| News |
| 19-08-10 - Where's PolyCAD 9! |
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Well, things have taken longer than expected. The new transformation tools have required a lot of thought and to support them there’s been a need for a lot of optimisation to improve the way that surfaces are rendered for visualisation, hydrostatics and analysis. In the last few weeks I’ve got to the stage where I’ve tested quite a lot of different hull forms and it’s now reasonably robust.
I never made it to COMPIT 2009 but after a significant push I completed enough research to support a paper at this year’s conference in Gubbio, Italy. It’s now available on the publications page.
M y laptop running XP has finally given up after five years. It’s done well really. I’ve just got a new one running Windows 7. There do seem to be a few odd problems running PolyCAD. The graphics are presently a bit untidy but it seems that this is down to a need to upgrade font used throughout the software. I still plan to get PolyCAD 9 out sometime, may be before Christmas this year. Although its always available on request. |
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| 28-09-08 - Future Updates
to PolyCAD |
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Updates to PolyCAD have been fairly infrequent
this year. One of the many reasons for this is that the software
has become fairly mature in terms of its modelling capability
and has not required any significant changes to its current
line up functions. Another reason is that a year ago I changed
my day job and I am learning to use new ship design tools.
Development of PolyCAD 9 has been underway for some time
and introduces a number of powerful modelling features which
function along side existing tools. However, as many of these
tools are aimed at expert users, such as a NURBS knot editor,
there is currently no real need to release it yet because
for most people PolyCAD 8 is just as good.
That said, PolyCAD 9 features import/export interfaces to
the Tribon Britfair and ACIS (SAT) file formats which may
be useful for Tribon users as the presently the only realistic
alternative to getting surface data in TID Surface/Compartment
is Rhino. Furthermore, Rhino is not able to import SAT files.
Although these interfaces are complete, significant changes
are planned to the SAT interface in the future (another reason
why the release of version 9 is on hold). However, if you
are interested in the Tribon interfacing capability please
feel free to get in touch and request a pre-release of PolyCAD
9.
One of the main reasons why PolyCAD 9 is on hold is due to
the development of a innovative hull surface transformation
tool based on the ideas of hull form topology (See IntelliHull
publications). The idea is to use the underlying topological
structure of the shape of the hull form (boundaries, knuckles,
flats) to construct a framework which can be used to deform
the surface. This framework should capable of modifying the
surface at the global and regional levels. Presently techniques
only allow changes at the global and control point (definition)
level of the hull surface. This research is speculative and
there is a good chance that it may not work but its interesting.
There are plans to put a paper together to present the work
so far at Compit 2009 Conference
in Budapest.
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| 19-11-07 - PolyCAD 8 Update |
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Since the release of PolyCAD 8 and X-Topology earlier this
year there has been a lot of work to try to improve the new
hull/surface design tools and other features of the software
which interact with them. The X-Topology surface routines
primarily interpret user data to produce a smooth surface
and, as this data is humanly generated, there has been lots
of work to try to make sure that the software can handle a
wide range of different curve network configurations or fail
gracefully when the data is inappropriate. This work is ongoing
but it is now time to make an update to the version on the
website.
There are a number of new features including a 3D measuring/dimension
entity and more extensive polygon mesh editing code. Furthermore,
the create mode is now retained when interactively drawing
new geometry. This will probably surprise a few existing users
when they experience it for the first time.
Work on X-Topology is ongoing to both improve the existing
interactive surface design tools and to develop a set of topology
based parametric/interactive hull/surface transformation tools. |
|
| 09-11-07 - Jean-Marc Nourry
annouces his hull design expertise for the next America's Cup |
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Following the release of the new rules for
the next America's Cup, Jean-Marc Nourry has announced his
design expertise for the new hull form. Jean-Marc has been
developing a parametric hull generation tool to produce optimised
hull forms for a number of years and uses PolyCAD as part
of his design process. Some of Jean-Marc's designs can be
found in the user
show case.
Press releases:
2007-10
VITEO Contact Presse
2007-11-06
VITEO Contact Presse
jean-marc.nourry@viteo.fr |
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| 11-07-07 - Hull and Surface
Design Workshop |
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The X-Topology surface design tools in PolyCAD were presented
at the Hull and Surface Design Workshop held at GRC. A select
number of delagates were draw from the UK naval ship building
and consultancy industry. They felt that PolyCAD's surface
design tools were one of the most advanced they'd every experienced.
This feedback is quite fantastic especially as they were all
experience naval architects and only had couple of hours with
the software and minimal training. Find more information on
the Photo
Blog page...
An updated version of PolyCAD 8 has been uploaded to coincide
with the workshop feature improved surface continuity characteristics
in X-Topology Surfaces. |
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| 15-04-7 - PolyCAD 8 Released |
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After three years development PolyCAD 8 has finally reached
the stage where it can be released on the website, at least
as a full test version. There has been some significant work
on the user interface:
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Enhanced 3d Editing |
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Object Snapping |
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A Grid and Grid Snapping |
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Object Highlighting |
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Proper Curve and Surface creation by using the mouse |
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Introduction of Camera viewing, i.e. you can rotate
around the thing you're working on rather than the centre
of the model. |
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Tutorials and Help!!! |
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...and probably lots more that I've forgotten about |
For the last five years I've been working on extending the
IntelliHull
concept to multi-patch surfaces. As expected, understanding
how to address surface topology became the major bottleneck,
eventually taking three years to resolve. This could not have
been achieved without the help of Herbert
Koelman from SARC who developed the Fairway system. Last
november I the surface generation code started to behave robustly
and after a few more months of software development and help/tutorial
documentation, X-Topology
curves and surfaces are ready for an initial test release.
There is still much to work on, with the next stage being
the development of hull transformation driven by IntelliHull
type parameters. |
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Marcus Bole, 15.04.07. |