nPower Software announces the 2.0 release of its Power Surfacing product. Power Surfacing is an award winning industrial design plugin product for SolidWorks® 3D design software that significantly improves the design process for modeling organic, free form surfaces in SolidWorks®.
Power Surfacing 2.0, with support for SolidWorks® 2015, builds on the successful 1.0 version of Power Surfacing. Power Surfacing 2.0 greatly improves the ability to integrate organic / free form design with mechnical / functional design. Power Surfacing integrates Subdivision Surface (Sub-D) modeling (with powerful free form surface modeling) into the SolidWorks® product; the integration of Power Surfacing's Sub-D modeling tools has empowered SolidWorks® customers with tools to design free form, aesthetically pleasing "Class A" surfaces quickly and easily, improving product design and work flow. The 2.0 version of Power Surfacing enhances the ability to integrate Sub-D design with typical NURBS models. Power Surfacing now supports parametric Sub-D design, tangential connectivity to SolidWorks® surfaces and solids, constraints to connect to SolidWorks® geometry, level of detail editing, and curvature analysis / display tools to facilitate optimal surface smoothness. Once converted into a native SolidWorks® part, Power Surfacing Sub-D models are treated just as if they had been created with traditional SolidWorks® tools. Thus SolidWorks® features like Booleans, fillets, shells, etc. can be applied to the Power Surfacing bodies. Design changes are a breeze with Power Surfacing. After applying SolidWorks® features, Power Surfacing users can go back to the original Sub-D form and modify the surface shape and downstream SolidWorks® features will be reapplied.
Power Surfacing 2.0 includes the following new features (see video of new features):
- Constraints (see video)
- Tangential connectivity to NURBS surfaces / solids
- Parametric (dimension driven) Sub-D (see video)
- Curvature display / analysis
- Level of detail editing
- Selection grouping
- SolidWorks® 2015 support
Constraints - user can constrain Power Surfacing points, edges and faces to SolidWorks geometry.
Tangential Connectivity - user can (by default) establish connections to SolidWorks surfaces with G1 (tangent) continuity.
Parametric Sub-Ds - using constraints (to planes and other geometry), dimension driven Sub-Ds can be created and parametrically modified.
Curvature Display - presents the user with a graphical (color coded) represenation of the model, highlighting areas of high curvature.
Level of Detail - user can locally edit the model at different levels of detail so that detail can be added to specific / local areas without affecting the rest of the model
Selection Groups - provides intelligent selection grouping for greater organization and productivity.
Power Surfacing unites the diverse modeling paradigms of Sub-D (Subdivision Surface) modeling and CAD (NURBS-based) modeling. Neither Sub-D modeling nor NURBS modeling can effectively solve all 3-D design problems. Each has strengths and weaknesses. Sub-D modeling is great at producing and modifying complex freeform / organic shapes with smooth surfaces. NURBS modeling is good at combining shapes via. Boolean and Feature operations as well as refining shapes with operations like filleting, blending and face editing. They see Power Surfacing as a novel and powerful unification piece between these two technologies. Being able to use both modeling paradigms together in the modeling process provides huge productivity advantages in both the design and revision process. Power Surfacing free form design combined with SolidWorks® parametric design provides SolidWorks® users with a ground breaking Industrial Design toolkit. Power Surfacing 2.0 dramatically improves the integration between these two important design paradigms; now design combinations with these technologies is almost without limits.
Power Surfacing is an excellent bridge between Sub-D modeling products like modo® and SolidWorks®. Power Surfacing can quickly and accurately convert virtually any Sub-D model (even Sub-D models that have some triangles) into the precise NURBS representation that is standard for SolidWorks® parts. Power Surfacing creates high quality surfaces, which accurately interpolate the vertices of the original Sub-D mesh.
