blog Post

The Novedge blog is running an exceptional series of interviews with the most prominent people in the CAD/CAM industry. I recently had the privilege of interviewing Robert McNeel, the CEO of Robert McNeel and Associates, the manufacturer of one of the most popular design products on the market.  Bob shared with us his unique and successful approach in developing such a complex software as Rhino. If you are a CAD user, I strongly recommend checking out this post.

Look in your e-mail inbox for the March newsletter and if you have any feedback or suggestions on how to improve it, feel free to share it with us by leaving a comment to this post.

Franco Folini