solidThinking

[Rick]

First of all I'd like to thank Jeff for the coverage of solidThinking on the home page.

 

Second, in the spirit of full disclosure I want to be clear that while I am mostly an architectural renderer/consultant I am also a reseller of certain high end modelling/rendering software including solidThinking (which I just started to rep).

 

With that out of the way, I think that this software package is really outstanding. It is designed from the ground up to draw complex curved surfaces and it does so exceedingly well. I would encourage you to look at the tutorial section of their website and see for yourself.

 

http://solidthinking.com/support/learn/index.htm

 

They have some self running flash movies that show how the software works which are just plain fun to watch.

 

Version 5.5 was just released. http://solidthinking.com/news/index.htm

 

The entry level package is called forma. It retails for US $495 and has full nurbs surfacing functionality that I am pretty sure blows away Rhino. The midrange package is US $2745 and implements a 1-construction history so that your surfaces remain live and respond to changes made to the objects that were used to create them (an indespensible feature for this kind of work) , 2-some advanced surfacing tools, 3-tools to evaluate the continuity of curved surfaces and 4- decent implementation of the lightworks raytrace/radiosity renderer. At the high end the Vantage package is US $4995 and adds some really impressive solids features and a drafting and associative dimensioning module.

 

The main audience for this software is industrial designers. I know that this is not conventional architectural software but I know there are quite a few people here at CG Architect who are using rhino, maya etc. to do this kind of work and I think some of you may be interested in knowing more about it.

 

If anyone wants more specific info on this my website's url is: www.threedt.com

 

Rick Bernstein