CAD, BIM & 3D

Disclaimer : I was politely asked by the developer of this software to feature a review on my blog. They offered a free license code, so I could test out the software properly, but provided no other compensations and did not interfere with the actual review. They were available for questions, but the review is my personal opinion. What is Able2extract? The software allows you to convert PDF documents into editable digital documents in various formats. They focus on Microsoft Office formats (Word, PowerPoint and Excel), but also on CAD users, by allowing conversion into the AutoCAD DWG or DXF format. There is a Standard and a Pro version, with the major difference the addition of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) in the Pro version, which will allow conversion of graphics into characters or text. http://www.investintech.com/able2extract.html The program is fairly easy to use. You load a PDF, define pages or selection areas to extract and then choose an output format. The...

While the Unity Game Engine has an integrated Lightmapping system (Beast, now from Autodesk), you need a Pro-license for Bounced Lighting. There are cases where it makes sense to import pre-rendered lighting from an external software. This blogpost is an overview of the process to bake lighting on a model in CINEMA 4D and ensure that it survives the conversion into Unity. Goal A model with two sets of textures: the regular tiled textures (bricks, tiles…) that are seamlessly repeated over the geometry (using the regular UV coordinates) and a second texture, containing the baked lighting using a second set of UV coordinates. References Several people have developed their own routines to get this done, but I'd like to refer to two posts, where a user name "Artzfx" posted some details on his workflow. http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/165691-Cinema-4D-Textured-Model-to-Unity-Best-Practices http://www.c4dcafe.com/ipb/topic/69750-baking-gi-and-textures-for-unity3d/ ...

You may have noticed that I'm interested in Unity. Here is another post about this fascinating game engine. Unity eBooks on offer for $5 There is of course my own book " Unity for Architectural Visualization " ( http://bit.ly/17u87df ). I you act quick, you can even buy it at a great discount, since Packt offers all eBooks and video courses for $5 till Jan. 3d ( http://bit.ly/1jdCr2W  ). I can recommend the  Unity Game Development Essentials  book by Will Goldstone as a general introduction and the  Unity 4.x Cookbook  as a series of valuable little tricks and tips once you know how to use C# in Unity. Unity for Architectural Visualization as a Video Tutorial? I'm currently working on a video course on the same subject . Will be still at an introductory level, though. Will be announced later. Further advancing interactive architecture projects I do hope to make a sequel on a more elaborate level as well. Not sure in which format. Book? Video Course?...

My (first) book on Unity for Architectural Visualization is ready. All files and texts are with the publisher (Packt Publishing) and they will make it available any day now. The cover image is a photograph by an external photographer, as is custom for Packt, but the bridge into the clouds is a nice metaphorical image on virtual and imaginary worlds. I've dragged the whole text through Wordle to come up with a text-based summary of the book: Despite the fact the only the 7th chapter goes specifically into scripting, I was a bit surprised that the term "script" is quite big, next to more obvious terms, such as model, objects, image or software. Who can spot the CAD and 3D applications mentioned? If any of you read the book, it would really please me to receive some feedback. Who knows what the future will bring.

This blog post is more a personal note, to share with the readers, whoever you may be, from wherever you may live. I have a few plans that I'd like to share with you. If you comment, you have the chance of steering it a bit. After all, what's blogging just for the sake of yourself. Unity for Architectural Visualization I'm about to finish the last revisions for the final chapters of my upcoming book Unity for Architectural Visualization. I do hope I live up to the expectations. It will be published by Packt and they have a pre-order page ready: http://www.packtpub.com/unity-for-architectural-visualization/book ArchiCAD Summer School Next week, I'm heading off to Cardiff (Wales) for the ArchiCAD Summer School 2013. There will be a BIM Teacher gathering, the introduction of ArchiCAD 17 (which I'm already using) and Artlantis 5 (which I'm using less, since moving more to Cinema4D, but interesting nonetheless). I will be too late for the openBIM day, a...

Most CAD and 3D-related websites have already gone over SketchUp 2013 by now. I'm not into repeating all of this, so this is more a personal reflection. SketchUp has become widely successful for many (valid) reasons. When I discovered SketchUp for the first time, they were at release 2 and ran by @Last software, who had lots of prior CAD experience. I remember suggesting to introduce it into our CAAD classes and we got a classroom license just a day or two before the first lesson. I quickly created some HTML overview pages and we were running. It will not come as a surprise that the software was a huge success. Reason for success: simple to use, quick modelling (push-pull!) and well-thought out graphical display styles, without jeopardising accuracy (inferences, axis locking). When Google took over, there were some hesitations, but overall the result was very positive: a free version became available, the 3D Warehouse was only in its infancy, but grew at a tr...

I am currently in the writing stage of a "mini" book on Unity for Architectural Visualization. There is not much   I can publicly share, at the moment, but I do hope it will be worth it. So if anybody has some ideas of what should absolutely be included in such a book, let me know and I'll see if I can fit it in somehow. But good, practical tips are also very welcome.