Autodesk Project Cooper : free drawing tool (for now?)

Project Cooper is a new and user-friendly drawing and presentation application, which should appeal to casual users, people with no CAD background and home-users. But nothing prevents you from trying it out as professional architects.

It actually contains enough precision for proper drawing on scale and uses the DWG format for interoperability with CAD software.

As most Autodesk Labs projects, specifications and availability are subject to change and no info is given on later possible commercial pricing. Current release expires on April 30, 2010 and available in US and Canada only.

Windows XP or Vista (32-bit) are required.

More info on http://www.autodesk.com/pr-projectcooper.

Free version of Balancer Polygon reduction

Atangeo Balancer is a tool that puts your 3D polygonal models in balance. With Balancer you can
quickly and easily find your perfect balance between visual appearance and the number of polygons; optimize your models even further for best visualization performance depending on your rendering method.

Limited in amount of polygons in the free version (which actually defeats its purpose, so you might need the full version to do real optimizations).

Check the Atangeo website for details.

Open Source HDRI application

Initially, when I learned about High Dynamic Range Images, I looked at the HDRshop application, which was simple, but at the time more than welcome. I just found out about Qtpfsgui, which is an Open Source application to load bracketed images (with different exposure) and turn them into real HDR images. Cross-platform (Windows, Linux and OSX) and Open Source.

http://qtpfsgui.sourceforge.net

T-FLEX CAD Free Student Edition

The Russian CAD program T-Flex is a general 3D Parametric Modeling solution, which offers a free (partially limited) student edition. Windows-only.

Check http://www.tflex.com/student

Pixelstruct - Open Source alternative to Microsoft Photosynth

Have you been impressed by Photosynth from Microsoft? Well, the same underlying algorithms have now been used in an Open Source application, which has a similar goal: reconstructing the environment through combining several pictures. Points in the pictures are related and the more pictures you receive, the more complete the display becomes. Each picture is mapped to the same point-cloud-like reconstruction.

http://da.vidr.cc/projects/pixelstruct/

Open Source : Sweet Home 3D

I just read about http://www.sweethome3d.eu through a Sourceforge mailing. Apparently, it is a cross-platform (Windows, OSX and Linux) and Open Source home modeling application, with the possibility of running online. The export to 2D drawings uses Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), which is slightly similar to PDF, but in an open XML-based format and the 3D model can be exported into an OBJ file (the old ASCII-format from Alias Wavefront software, before it became Maya).

List of free Vector-drawing programs

If you want to look at alternatives for CorelDRAW or Adobe Illustrator, this list gives a brief overview of some possible applications to look at. They all handle drawing, layout of (usually) single pages and insertion of bitmap images.

Go to http://www.junauza.com/2009/09/free-vector-graphics-editors.html.

• I have used Inkscape twice, to create posters. Starting from a PDF and once starting from a PowerPoint template saved as a PNG file to use as background. Support of layers, snaps and grids is there and also insertion of images, clipping, Boolean operations and decent font support. While I still believe I am more flexible and productive in CoreDRAW (which I used quite a lot), it gets the job done. On Windows, OSX and Linux, no less. Native format is SVG, but it has decent support for other formats too.
• I don't know Xare Xtreme, but if it used to be commercial, it might have some good productivity laying behind it.
• I tried the 3.0.0 version of OpenOffice.org Draw once and it behaved really bad. Maybe it was the bad OSX port or maybe it was just released too soon, but alignment of text was not properly stored and I had lots of interface complaints. I hope, really hope, that the current version is better. It could not possibly be worse than the version I tried. Anyway, for a 3.x release it was unacceptable.
• Skencil has a nice name, but have not had the chance to try it out.
• sK1 is a "fork" from Skencil, meaning it derives from Skencil but has been growing on its own. They promise support for CorelDRAW files, which might come in handy to port my older drawings to e.g. SVG or PDF.
• Karbon14 belongs to KOffice, so if you run KDE it's probably installed already. I think I launched it a few times, but not much more.
• Don't know Xfig. Interface looks a bit dated, so it could need some getting used to.

Anyway, I still really like CorelDRAW and never got really productive in Illustrator, so if you need some vectorial graphics (e.g. presentation of a design project on a poster), be sure to al least try to see if any of these suits your working style. And let me know if you use any of these in architectural design!

Free version of netfabb studio available

netfabb Studio is a new version of this software to manipulate 3D models in the context of fabrication. STL files can be loaded but also assessed and even fixed. It might not be a full Magics alternative, but it has a free (Windows) version and a non-free more extensive version.

Check it out at http://www.netfabb.com

Updated connection between ArchiCAD and Cinema4D

After a very long time, there is an updated version of the Exchange Plugin, which is a free add-on for ArchiCAD 12 and Cinema4D (R10.5 or 11), for Windows and OSX.

It replaces the deprecated MaxonForm and allows you to combine work from ArchiCAD and Cinema4D in two major ways:

• render your ArchiCAD project in Cinema4D and update the geometry from ArchiCAD


• embed freeform Cinema4D geometry as GDL object inside ArchiCAD and even update them again in Cinema4D

There have been long complaints about the combination of both, so I hope they finally got it right with this update.

http://www.graphisoft.com/products/archicad-solutions/cinema4d_download.html

Free Image Stitching from Microsoft

The researchers from Microsoft created this free gem, called Microsoft ICE, which is to be found at http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ICE/.

You can use it to merge your snapshots into stunning panoramic images (or other projections). Windows-only, obviously.

CraftAnimations freeware addons

On http://www.craftanimations.com/index.cfm?objectid=86E1B03E-EBF3-C495-703D3F30099FF423 you can register to download a series of free plugins (+ demo versions of commercial plugins) which work in all (recent) versions of 3ds Max, Maya and Cinema4D (on all of their platforms and in 32+64 bit).

Mainly targeted at improving animation of cars, planes or camera's, these utilities can assist with different animation tasks.

Modelur Urban Modeling for SketchUp

The Modelur software is a plug-in for SketchUp which is currently entering beta-testing. There are some YouTube movies to watch and you can register to test the software.

http://www.modelur.com

The end is near for Truespace

After Microsoft bought Caligari, it turned Truespace free. But apparently, the crisis is having an effect on the future of Truespace. It is assumed that the Truespace software and everything around it will be cancelled.

Read a notice from the founder of Truespace: http://www.caligari.com/News/news_200905/LetterFromTheFounder.html.

Envisioneer Express for free

According to the Novedge blog, CadSoft releases a free version of their CAD software for residential design, called Envisioneer Express. Read more at http://blog.novedge.com/2009/05/cadsoft-releases-envisioneerexpress-50-free-download.html.



Direct link to the product page for this software at http://www.envisioneerexpress.com.

Houdini 10 (still with free Apprentice Edition)

http://www.3dworldmag.com/page/3dworld?entry=houdini_10_released

The new release of Houdini 10 is (luckily) still available in commercial, cheap and free editions, for all major platforms (Windows, OSX and Linux).