Reproduced from my Atkins blog of 15.09.2011
As anyone who has been bored by me on the subject will know, my favourite program for the past decade has been Rhino. For accurate engineering 3D modelling I think it can’t be beat! Add in the great renders you can get from Flamingo and who could want more.
As anyone who has been bored by me on the subject will know, my favourite program for the past decade has been Rhino. For accurate engineering 3D modelling I think it can’t be beat! Add in the great renders you can get from Flamingo and who could want more.
When I was invited to a webinar on Scan&Solve, a
new analytical plug-in for Rhino the idea was so strange I had to have a listen.
Analysis programs have been improving their graphics for years. But a graphics
program improving its analysis? Weird.
Scan&Solve wasn’t written only for Rhino and may
be adapted to work for other 3D modelling software. It works on solids, not
assemblies, and is able to work on any Rhino object that can give volume
data.
To be honest though, I am not impressed. The guys
presenting it evidently come out of an academic background and are doing some
pretty interesting stuff – but I am not sure if it is useful to us, and there
are other programs that probably do it better. Currently it is limited to single
materials with few releases and not that huge models. Add in the strange use of
‘Danger Level’ instead of terms like utilisation and the hopes of composite
materials ‘like reinforced concrete’ being dealt with and I came away not at all
sure if they knew where they were heading and what the business model is for
their future. ‘We’re working on it’ was the answer to many questions.
Not for structural engineers. Maybe (only maybe) for
mechanicals? I think most of the others on the webinar were architects and
product designers who seemed to be excited by being able to do analysis on their
models but, from their questions, they didn’t really know what they needed to
know (see previous post!). Perhaps the main thing engineers need to know about
Scan&Solve is that there are architects out there who may think they can do
it all now without us!
The two things I did like perhaps might get used
from the free version at home on some future competition. Firstly it can show
the deformed shape and then export that as a mesh model. This has been done
before but here it drops neatly back into Rhino and could be used interestingly.
Secondly it can ‘bake’ the coloured contour plots for results back into the
Rhino model. They actually showed 3D printed models with some very funky colour
schemes based on the results.
Which reminds me to get the 3D printing project
going sometime soon!
If you want to see a recording of the webinar it is
at this link. One instead of Eastenders perhaps.
