3/23/2011

Will Inventor Fusion within AutoCAD 2012 really improve popularity of direct modeling?

@dmitryushakov has just published a summary of the yesterday's twitter discussion on direct modeling with @bcourter, @DeelipMenezes, and @SeanDotson. Dmitry himself also took part in that twittering.

You can read Dmitry's article in Russian or translated by Google.

My own comment. Yes, all those interested in spreading DM (not least - LEDAS), in one degree or another, can be grateful to Autodesk. However I think that it's prematurely to count how many millions of AutoCAD users will be infected by DM: rather probably the majority will not only stay noninvolved but for quite a long time will still not go beyond 2D. In addition, a specific approach of very popular Autodesk (a concrete Fusion, combination of DM with a "historical" method) may distort a trajectory towards complete victory of a true pure DM - with automatic detection of the design intent - an approach which, for example, LEDAS is developing. But these observations do not abolish or downgrade significance of the move just made by Autodesk, be it only marketing or not.

1 comment:

  1. Here is my assessment, which agrees with a lot of what you said.
    Autocad has had the ability to model in 3D for quite some time now without a parametric history tree. The only difference between it and the direct model approach is that direct modeling seems to have a much better and faster tool set for making edits to model. It also recognizes specific elements and will allow me to input parameters to edit those elements. For instance a cylinder shape. In direct modeling it knows that this element is created by a radius and will allow me to change the radius. Prior to that with solid modeling in Autocad you would have had to use the scale tool in order to modify it, which isn't near as intuitive. Back to my point, which is that Autocad has had solid modeling for quite a while now and it was suppose to move everyone from 2d to 3D. Which to a certain point is has helped fuel where we are at now with 3D. I know it was my first experience with 3D and was definitely a stepping stone for me, but Autocad today is still a hugely 2d program. Most of the architects that I work with still only use the 2d functions, and don't even touch the 3D environment. So I think Blake is a little over optimistic. Actually I think SketchUp is a better stepping stone for Spaceclaim and direct modeling than Fusion in Autocad will be.

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