solidThinking announced on Monday, February 14th, the release of solidThinking 8.5 and solidThinking Inspired 8.5. Industrial designers, concept engineers and architects will soon be able to experience the enhanced benefits of the new releases, which launched worldwide.
The solidThinking 8.5 releases introduce more than 900 new features, enhancements and updates, including:
Modeling
- Faster workflow and functional performance.
- Simplified user-interface navigation and scene organization.
- A new and improved round tool with advanced options for shape control and handling of overflowing/overlapping rounded surfaces.
- A new Face Extract modeling tool for the creation of new surface objects by extracting faces of existing objects.
- More shortcuts, construction aids, sort and selection filters.
- Dramatically faster and higher-quality environment mapping and interactive visualization.
Data Exchange/CAD Collaboration
- New direct import for several native formats including H3D, SAT (ACIS), Catia V4, Catia V5, Parasolid (x_t and x_b), Pro/ENGINEER, SolidWorks and UGS NX — all at no additional cost.
- New export capability for Parasolid native format (x_t and x_b).
- Improved import and export capability for IGES, STEP and STL.
Rendering/Presentation
- A new real-time photorealistic rendering option, which integrates raytracing and progressive rendering to obtain a more photorealistic representation of lighting and materials.
- Enhanced anti-aliasing techniques and more efficient glossy materials for real-time rendering.
- Reflection Catcher, a new function that adds reflection below the model in a photorealistic rendering when the model is added to a back plate image.
- Enhanced materials library with more than 300 new “apply-and-render” materials. Material default settings have been optimized for best results.
- New ready-to-render lights and interior sets.
- Increased selection of background images and environments.
Form Generation (solidThinking Inspired )
- The ability to run Morphogenesis form generation on multiple model parts and materials.
- Define parts as design or non-design space.
- Show design space and morphogenesis results simultaneously for full review of the form generation.
- Faster, more intuitive part manipulation through smart snaps.
- Simple push and pull capabilities for turning 2D sketches into 3D design spaces.
- Measure static weight distribution of parts and assemblies on supports.
Current solidThinking users and members of the creative community are encouraged to further explore solidThinking 8.5 and download a free trial version by visiting http://www.solidthinking.com. solidThinking is also offering updated tutorials and essentials videos, to get users up and running quickly and independently.