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Understanding the Basics Overview |
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This program is the first to bring full 3D design visualization , drawing creation , rendering, and animation into the mainstream of desktop computing. It combines a breakthrough new architecture with drag-and-drop solid modeling to provide the easiest part/assembly design /drawing environment available today. Yet it offers the same level of performance and compatibility you would expect from high-cost, advanced 3D applications.
Design Project Phases
There are several potential phases to a design project:
Building the part.
First, assemble the part from IntelliShapes. Choose from appropriate shapes in the catalogs or create 2D profiles to be extended into custom 3D shapes. Parts and assemblies also can be imported from a variety of standard formats. Use the applications catalogs to store your own custom parts that can be reused in your design process.
Assembling multiple parts.
When necessary or desirable to manipulate multiple parts as one, join them as an assembly. While this option facilitates manipulating several objects simultaneously, each component of an assembly retains its individuality. In addition, Assembly Features cut operations that affect parts under the assembly, can be applied. Assemblies often represent the structure of the design and can be rearranged/ordered during the design process using the Scene Browser.
Creating a 2D drawing of the part.
At this stage of a project, you may want to create a 2D drawing of the 3D part. First, choose the appropriate drawing size and view. After associating the desired file and configuration, you can specify alternate views, annotation, and layers, as well as other 2D drawing elements.
Rendering the part.
During the design process, you may need to communicate a realistic visual representation of your design. Using the SmartPaint properties, you can add various aspects to the appearance of the design including colors and textures, lighting effects, bumps, reflections, and transparency. In addition, various lights and camera effects can be added that are combined with the realistic aspects of Global Illumination and Radiosity to give your designs photo-realism capabilities. All of these controls and options are built into the 3D environment so that you can easily create realistic renderings without learning a new environment.
Animating the part.
During the design, you might want to add movement to your design for verification of mechanisms or communicating the action of your design. SmartMotions and the Mechanism Mode allow you the ability to create animations for communications and allow you to test out your mechanism including collision detection.
Communicating the part.
Finally, you can communicate a part through many channels. Various options including 3D and 2D PDF are available to communicate your designs with the ability to view, markup, and collaborate. In addition, extensive translation features are available for exporting your part to other software packages for downstream processes.
As a result of the capabilities to communicate your design through the design process, design changes may be discovered in the collaboration. Due to the unique history and non-history capabilities, changes in your design can be easily made without the need to be bound by your original design intent. This capability can allow you to make the necessary changes in a shorter design time that give you the ability to deliver to the demands and time constraints of your customers.
Of course, not all projects will require all of the above phases. Your job may be complete after the building and rendering phases.
Two user interfaces for completing a design project are provided: The 3D Design Environment and the 2D Detail Design Environment. The 3D Design Environment interfaces is used for completing a design project.
3D Design Environment
3D part design takes place in a scene. Scenes are composed of single or multiple parts/assemblies, created using the ACIS or Parasolid modeling kernel. They are saved as documents with an .ics extension. The scene can be thought of as a container for all your components. It can hold features, parts, assemblies, imported parts, and rendering and animation components. You have the ability to keep all your components in a single scene or break out individual components into individual scene files that can allow the ability to reference the same component in multiple files. At any stage of the design, you have the flexibility to determine this scene structure based on your design needs.
2D Detail Design Environment
Creation of 2D drawing views of 3D parts/assemblies takes place in the drawing environment. Drawings contain associative views of existing 3D parts/assemblies, and any additional annotation required to fully describe them. They are saved as documents with an .icd extension.
Basic concepts found in about environments are discussed in the "Understanding the Basic" section. Review these topics prior to working with this program to get the basic concepts.
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