Showcase now has its own community on Autodesk's "The Area" website. The Area is for the Digital Entertainment & Visualization Community and Showcase users now have a great resource at their fingertips!
Check it out here...
http://the-area.com/products/showcase
Created by Aaron... Your Alias/Showcase CAD Geek!
I get asked all the time what hardware I recommend for running Alias. Personally I have had a lot of luck with the Dell Precision line of workstations. I have also used HP and Dell workstations at the various companies I've worked for with decent results.
What I have observed over the years is that Graphics Cards play a BIG part in how Alias runs on a machine. Don't cheap out on your graphics!!! Spend the money and get a good workstation class card. The key word being "workstation". Workstation class graphics cards are designed specifically for CAD applications. While a high end gaming card may work sometimes, they are not supported.
Below is a link to the Autodesk Hardware Qualification Chart for computers and graphics cards. This chart lists all the currently tested configurations. Use this as a guide when you are getting ready to upgrade or buy a new system.
Hardware Qualification Chart
Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek!
If you are reading this you have probably scoured the internet looking for tutorials and demos for Alias. Not to easy to find them is it? While the CAD Geeks are trying to do our part to provide useful content to the Alias community, not many others are. Fortunately the folks at Autodesk have started to actively populate the AliasDesign web site with new and cool tutorials. They have assembled a nice selection of tutorials from basic to advanced technical surfacing. So after you have filled up on cool CAD Geek content surf on over to AliasDesign and check them out!
You can check it out here...
http://aliasdesign.autodesk.com/learning/tutorials/
We have created a new online self-paced training course for Autodesk Showcase.
This course covers the basic functionality of Showcase and what steps are necessary to create real-time photo realistic imagery from your existing 3D geometry.
If you have a seat of Showcase and haven't taken the time to learn the software this is your chance. This class covers the basics and walks you through the process of creating an image like the one you see above.
Follow the link below for more information...
I Get It - Showcase Basics Training
Have you ever gone into a menu and discovered what you are looking for is not there? This can be VERY frustrating for new users who are not aware of Alias's Short & Long Menus preference. The Short Menus give you an abreviated menu set that is supposed to make the interface less cluttered. I dislike this option and always change my interface to show Long Menus. This will guarantee I see everything whenever I open a menu.
Long Menus can be found by going to, Preferences -> Menus -> Long Menus
Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek!
By default the Draw Precision in Alias is set to 0.5. This setting leads to surface edges and curves to appear jagged and can lead a user to interpret good surfaces as having gaps.
To resolve this you can increase the level of precision used to "draw" the objects on screen by increasing the Draw Precision to 1.o. This can be done in the Control Panel. This will smooth out the surface edges and curves to give you a truer representation of your objects.
Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek!
The construction history in Alias is an extremely power tool. It can be a huge time saver while you are editing objects in your model. When modifying surfaces it can be very useful so watch the surface change in real time.
Lets say you are modifing some CVs on a curve that your surface is built from. Does your surface only update after you make your adjustments? Do you wish it would show your changes in real time? You just need to change a setting in the Performance Options...
Go to the main menu Preferences -> Performance Options
Under the Construction History Updates tab check on During Transform
Your construction history will now update in real time.
Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek!
Check out the video here......
http://www.screencast.com/t/7W9lmIBil
Created by Aaron... your Alias CAD Geek
In this weeks video I will demonstrate a workflow that takes advantage of Alias's Construction Histroy and some instanced geometry. This will allow me to visually see changes being made to multiple objects at the same time.
Click HERE to watch the video.
Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek!
Tata Technologies will be holding two Alias Basics classes in September and October.
These classes are intended for new Alias users and focuses on the basic techniques required to be productive with the software.
Classes will be held in our Novi, MI training facility.
There are limited seats available so sign up today!
Follow the link below for more details...
Course Information and Registration
Graphics add the finishing touch to any image and Showcase allows you to apply them quickly and easily. This weeks tip will walk you through the process of creating your own custom decal and applying it to you model.
Click HERE to watch the video
Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geed!
The orientation of surface normals are import for many aspects of visualization and modeling in Alias. Whether you are offsetting surface or calculating Ambient Occlusion, your normals need to point out. The Set Surface Normals Tool allows you a quick and easy way to make sure everything is orientated properly.
Click HERE to watch the video
Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek!
The Move CV tool is extremely useful for manipulating CVs in a controlled manner. In the video I will demonstrate how I use to tool to bring my CVs into alignment.
Click HERE to watch the video
Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek!
When you add items to your Marking Menus it uses the path to the tool as the tool name. This can make your marking menus pretty big and clunky looking. The solution is the rename the item.
The first think you need to do is open the Marking Menu palette.
Find the tool you would like to rename and double click on the icon while holding down the Ctrl key on your keyboard.
This window will appear. Rename you tool to whatever you like and hit OK.
You are now the proud owner of a clean looking Marking Menu.
Created by Aaron... your Alias CAD Geek!
Alias allows you to create animations of your products using key frame animation.
Key framing allows you to capture movements over a period of time. This very useful for visualizing the functionality of a product you are designing.
Click HERE to watch the video
Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek!
Alias comes with a bunch of command line rendering tools, such as renderer, raytracer, powercaster, and powertracer. These programs allow your to render without Alias running in order to take advantage of all the horsepower you machine has to offer. These programs have been around for a long time and were a favorite of mine back in the Unix days. I would remotely log into machines that weren't being used in the studio and run my renderings on those machines.
So today I will walk you through this process. To start we need to save an SDL file out of Alias. This file stores all the rendering information from the Render Globals, Shaders, Lights, etc. needed to render the file.
Go to File -> Export -> SDL
Next we will need to open up a Command Window.
Go to Start -> Run -> type Cmd -> Enter
Once in the command window navigate to the appropriate project directory.
Next we use one of the following commands to render the sdl file I named test_01:
renderer - this renders a raycast image
raytracer - this renders a raytraced image
powercaster - this renders a raycast image on all available processors
powertracer - this renders a raytraced image on all available processors
Type the appropriate command: renderer sdl/test_01
This tells the computer to use the renderer program to raycast the file "test_01" in the sdl directory.
Once the file is rendered you can view the results by using the fcheck command.
Navigate to the pix directory
Type the following command: fcheck test_01.tif
You image will appear in a new window.
That is all there is too it. Not to bad. If you want to get even more indepth there are many options you can include in the rendering commands. You can view these command in the Alias Help docs under Command Line Options.
Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek!
August 6th, 2009 | 2:00-3:00 PM EST
Topics to be discussed:
Alias & Inventor workflows
We will show how surface models created in Alias can be natively opened in Inventor, modified, and later updated after changes take place back in Alias.
As always a Q&A session will follow the demonstration allowing all attendees to discuss topics relating to Alias.
Click HERE to register
The Global Surface Intersect Tool is a great time savings Plugin. Using the traditional Intersect tool you would have to pick multiple times to intersect multiple surfaces. The Global Intersect tool allows you to do this much faster.
Click HERE to watch the video...
Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek!
The Symmetry Plane Align tool makes it easy to model across center line while maintaining continuity. The tool automatically adjusts the tangent row of cv's on a curve or surface to be tangent to the symmetry plane.
Click HERE to watch the video
Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek!
Layer Symmetry allows us to visualize what our complete model will look like when we are only building half of a symmetrical part.
Click HERE to watch the video
Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek!
