CAD Forum

Firstly thanks to Matt for setting this place up, looking forwards to some CAD agnostic discussions!

I thought I’d start with sub d toolsets and how we have grown into these. Back in the day, we bought into Modo as a rendering tool to accompany Solidworks, with also the vague hope that we could do concept work in it. For various reasons this didn’t work out. Primarily because Keyshot happened, and TSplines proved more useful to our workflow. Not to mention the sheer complexity of the Modo interface which I never took to, and the guy working for us who did, left!

So began our expenditure in sub d toolsets!

TSplines with Rhino 5 was our core tool for this type of work for years. We designed many products in it, and it always tickled me to see comments on “you can’t use TSplines and Rhino for final A class surfaces”. Oh really...
Designed 100% in Tsplines and Rhino, tooled from data.

Anyway, moving on a year or two I invested in Power Surfacing for Solidworks, which in the early releases promised much but was as flakey as hell. Half the time the subd didn’t convert properly. I was used to something better with TSplines. So Power Surfacing languished on the hard drive for a few years getting very little use.

By this time Fusion 360 had appeared (and as a pre beta tester I bought into it in version 1 for peanuts). I had hoped Fusion could eventually replace Solidworks but early versions were even more unstable than a Solidworks beta. So no. But the TSplines implementation improved release by release.

As Autodesk had bought T Splines and pulled the plug on Rhino, it meant Rhino had to develop their own subd engine. We tried using this in the betas but decided not to use it until it was released (which it is in Rhino7, more later)

A few years ago, we picked up some toy design work, so we used Rhino5 and Fusion to do early versions of these guys
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The trouble with doing this work is you need lots of revision phases so going Rhino/Fusion/Solidworks/Keyshot etc was a pain, so we started to look for alternatives. At the time Creo had switched to subscription only so I bought a network license of Creo 4 with Style (ISDX). Creo has a fantastic feature in all versions called Freestyle. It is an amazingly effective tool for sub d work, as you can control the edge sharpness from creased to smooth. Anyone using TSplines, or PowerSurfacing, or the Rhino versions knows that you need to add control curves to the form to control the sharpness of an edge. Creo doesn’t. You just select the edge and set the sharpness you want. Less control curves means lighter surfaces. (Looking at videos of the new SolidEdge subd toolset it appears to do the same).

So we attempted to move all toy and surfacy work to Creo. Unfortunately Creo’s other tools are not great. Drafting is, well, dismal. Assembly and in context modelling, pre version 7, was tricky without expensive AAX add ons. Version7 improved things a lot, but of course Covid then hit and the reality is we haven’t used it much in the last year so we are dropping it and reverting to Rhino7 and Fusion and....Altair Inspire Studio (which is available at a bargain subscription price).

The Altair software is quirky. It is not like others, but it is exceptionally powerful and has the sane edge sharpness controls as Creo. The built in rendering is also fantastic so frees up our Keyshot seats.

So what have we learned?

The biggest lessons are, sub d is a small part of our toolset. We don’t use it on every job, but when we need it, nothing else will do.

You can get to a mid level standard in sub d quickly, but to get to using it for production release surfaces needs lots and lots of time and tweaking. There are no shortcuts in this game.

There is no point in using pure sub d tools like Modo or Blender for doing our kind of work. It’s a wasted effort. We can conceptualise faster in nurbs linked subd, and then there is no reworking needed when we move into design freezes.

Cost has bugger all to do with functionality. I’ve seen Imagine and Shape, the CATIA sub d module. It is no better than anything else we use. The toolsets in Rhino, Altair Inspire, Fusion are all low cost. We kept Power Surfacing for Solidworks and it is a lot better these days but would I pay the asking price just to run it inside SolidWorks now? No. Get Altair and export as a parasolid.

Finally, there is the 3D EXPERIENCE question! Readers on the Solidworks forum know my thoughts on this. 3D Sculptor (the 3DX sub d x app) is rubbish. It is a toy. It offers nothing that these other apps don’t already have. If your thing is staying with one supplier and one platform then that’s fine, but let’s not pretend these apps are state of the art. They are nowhere near it.
So what will we end up using in 5 years? No idea. I just know we’ll not be changing to one system. Ultimately the tools are only as good as the user, which is why I value user skills over software capability any day.

@KQuigley Thanks for that! I'll probably bookmark that and re-read it as I need more subd info.

I haven't been able to do a subd project yet because I generally do work for a dedicated SW workflow and need editable SW data. But yeah, I get what you're saying. The subd needs to be part of a complete package.

Thanks again and welcome.

thanks for the information, I use Blender and Unreal 4 for rendering and have used Cinema4D and lightwave.
Not that i use Sub D as much as i should!

Hi Kevin thanks for the write up. I'd be interested in your opinion/ if you have ever had to mix parametric features and Sub D. i can see for some jobs doing the whole thing in sub D is suitable for figurines etc Although i suppose even with the bath example it could be a challenge to make that dimensionally accurate with sub D?

I have always come from the standpoint of thinking wouldn't it be great to use sub D as something that would be ideal to use for certain parts of a design maybe that's being a bit narrowminded having always used parametric design tools. With tools like power surfacing constraining to SOLIDWORKS geometry that seemed like the ideal blend, I could use parametric items to constrain the sub d elements if needed and make it all work together, change sizes etc within reason. Just a shame SOLIDWORKS didn't embed sub d or just purchase powersufacing.

I think 3D Sculptor/Xshape has finally got ability to constrain to edges/sketches in the latest release but yet to see how well that works with it being a separate application, import/export workflow with SOLIDWORKS.

Sub-D comes with Solid Edge....why go through all the hassel! ;-)

@AL123

Yes is the short answer. This is where a built in option helps, like in Creo (and to be fair in Creo it is very good). But let’s reverse up a bit and look at the reasons for doing this. Many of the sub-d examples the vendors use are just plain stupid. For me the benefit of sub d comes with rapid concept design (note design, not modelling), and transitions. But it is not the answer for everything. I always recommend folks dive into Kyle Houchens tutorials for Rhino 7, or his earlier ones for T Splines. This is how most designers use these tools.

Parametric design is our go to option for most work but in all my years using these tools I’ve always been faster, and less constrained, by mixing toolsets. Running a small team it is also far less costly! Sure PTC and Dassault and Siemens want you to run everything inside their platform, the reality is switching my team to just (say) 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS would triple our costs....no joking. I have the quotes.

We originally bought into Creo for the very reasons you stated though, but the reality was there were holes in the feature set in Creo that meant we still had to swap into other apps to complete the job (most notably, the inability to apply split lines to surfaces to let us colour up faces for step export and visualisation). Often, the seemingly simple features you use day in day put are the ones that drive you nuts when they are missing in other apps.

@Ry-guy
Play nice now
In all seriousness I totally missed that SolidEdge had built in sub d when it was released....they kept it quiet! The release demo was so astonishingly irrelevant I felt it was a feature they were trying to hide! I will likely take a look at it at some point, but for now we are focusing on Altair Inspire Studio and getting to grips with that. It’s not perfect but it’s amazing value for money on subscription. Like Fusion 360 prices. Totally unlike anything else but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

@KQuigley: Having been in a similar boat as you I have resided to using Solidworks, Modo, zBrush, and Rhino. It's not ideal BUT have found it to be the most flexible for any projects that come my way. Granted I am a consultant and not on a team which makes it much easier to move in and out of the different software's easily. Also there aren't a lot of people that work great in both CAD and DCC software and have a great understanding of how to leverage and iterate between them. Bar not Modo is a modelers modeling system nothing else close. If using the Power Sub-D add on for it then there are ways to tag the polygons in such a way that when exported out as a (.STEP) file will maintain the creased/hard edges that were created as part of the topology of the SubD modeling.

Rhino's SubD capability, if this were 10 years ago would be game changing. It's great for what it is but it seems that none of the CAD companies really get it....not Soldiworks with the 3DXP tools, Solidedge....Creo's is ok but they're still thinking and programing like CAD users. Solidthinking has always felt like some mix and match between if Solidworks and Rhino got married and had a 3D software baby. Power Surfacing does have it's downsides here and there but for the most part definitely offers something that Solidworks native just isn't doing....converting a mesh to BREP. Yes there is the new BREP-Mesh but no need to pop open that can of 3D mishmosh of worms.

CAD companies also NEED to stop calling, whatever their version of SubD is, Sculpting....it's not. zBrush, 3D Coat, Mudbox, Modo, Blender...that's sculpting and what sets this apart is that those software offer Brushes to actually 3D sculpt with. Picking CV's/Vertex..etc and using the move tool is not the same. Being able to add alpha channels to the brushes to give textures while sculpting the geometry is more akin to what traditional artist did with clay.

Arthur NY wrote: ↑Sat Mar 27, 2021 12:57 pm @KQuigley: Having been in a similar boat as you I have resided to using Solidworks, Modo, zBrush, and Rhino. It's not ideal ....

Hey, @Arthur NY , thanks for stopping by and weighing in. I was hoping you'd make it here, and I'm glad you found a discussion that you wanted to chime in on. Thanks again, and glad to have you here!

Arthur NY wrote: ↑Sat Mar 27, 2021 12:57 pm @KQuigley: Having been in a similar boat as you I have resided to using Solidworks, Modo, zBrush, and Rhino. It's not ideal BUT have found it to be the most flexible for any projects that come my way. Granted I am a consultant and not on a team which makes it much easier to move in and out of the different software's easily. Also there aren't a lot of people that work great in both CAD and DCC software and have a great understanding of how to leverage and iterate between them. Bar not Modo is a modelers modeling system nothing else close. If using the Power Sub-D add on for it then there are ways to tag the polygons in such a way that when exported out as a (.STEP) file will maintain the creased/hard edges that were created as part of the topology of the SubD modeling.

Rhino's SubD capability, if this were 10 years ago would be game changing. It's great for what it is but it seems that none of the CAD companies really get it....not Soldiworks with the 3DXP tools, Solidedge....Creo's is ok but they're still thinking and programing like CAD users. Solidthinking has always felt like some mix and match between if Solidworks and Rhino got married and had a 3D software baby. Power Surfacing does have it's downsides here and there but for the most part definitely offers something that Solidworks native just isn't doing....converting a mesh to BREP. Yes there is the new BREP-Mesh but no need to pop open that can of 3D mishmosh of worms.

CAD companies also NEED to stop calling, whatever their version of SubD is, Sculpting....it's not. zBrush, 3D Coat, Mudbox, Modo, Blender...that's sculpting and what sets this apart is that those software offer Brushes to actually 3D sculpt with. Picking CV's/Vertex..etc and using the move tool is not the same. Being able to add alpha channels to the brushes to give textures while sculpting the geometry is more akin to what traditional artist did with clay.

Thanks for your comments Arthur... and I very much appreciate your insights and agree with the generalization of words from cad marketing.. yeah, they're NOT Sculpting tools like zBrush,.. I wish they'd be clearer or told/taught to know the difference. Modo was one of our best chances of getting subd/poly/nurbs modeling integration within SWx,... other than the subd beta tease we accidently saw in 2018.
The tool I hope to play with Altair Inspire Studio soon.