Yeah, I know of Power Surfacing but I still think that they need to at least pay nPower and put this in as standard. Otherwise they are lagging behind the competition massively now.
Fusion 360, Inventor, Creo all have sub-D. Not sure about SolidEdge.
Now I work in education Power Surfacing is not an option for us. We are giving serious consideration to switching to Fusion 360, and I have already seen numerous UK universities making this switch. Dassault cannot continue with their arrogance or it is going to bite them in the ass in a few years time when everyone is teaching F360 in college and university.
@MK19: Honestly I would really say that Modo is in many ways a better bet to go in. The SubD modeling blows away the others hands down. Add in Mesh Fusion, dynamics, and renderings into the mix and you have a much more comprehensive solution.
Physical dynamics can be simulated in Rhino using Grasshopper and kangaroo that are free plugins for Rhino.
The thing here is that the industry will adopt the software that companies can afford and that satisfy it’s specific needs, we can’t say if some software it’s better than te other in a single phrase without explaining the use case for each one, NURBS software’s are more commonly use for production and manufacturing pieces where you need more control on dimensions, in that case modo would fart short on tools like surface analysis and unfolding surfaces, 2D parts Drawings and such. which are a essential part of the industrial design modeling.
I also recently notice that Autodesk discontinued the t-spline plugin for rhino, it did the same thing with the amazing VSR Shape modeling Plugin, it bought the company, implemented the tools in Autodesk alias and got rid of the rhino plugin, t-splines it’s now part of Fusion 360 and Alias Design,
Right now i think that your best option it’s Rhino 3D for what you said you need to design, Rhino it’s adopted by many ID firms, and you could complement it with Clayoo (an alternative sub-d modeling plugin for Rhino still with support and constant improvements), with Rhino you can also create drawings of your models for the production point of view. McNeel it’s about to release Rhino 6 with great new features and fixed some geometric controls to better adapt the software to the industry standards, Cycles will be the default render engine of Rhino 6 version and also there’s a new Vray plugin version for Rhino that it’s amazing (vray it’s one of the biggest standards in realistic rendering). plus you have Grasshopper for a very unique innovative way of 3D modeling you couldn’t do in any other place.
I haven’t personally tried Fusion 360, jet, but I think has lot of potencial, it seems very versatile like Rhino but with the experience of Autodesk to create profesional tools and Geometric precision, it seems Autodesk it’s gathering the best of its software’s into one tool, I’ll give it a shot specifically looking for the surface modeling tools, but I’m just scared about this Autodek big monster that could change it’s licencing prices at any time.
Do you guys have heard about Clayoo for Rhino? it appears to be a great Sub-D replacement of T-Splines, there’s also a Sub-D feature on the Rhino WIP project that looks very promising, but wont be released with in the Rhino 6 version.
Physical dynamics can be simulated in Rhino using Grasshopper and kangaroo that are free plugins for Rhino.
Yes this is a decent solution when it comes to dynamics but even Blender offers a wider deep range of solutions when it comes to this aspect.
The thing here is that the industry will adopt the software that companies can afford and that satisfy it’s specific needs, we can’t say if some software it’s better than te other in a single phrase without explaining the use case for each one, NURBS software’s are more commonly use for production and manufacturing pieces where you need more control on dimensions, in that case modo would fart short on tools like surface analysis and unfolding surfaces, 2D parts Drawings and such. which are a essential part of the industrial design modeling.
Any company that only stays in one software is again short sighted. Let’s put it this way, no company would ONLY manufacture with just one output in mind (i.e just sheet metal or just injection molding). Software has to be looked at in much the same way. Not saying that every software needs to be purchased Rhino will never be Pro/E and Solidworks will never be zBrush. Modo is every bit as accurate as Solidworks but I agree that it is not a drafting tool. There are many times when a design/engineering director is behind the times and are not always keeping their eye out for the ever changing landscape that is 3D software.