Viewports provide a graphical user interface to display and edit the same model in
multiple views. Each view may have a different orientation, which for example enables a component to be viewed and modified simultaneously in isometric, side, front, and top views.
A variety of predefined viewport arrangements are available that split the screen into two, three, and four views. Additionally, a floating viewport window can be created which is especially useful to display data on multiple monitors.
Parametric Dimensions & Geometric Constraints
Shark supports dimensions and constraints for managing a variety of geometric relationships between 2D sketches. These relationships are used to establish the design intent of 2D sketches which then typically drive 3D solids. Modifying any object within a system of constraints will update all other dependent objects accordingly. Dimensions and constraints are key to making rapid design iterations based from 2D sketches.
A variety of constraint types are support by Shark which include distance, radius, diameter, coincident, tangent, horizontal, vertical, perpendicular, offset, concentric, parallel, equal, colinear, and symmetry. Distance constraints may also be defined by vairables and equations. Variables and equations are useful for relating other dimensions such as defining the height of a rectangle to be a function of its width (H = 2 x W).
Shark supports the unqiue ability to create sketches without entering into a dedicated 2D mode. This is accomplished by an underlying inferencing system that identifies skechs as you are designing. This means you can create constraints in any view, at any time.
Colour By Face
Colours can now be applied to the individual faces of a component, allowing for improved visualisation without the need to explode or split components just to modify the colour of a particular face.
The method by which photrealistic materials are applied to components has been enhanced allowing for materials to be applied using one of 3 filters; Apply to Face, Apply to Body or Apply to Similar. These filters enable a selected material to be dragged and dropped on to the face of a component, on to all the faces of a component or on to all displayed faces which have the same material as the face on to which the new material is dropped. This final filter is ideal for replacing one material with another across an entire assembly.
The Protrusion Solid tool located in the solids from 2D profiles palette now supports protrusions by distance. The direction of the protrusions relative to the selected face that the 2D profile lies upon.
The CutOut Solid tool located in the solids from 2D profiles palette now supports material cutouts by distance. The direction of the cut is relative to the selected face that the 2D profile lies upon.
The Three Face Blend tool creates a variable radius blend between three adjoining faces. The center, or shared face, is replaced with a smoothly blended surface. The radius value is completely controlled by the geometry of the three faces.
Feature based solids such as extrusions, sweeps, and lathes are created from collections of 2D curves called profiles. The new Modify Profile Tools enable these profiles to either be modified by adding, removing or replacing curves or to be completely replaced by an alternate profile.
The Curve to Arc tool will convert splines, conics, ellipses, polylines and collections of lines into arcs. This tool is of special interest to designers interfacing with CNC machines which do not accept higher order curves. The tangent continuous option can be used to have each arc tangent to its neighbor or the position continuous option can preserve the original curve. Conversion is done relative to a user defined tolerance.
Dynamic Linear Array Tool
The dynamic array tool will create and distribute copies based on the starting reference point and cursor location. As you move the cursor, the angle and number of copies increases or decreases. The spacing value describes the absolute distance between each consecutive object.
Enhanced Printing on Mac
Printing now uses the Quartz drawing system which enhances several print aspects on the Mac platform. Quartz provides a much larger coordinate space which means larger size plots can be printed. Quartz also supports much finer line weights which is especially noticeable when printing very thin lines. Printing now obeys the anti-alias setting under the View Display settings.
OBJ Import/Export
The Wavefront OBJ ASCII file format is widely accepted throughout the world for exchanging facetted data between CAD applications. OBJ files exported from Shark contain vertices, normals, texture coordinates, and part names. Texture coordinates are especially useful for 3rd party photo rendering applications to preserve the original NURB parameterization for smooth renderings.
Shark can import Google SketchUp and Google SketchUp Pro version 6 or earlier files. As Google SketchUp files only contain planar data all entities are converted into planar surface object types. This import option opens up the entire collection of components and models contained in the Google 3D Warehouse for use in Shark.
Enhanced AutoCAD 2008 Import/Export
Miscellaneous Corrections
• Corrected crash with certain text in DWG files
• Fixed Tmp file issue with DWG files
• Corrected Page Setup not working on mac
• Corrected click on layer name to edit second time not working on mac
• Fixed select highlight issue when zoomed in on model
• Data entry now preselects non zero field for translate/move tool
• Corrected bug with selecting control points of faces/and calculating extents of surface_faces.
• Updated AI export to support scaling
• Corrected option to keep core for shell tool
• Construction lines now use view instead of window based clipping to allow zooming in on construction line.
• Corrected crash with certain font types such as Parchment
• Corrected dragging a sketch which had a previously deleted object associated with it.
• Dimension font size & type now correctly preserved between launches.
• Exporting as FACT supports scaling into different units
• Corrections for culling and transparency.
• Corrected crash on read bug regarding group links not getting rebuilt correctly from a ViaCAD 2D/3D file.
• Added "Y is up" option for OBJ export.
• Creating a new view from rotation now applies multiple rotations at a time.
• Localizing file properties menu item for different language support
• DXF/DWG exporting error handling now includes using a temp file and displays a dialog box when export aborted
• Sketches now force moves into the sketch plane.
• Double line tool crash fixed and now protected from overlapping curves.
• Corrected offset crash with overlapping curves
• Added shift key graphic to Edit:Select Chain tool menu for Mac
• Corrected issue of dangling profiles after part deleted.
• Text height and dimension height now correctly converts to the equivalent heights for DXF/DWG import and export.
• Exporting hatches to DWG/DXF now implemented.
• Feature reordering working again.
• Application folder permissions are improved to support Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.
• Corrected ACIS crash related to offseting overlapping curves
• Corrected Double Line Tool crash related to overlapping wall lines
• Fixed crash on iMac when in Thousands of Colours.
• Corrected bad window title of "UNDEFINED" when opening certain file types.
• Corrected corruption of surfaces when using the Insert Knots Tool.
• Corrected VRML export to support grouped 3D data.
• Corrected OBJ export to support grouped 3D data.
• Corrected crash when hitting the return key while creating certain solid primitives.
• Auto constraints now cleaner regarding equal constraints.
• Added arrow tool data entry support for infinite planes.
• Added arrow tool data entry support for bend features.
• Corrected display artifacts associated with spiral and helix tools.
• Added arrow tool data entry support for spiral helix tools.
• Transparent flag now preserved when trimming surfaces.
• Progress cursor now updated after an export operation.
• Removed spinning cursor when resizing a viewport.
• Fixed Undo on a history feature.
• Fixed crash when quicktime was not installed on PC.
• Added PhotoRender to Viewport
• Advanced Render drop downs now working for body or face.
• Fixed variables and equations dialog box on Mac.
• STL export set to binary by default.
• Corrected moving, dragging, editing draw views in multiple viewports bugs.
• Enabled Publish to Web on Mac.
• Corrected Shark and Shark FX file association.
• Updated Shark FX Videos on PC.
• Corrected undo stack for constraints.
• Detail views now recognize hatches.
• Improved precision of AI export.
• Updated Shark FX User Guide.
• Updated Release Notes.
What's New in Concepts Unlimited 4.0 SP4
Concepts 2D, Concepts 3D and Concepts Unlimited are all compatible with Apple's next generation operating system.
ACIS R17
Service Pack 4 includes a major release update for the underlying modeling kernel provided by Spatial. The service pack includes ACIS R17 which includes over one year of performance and maintenance corrections to the underlying kernel. In particular, the new kernel addresses:
• Updates to STEP, & IGES
• Updates to ProE and CATIA V4
• Improved memory optimization
• Improved blending via capping/mitring
• Improved local operations (move,delete,offset faces)
AutoCAD 2008
Support for reading and writing AutoCAD 2008 data files.
The tape measure tool identifies distance, distance components, and the angle relative to the work plane. The distance and angle values are displayed at the cursor location for quick reference.
Using the Tape Measure Tool
1 Click on the Tape Measure tool icon from the deep select palette.
2 Click the first point.
3 Click the second point.
The distance and angle are displayed at the cursor location. The dx, dy, and dz
distance components are displayed in the Data Entry Window.
The Publish to Web command is located under the File menu. This tool will capture the screen and embed the resulting jpeg within an html file suitable for display within a internet browser application.
File Export JPEG
This option will capture and save the entire display screen to disk in the JPEG format. JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) is a standard image compression format. JPEG compression is "lossy," meaning that the compression scheme sacrifices some image quality in exchange for a reduction in the file's size.
File Export BMP
This option will capture and save the entire display screen to disk in the BMP format. BMP (short for bitmap) is a graphic format used internally by Microsoft Windows, and used commonly as a simple graphics file format. Exported BMP files are not compressed, so they are typically much larger than compressed image file formats such as JPEG. The simplicity of BMP and its widespread use in Microsoft Windows and elsewhere, as well as the fact that this format is well documented and free of patents, makes it a very common format.
The File properties tool will save a variety of information along with the file. The dialog box that appears includes deails that help identify the file such as descriptive title, the author name, the subject, and keywords that identify topics or other important information in the file. Use file properties to save information within a file for later retrieval.
Miscellaneous Corrections
• Corrected STL export issue
• Corrected Properties Dialog crash when using show units
• Corrections for modify tool when snaps turned off
• Corrections for printing draw views without PhotoRendering SDK
• Corrected Model to Sheet Polyline option
• Corrected prompt error with MicroScribe
• Solved memory issues for specific modeling situations
• Print shortcuts now displays printer setup dialog box
• Enhanced DWG translation
• DWG block attributes now supported upon import
What's New in Concepts Unlimited 4.0 SP3
Revised kernel provides update to core modelling functionality including updated STEP, IGES, ProE and Catia v4 translators.
New 2D Symbol Library
Over 26,000 precision 2D symbols covering Mechanical, AEC, Electrical and Plant/Piping Design.
Enables Concepts to be used on systems running the 32bit release of Microsoft's exciting new operating system.
Other Features
• Support for larger plot sizes
• Improved undo/redo
• Enhanced polyline detail view creation
• Improved support for French accent characters
• Improved legacy data support
• Improved resolution for obscuration plots from meshes
• Enhanced outline only mode with model to sheet
• Improved pen weight support for DXF/DWG imports
• Enhanced export of large meshes to DXF/DWG
• Updated skin solid with guide curve tool
• Added support for areas from Smart Polygons
• Improved Region Trim support for complex regions
• Support for text attribute types in DXF/DWG
What's New in Concepts Unlimited 4.0 SP1 & SP2
The Region Trim tool was added to support rapid trimming of regions. The new region trim requires the user click inside or outside of a region to trim. Holding down the option key will make a copy of the trim results leaving the originals untouched. Pressing the shift key will allow the user to select which curves are to be used in the trimming operation.
ACIS R16 Major Kernel Update
Integrated ACIS R16 SP5 from Spatial.
AutoCAD 2007 Support
The latest release now supports AutoCAD 2007 DXF and DWG files. Additionaly the release now supports unicode paths for DXF/DWG files providing the ability to work with Japanese file names.
Improved StartUp Times on PC
The release identified several potential performance issues on certain PC configurations resulting in significantly reduced launch times.
Saved Views
The saved view command now stores the viewing region along with the viewing orientation. Clicking on the view name to restore, will now restore using the saved view region.
What's New in Concepts Unlimited 4.0
Version 4 now natively supports both the Apple Power PC and Intel architectures providing a significant all around performance boost on Mac Intel based machines. Benchmarks show performance increases of 300% for most operations.
ACIS R16 Major Kernel Update
Integrated ACIS R16 SP4 from Spatial. The new ACIS build represents over a year of maintenance work by Spatial relative to the R15 build used in version 3 including hundreds of issues addressed including blending, shelling, faceting, booleans, and local face operations. This also includes updates to the IGES, STEP, Pro/E, and CATIA v4 translators. The Pro/E translator now supports reading Wildfire version 3 parts and assemblies.
The rail revolve surface was added to the two point revolve and revolve about curve surface construction methods. The rail revolve surface creates a surface from a profile that is non linearly scaled to the rail path and rotated about an axis.
Faceting Improvements
Normally the facets surrounding the poles of spheres are narrow and sometimes unnecessarily too numerous. The new version reduces the number of facets near the poles of spheres, ensuring an aspect ratio that is more consistent with facets near the equator of the sphere. In addition to improving the quality of the display, these changes have positive impact upon outputting mesh/facet data to stereolithography, DXF, DWG, and Electric Image.
A number of new color and displacement shaders have been added to the release, including the ‘Paving” color shader and ‘Roof Shingles’ displacement shader which further extends photo rendering of procedural materials for the building industry.
Rapid Rendering Material Preview
The Material Render Settings dialog box has been enhanced to support previews directly in the drawing window. This allows material settings to be quickly visualized directly on the object in the drawing with optional cropping to the object extents.
Concepts now supports paper space and viewport entities imported from DWG and DXF files. DWG/DXF files support two drawing areas which include model space and paper space. All modeling is typically done in model space. Paper space is an area normally used to organize data for printing. The paper space sections of a DWG file may contain title blocks and annotations that are associated with the model. Paper space also contains ViewPorts which define a viewing region and orientation of the geometry located in model space. Entities in paper space are imported as layers and sublayers which preserve the same name and organization as in the original file. Each paper space may contain one or more viewports. Viewports provide the ability to view specific regions and of model data. Viewports are precisely preserved through the Concepts draw view entities.
Exporting Paper Space and ViewPorts
Paper Space and ViewPorts are somewhat unique to AutoCAD. Many applications are unable to support their complex definitions. To broaden our ability to share this data with other applications, Concepts automatically explodes viewports into entities typically supported. This unique implementation means it is now easy to share paper space data through our Adobe Illustrator export as well as DWG/DXF exporter.
Improved Cursor Snapping
Feedback and responsiveness for cursor snapping was dramatically improved for large files, especially those with groups and drawing views.
What's New in Concepts Unlimited 3.0 Service Pack 1
Concepts Unlimited Service Pack 1 adds to its collection of surface modeling tools a new option for constructing shapes using boundaries and guide curves. This tool preserves n-sided boundary tangencies as well as allows the user to control the shape between the boundaries by specifying points and curves as guides. Once created, the guides can be intuitively pushed and pulled to explore new shapes.
Core Technology Updates
The new release also incorporates a major update from Spatial, the creators of the popular ACIS® 3D modeling kernel. The updated kernel features several hundred changes addressing performance, stability, and enhancement issues. This includes improvements to advanced blending, chamfering, shelling, and complex surface modeling operations. The kernel update also includes enhancements to the IGES, STEP, PRO/E, and CATIA v4 translators allowing Concepts Unlimited to precisely share data with other CAD/CAM/CAE systems.
Other Features
• Tool bar data entry fields updated for architectural display formats
• Up to 4X faster performance for reading/writing specific file types
• Improved support for DWG/DXF files
• Improved pen weight and styles support
• Twisting and stretching enhancements
• Improved bill of material (BOM) handling
• Numerous updates to the AeroPack tools for aircraft design
• Italian Localisation
• 75+ issues addressed
What's New in Concepts Unlimited 3.0
Exciting updates to the user interface that make CU fun, refreshing, and easier to use. Core to the change is the introduction of the Tool Bar which contains eye pleasing graphic elements for tool names, prompts, tips, hints, data entry fields, and help. Plus all new icons, tool cursors, and innovative improvements to our snap implementation. Beta testers have called the user interface changes stunning.
Guide Curves for Cover Surfaces
Another surface tool used to model complex shapes. This new tool nicely augments our existing 17 NURB surface construction tools by providing interior control to a set of boundary curves. The Guide Curves for Cover Surfaces is unique in the industry since the guide curves can cross over each other and do not need to touch the boundary!
Feature Patterns
Create linear, cylindrical, radial, polar, along path, spherical patterns from features. This tool also allows you to pattern faces from foreign parts. Great for working with data imported using our ProE and CATIA v4 direct translators or features generated with our history based feature tree.
Awesome new rendering tools to quickly create stunning images using predefined materials, lights, and environment maps for metal, glass, plastic, mirror, and stripe (surface analysis) materials. With these tools, anyone can quickly create amazing renderings with a press of a button.
Object Animation
New tools for rotating and translating objects and cameras with respect to paths. Preview your movies using OpenGL or generate high quality QuickTime movies using photo realistic rendered frames.
A key to generating eye popping images is placing an object in an environment that will reflect realistically back onto the objects. A very fast way to obtain this effect is to use specially constructed images that are projected onto the rendered objects. Concepts Unlimited now supports this ability through a set of drag and drop environment maps.
Use Concept Explorer to drag and drop over 12000 2D or 3D parts. Great for populating scenes for rendering and animation. Or use this new feature to build a custom library of your most frequently used parts.
We've taken key technology developed from our Immersion private label and included with our Concepts Unlimited product. Use the new tools in conjunction with the MicroScribe to digitize 3D shapes.
Technology Updates
• Kernel updates from our technology partner Spatial provides improved robustness for blending, shelling, booleans, bending, twisting, stretching, and local face operations.
• Interoperability updates for sharing data with Adobe Illustrator, Rhino, STEP, IGES, ProE (prt and asm), and CATIA v4
Other Features
• Support for AutoCAD 2006
• Double line tool for quickly creating walls
• Dual Processor support for Mac PhotoRendering
• Support for 3DConnexion motion control devices
• Reads Native TurboCAD for Mac files from IMSI
• Unicode support for language localization for our Japanese users