Artcam or Rhino

[Brady Watson]

Martin,
Yes. By 'modelling' we are talking about creating a 3D geometric file (regardless of the means...NURBS, pixels, polygonal meshes etc). That is considered the CAD portion of the 3D process.

'Rendering' refers to the process of taking these shapes and making them look pretty by adding visual textures and materials like wood, shiny plastic or modifying how the light hits the model and at what angle. Aside from making it look good to show your customer, it is of no relevence to the 3D process.

The next important part is the CAM portion to create toolpaths for machining the model. Some packages, like ArtCAM do both. Others just do design/modelling and some just do CAM.

Silo, Blender, Rhino and others can create 3D shapes. Whether or not the interface and tools are going to be suited for the work you are doing, is questionable & totally up to you. Some are more efficient than others...some are free, many of the better ones are not free. There are pros and cons to all of them. It all depends on what you really need. If just want to try 3D, you will (or already have) MillWizard included in the purchase of your tool. It is CAM only (machining)...You can take models created in any of the programs in question, import them into MW and create toolpaths to machine the part. If you need 3D content, there are tons of files on the web that you can download for free or for a fee, depending on what you really need.

-B

[paco]

Modeling:

-Paco: drawing in 3D, creating stuff around the virtual working area.

-Wikipedia: solid modeling


Rendering:

-Paco: sort of capturing the 3D view port into a 2D image for showing off.

-Wikipedia: Rendering (computer graphics)


You can do pretty much the same things in both kind of modeling. The two have different tools set so work differently with some similarities. RHINO can handle mesh while SILO cannot handle nurbs entities. But RHINO is not well suit (equipped) for modeling mesh. Blender use both ways of modeling and more.
Nurbs modeling was there way before subdivision appear around. People tend to believe that nurbs is for solid/mechanical/engineering stuff while subdivision is for artsy stuff like movie and video games characters. I've seen very nice solid stuff made in subdivision modeling and I've seen very sexy things done in nurbs ...

Check out this primer.

Teaser on modeling...

[jeffreymcgrew]

For what it's worth, Blender just got Sculpting tools. They rock. Not as nice as Z-Brush or Artcam Pro, but free is free. If you want to check them out you'll need to download the latest beta (which will be out very soon). I posted on my blog about it here: http://becausewecan.org/node/258

Haven't had time to carve anything with it yet, tho...

[stockbub]

Jeffrey

Which program is the beta in Blender? Which subcategory do I look under?

[rhfurniture]

Paco - rhino4 has mesh manipluation tools - have you tried the beta?

R.

[paco]

Martin,
Blender 2.42 is the current stable release. 2.43 is still under testing (release candidate) but should release soon. That's the whole package.

R. (sorry, I cant remember your name),
no but I'm aware of it. I wish I could see some SS of the new functions in action...

[normand]

Hey Brady dont take this to seriously I only want to make botter aware of the difference betwin the 2 software. All the talk above is only about the cad part. It would be helpfull to know the cam part of artcam , what are the toolpath option? Also in that moon crater example you are again mixing mesh and nurb. When you get highfeild from picture you get mesh NOT nurbs. no wonder you find it hard to work with rhino. Same thing when you scan you get mesh not nurbs. Again rhino is not good at working with mesh . Showing my work with rhino would not help much I never say I was good at it. And for my work on the shopbot for the last couple of year has been for movie, they design I cut and they dont like us putting pic up before the movie is out. Evevtualy you check the old town, the gasebo the disco and ... in The film (I AM NOT THERE) story of Bob Dyland coming out I dont know when. Also check the the control room in the movie (War GAMES2) coming out eventuly.
Great work Jeffrey glad to see someone using Blender. When I first inquire about it a few year back in this forum I have been told that it was not good to do model to cut on shopbot. So not knowing about 3d I trusted the info on this forum. Glad this is working for you.

[rhfurniture]

Paco, Its Ralph (some saint or other in St Pauls Cathedral London apparently)
TBH I just downloaded Rhino4beta to see where they were going with it - I am not a fully upto speed user - just have it for the parts others cannot reach. They did say there was construction history tracking (other than the usual undo/redo), but I cannot see any obvious useage of it.
Anyone with a RH2 or RH3 serial number can download it and try.

R.

[rhfurniture]

18431.gif

[stockbub]

With beta version of blender, can you save it as a whatever, and then bring it into like Rhino or artcam for further adjustments, and then to Visual Mills or RhinoCam or other cam software for tooling?