With formZ 4.0 also came the release of the first three plugins that represent new features:
  • Re-Engineering Point Clouds -- Thread arbitraty point cloud data into both facetted and NURBS structures.
  • STEP Translator -- Efficiently import and export parametric objects and their controls.
  • Sketch Rendering -- Post-process a rendering and apply a variety of expressionistic effects that may make an image appear as if it were done by free hand sketching.
Re-Engineering Point Clouds

Deriving properly structured objects from arbitrary and unstructured collections of coordinate points as generated by 3D laser digitizers. These objects can be structured as polygonal entities or as NURBS surfaces, which can subsequently be manufactured by one of the CAM methods. This is reverse engineering of physical objects at its best.

STEP Translator

STEP, the Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data, is a comprehensive ISO standard (ISO 10303) that describes how to represent and exchange digital product information. It defines a neutral file format for representation of configuration control design data for a product. It was developed by an international community for all engineering data, to cover a product's entire life cycle, from design to analysis, manufacture, quality control testing, inspection and product support functions.

STEP is built on a language, called EXPRESS, that can formally describe the structure and correctness conditions of any engineering information that needs to be exchanged. STEP is open and extensible. STEP is similar IGES in that it is good at representing parametric surfaces including trimmed surfaces. STEP is only available in the modeling environment.

Sketch Rendering

The generation of images that look like they were done by free hand. That is, a variety of effects can be applied to rendered images to produce expressionistic pictures that do not look like they were done on the computer.


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