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Archive for February, 2009
Materials, Materials, Materials…
Friday, February 27th, 2009
by Stephen Gabriel ACI
I spend a lot of time helping users improve their rendering quality and I am amazed at what people are using for materials in their renderings. By this time, most people should be in one of two groups, those using mental ray and those using a competitor such as Vray, Final Render, Maxwell, etc. Each of these rendering engines provides materials specifically designed to work optimally with the engine. I use mental ray so cannot comment too much on the other engines, but I’m sure their materials work well.
Within 3ds Max, there are several types of materials specifically designed to work with mental ray including Arch & Design and Pro-Materials. Materials designed for use with mental ray are indicated by a yellow icon in the Material/Map Browser while materials meant for the default scanline rendering engine are indicated by a blue icon. The one and only pink icon is for the DirectX shader which is mostly used within the gaming industry.
While we can use materials designed for the default scanline rendering engine within mental ray, there are reasons why we shouldn’t. For the most part, we want to use the materials optimized for mental ray because they will render faster and with better results. Some of the default scanline materials, like Multi/Sub-object materials, are actually placeholders that can be filled with mental ray materials.
Probably the single worst material to use in any kind of rendering environment is the Architectural material. This material was designed specifically to be used with radiosity and the default scanline engine and is the material used by most Autodesk products, including all AutoCAD based products and Inventor, from about release 2004 through 2009. The Architectural material has two main problems with it. First, there is very limited control over most of the aspects of the materials appearance making it difficult to tweak the material and get the desired appearance. The second problem is the rendering times. In my experience, I’ve found the Architectural material to have the largest impact on rendering times of any of the other materials and this is mostly due the Shininess parameter which immediately adds raytrace reflections if the value is other than 0. This means that if you want to see a glossy highlight, you added raytrace calculations for the entire object and with the poor efficiency of the scanline engine, it would drive your render times through the ceiling. And the effect is compounded for every object in the scene with an Architectural material set to a Shininess other than 0. To be fair, the people at Autodesk were trying to implement a more real world material model with the Architectural material, essentially making it comparable to the mental ray DGS material (Diffuse, Glossiness, Shininess), and it also introduced the Type selection to help you quickly get settings similar to the desired surface. But, the Architectural material is just too darn slow and poor in appearance for production.
Autodesk introduced the ProMaterials with Revit Architecture 2009. These materials could be thought of as the next generation of Architectural material in that they are quick to get settings similar to a desired material and all Autodesk products that had the Architectural materials will now ship with the ProMaterials starting with the 2010 release. This means an improvement in rendering capabilities for all of these Autodesk products and the materials will transfer directly into 3ds Max. So, that’s good news, but the silver lining of this cloud is more like pewter. ProMaterials are broken into specific types with presets for specific materials such as Wood, Ceramic and Stone. This makes it easy to get general surface properties similar to a desired material. The down side is the parameters of each material type are different and sometimes you must switch material types to acquire the settings you want to use. This can be inconvenient as you will have to copy and paste your maps back into the new material parameters. In general, I do not use ProMaterials very often due partly to the inconvenience and partly because I find that they take about 20 to 25% longer to render. While this is not necessarily a show stopper, it is deterrent in my mind.
The most popular material used for mental ray is the Arch & Design material and there are good reasons for it. To me, this is the easiest material to handle and I can duplicate just about any surface I want with it. I won’t to rave on this too much, Zap Anderson and Jeff Patton have already done enough on that topic.
If you haven’t looked at mental ray recently or at all, I’d strongly recommend it. If you are still using radiosity and default scanline, wake up and embrace the future, it is already here. If you are using Architectural materials, please seek professional help immediately.
Have fun and happy rendering!
Stephen
Revit MEP Space Naming Utility is Now Available on Subscription
Thursday, February 26th, 2009
Content is currently available in English only.
Please click the link below and sign into Autodesk Subscription to retrieve this utility:
http://subscription.autodesk.com/
Autodesk’s Revit MEP 2010 Product Launch Press Release
Thursday, February 26th, 2009
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Import manufactured building components from Autodesk® Inventor® without undesirable loss of data.
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More than 300 ASHRAE duct fittings and ASME pipe fittings are added to the application.
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Enhanced integration with Autodesk® Seek web service lets designers search a vast library of 2D and 3D building products and publish customized designs to the service.
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New tool for automatic space generation lets designers generate multiple spaces from all “Room Bounding” elements present in the floor plan. Also generate spaces from linked Revit Architecture files without physically selecting each enclosure.
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Notable performance gains for updating network flow, adding elements and connecting to networks, and design manipulation.
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Expanded API (application programming interface) support.
Improved User Interface
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New customizable ribbon toolbar is task-oriented with redesigned, intuitive icons.
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Customizable Quick Access Toolbar allows one-click access to an individual user’s favorite and most frequently used tools.
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New “Options Bar,” navigation toolbar and enhanced Tooltips help improve productivity and user experience.
Intelligent Systems Engineering
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New heating and cooling loads analysis, weather data tools and building space calculation settings.
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Option to generate three levels of heating and cooling loads reports (simple, standard and detailed).
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gbXML (green building XML) export improvements allow users to help streamline the collaboration process with external analysis applications.
AutoCAD Revit MEP 2010 Screenshots and Captions
Building Information Modeling for MEP Engineers
Autodesk Revit MEP 2010 allows engineers to gain from the competitive advantages of BIM to support better decision making with Autodesk Revit MEP software. More clearly identify, share, and resolve system interferences and clashes when collaborating with other design disciplines. Help accelerate engineering design with tools that help to provide increased drafting productivity and support sustainable design and analysis.
Native Heating and Cooling Load Analysis
Autodesk Revit MEP provides native integrated heating and cooling load calculation tools to help engineers perform energy analysis, evaluate system loads, and produce heating and cooling load reports for a project.
Multi-discipline Coordination and Interference Checking
Optimize workflows by linking and managing central architectural and structural models to MEP workingfiles.
by Scott Brisk
Autodesk’s AutoCAD MEP 2010 Product Launch Press Release
Thursday, February 26th, 2009
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New customizable ribbon toolbar is task-oriented with redesigned, intuitive icons.
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Improved workspaces are tailored for tasks such as HVAC and piping systems in
ready-made formats, which are also highly customizable. -
New application menu helps enable easier access to a list of commands such as
Open, Save, Export and Publish; also use the application menu to access recent
documents. -
Gravity based designs for Sanitary Drain, Waste, Vent and Storm/Sewer drainage
systems can now be drawn more easily with the new sloped piping functionality. -
Pipe routing preferences have been expanded to include parts with male and female
connections.
More Efficiently Create and Edit Drawings and Drawing Data
- Leverage multiple part catalog support and use individual catalogs for different
material types, allowing for easier part selection. -
Support and migrate existing customized catalogs with tools to redefine the catalog
based content in existing drawings; upgrade and add new parameters automatically. -
Import manufactured building components from Autodesk® Inventor® without
undesirable loss of data. -
Content builder enhancements allow users to create custom parametric parts with
male, female or a combination of both connectors based on real-world piping
requirements. -
Enhanced integration with Autodesk® Seek web service lets designers search a vast
library of 2D and 3D building products and publish customized designs to the service.
More Coordinated Construction Documents
- New part content has been added to help produce construction documents faster.
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Values in the Panel Schedule are automatically updated when regenerating a drawing.
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Improved graphical display of MEP parts provides more accurate representation in
construction documentation. -
A new DWG to PDF driver offers merge control for plot colors, the ability to include
layer information and a preview of the plotted PDF.
AutoCAD MEP 2010 Screen Images and Captions
- AutoCAD MEP 2010 Familiar Environment
Leverage the familiar AutoCAD environment and access all of the commands that you are familiar with from right within AutoCAD MEP.
- AutoCAD MEP 2010 Task-Based
Whether you are a small or a multidisciplinary firm save your unique individual user interface configurations that are tailored around your specific building systems design task.
- AutoCAD MEP 2010 Multidiscipline Coordination
Coordinate mechanical, electrical, and plumbing design the interference detection tools within AutoCAD
by Scott Brisk
The Show is on the Road!
Sunday, February 22nd, 2009
In 1998 I graduated from a technical college in Mechanical Design with a couple things in mind. One was to involve myself in a career field that had some longevity and the other was to hopefully see that magical moment when technology had delivered something truly amazing. Windows 98 was just a couple months from release, the internet dot-coms were taking off and life was good. Well, technology since then, a mere 11 years ago, has delivered to say the least. We have seen things change drastically with how we work, how we play and how we live.
Now to some, on the surface, it all looks the same as it did 11 years ago but to others, especially those that are addicted to technology as I am, it is vastly different. I introduce to you iLogic Add-in for Inventor 2009.
In my last blog I had mentioned something pertaining to how Design Automation was coming to those that favor the Inventor application. Autodesk has released iLogic to it’s subscription customers on Februrary 12th, 2009 and it is available in the form of download on the Subscription Center website. What iLogic brings to the table is the ablility to use an easy to understand interface in the Inventor environment to associate parameters from parts to assemblies to drawings in the form of rules. Using Visual Basic code we can apply intellegence to our models to represent conditional design. If this condition exists, Then something will happen." As an example, if an assembly of a needs to be longer then on occasion we will need to increase the material thickness to compensate for the size or increase the number of supports so that the design does not fail. With iLogic we can write rules that Inventor will monitor so that if we inform the assembly to become longer then it will increase that material size or the number of supports which will automatically update all the parts, assemblies and drawings as Inventor normally would. The increase in productivity and efficiency is immediately apparent. We now will have real control over our designs, real power to see how designs can change depending on the condition and real strength in our intellectual data.
I have seen first hand what this application can do for Inventor and I truly believe this is one of those moments when technology has delivered. Autodesk has done well for us designers and engineers and anyone else who uses Inventor. If you are serious about using Inventor as a tool to manufacture a quality product in a timely manner with a efficient engineering department then you NEED to take a look at iLogic. If you are not a subscription member then request a demo, see what the Inventor/iLogic combination can do for you. In my opinion, its worth its weight in gold, 10 fold!
Time to Invest in the 3D Future is Now
Friday, February 20th, 2009
I’m seeing an interesting trend in regards to technology. Even though we are in a recession many companies are looking at technology as a way to improve their productivity and are using this slower time to implement new technologies and processes. The transition to 3D modeling is well on its way and tools such as Autodesk Inventor can digital prototype a design and find failures before any metal is cut. The transition to 3D modeling can be an overwhelming thought for many, but today’s 3D design tools are easier to use and more practical compared to the software available 10 years ago. 3D modeling promotes innovation by removing repetitive tasks found in 2D CAD tools.
Many companies are also using this time to develop their number one asset, their employees. By training your employees they will be able to use the software to the highest potential. Training is a vital component to the success of the software implementation. Through a training program students learn how to best design in 3D which is very different than designing in 2D. A good training program will reduce the productivity lag in a switch to a new 3D design tool. Numerous studies have shown that a trained employee is more productive.
The question is how are you using this downtime? When the economy rebounds will you be ready to take full advantage of today’s 3D design software?
By, Dan Banach
Civil 3D Intersections
Wednesday, February 11th, 2009
Get it while its hot! This is a free introduction to Intersection Design tutorial. This information will work for all released versions of Civil 3D. I think it is good to know these basics before delving into more automated tools that are out there.
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