The CAD Insider

zSpace Interacts with 3D CAD

by Ralph Grabowski

ANAHEIM, CA (SIGGRAPH 2013) July 25 2013 - Some months ago, I interviewed the folks from zSpace over the phone, and so only got to see pictures of their hardware. Now at SIGGRAPH 2013, I got a hands-on of their take on interacting with 3D CAD.

Their take is a large monitor modified to rest on the desk at an angle. This makes it easier to work with the stylus: I can rest our arm on it, rather than holding it in the air with the usual monitor orientation. A pair of infrared cameras are built into the bezel. I can don polarizing glasses; zSpspace is the first  I''ve seen with clip-ons for those of us who already wear glasses. Nice touch!

Put on the glasses, and the 3D model pops out into the air. Grasping ahold of the stylus, we see a green light shoot out of its end. The green vector helps us determine which part we are selecting in complex models. Here's the strange part: the green vector is visible only when wearing the glasses.

Using the stylus, I was able to quickly pick apart the parts of an automotive under carriage. The green vector made the job precise. When I moved our head, the glasses instructed the model to move along.

The price of zSpace is not cheap at $6000, but costs no more than the current crop of 4K monitors that don't include the 3D interface. The Zspace folks figure the price will be coming down over time, and quickly added that bulk purchase discounts are available. The display's software reads the usual variety of MCAD and M&E formats.

http://www.zspace.com

Cintoo3D Compresses CAD Models

by Ralph Grabowski

ANAHEIM, CA (SIGGRAPH 2013) July 25 2013 - We have no new products to show," AMD told us, in their big booth at SIGGRAPH, "but we have a lot of partners here in the booth showing interesting uses of our graphics boards." AMD's line of graphics boards for professionals is known as FirePro and right now AMD is feeling pretty good at winning major sales with the upcoming XBox One, Playstation 4, and Apple Mac Pro.

Many of the demo stations showed off FirePro boards hard at work pushing 4K resolution to as many as six monitors -- that's 3840x2160 to each monitor. But there were two of interest to CAD users.

If there is a theme to SIGGRAPH 2013, it is handling massive data, like 6x 4K monitors or billions of 3D points. To help move all this data, Cintoo3D offers that offers multi-resolution lossless compression. (They are a brand-new French company, just launched this month, an off-shoot of a university.) Technically, they use wavelet-based CODECs (coders, decoders) using vector quantitization running on the GPUs of FirePro graphics boards. Well, any graphics board that supports OpenCL.

The practical effect is that meshes and textures are compressed 50x or more for transmission and storage. When it comes times to view, a slider lets us see greater or less detail in real-time. Ceo Andre Labat told us that CAD models are easier than M&E, because textures are hard to compress, and CAD generally doesn't use them.

http://www.cintoo3D.com

Why Can't They Just Get Along? CPUs and GPUs

by Ralph Grabowski

ANAHEIM, CA (SIGGRAPH 2013) July 24, 2013 - When I told fellow reporters I had a 1PM heterogeneous computing seminar, they looked at me at pity. I should have told them it was because HSA is as important as other obscure acronyms, like OpenGL ES, if they become common in our industry. I should have told them they should go, too.

Nearly all computers contain two types of processors, two or four CPUs (to run the operating systems and programs) and hundreds of thousands of GPUs to display graphics. In Intel chips, both are on a single chip; smartphones and tablets have SOCs, "systems on a chip," where both are there, along with other functions like DSPs (digital signal processors). for instance, games use CPUs for game play and GPUs only for visual effects.

Phil Rogers of HSA discusses "riding both" CPUs and GPUs at SIGGRAPH 1013

Phil Rogers heads up the foundation and in his day job works for AMD. At this HSA seminar, he is telling us that the CPU is overused and can no longer scale; GPUs and other functions are under utilized. But it is not easy to use both, because CPUs work best with sequential instructions while GPUs are best at parallel instructions. HSA provides an API to "ride both," as Mr Rogers put it. For mobile devices, using GPUs is exciting, because they are much more power efficient than CPUs.

At this point, the talk became very technical, as Mr Rogers listed functions of the API like unified addressing across all processors, visibility ordering, and bidirectional memory coherency. He emphasized that HSA is not an alternative to OpenCL but runs with it. Pretty much every company involved in graphics and mobile devices is a member of the HSA Foundation, with the notable exception of Apple. The API is free, documented, and still being worked on. In addition, a high-level language is being finalized under the same of HSAIL (short for "HSA intermediate layer"), a low-level abstraction layer; it supports Java, C++, and OpenMP.

http://www.hsafoundation.org

Thinkbox - Changing Point Cloud Processing by Orders of Magnitude

by Ralph Grabowski

ANAHEIM, CA (SIGGRAPH 2013) July 25 2013 - There are a number of software companies that specialize in processing 3D point cloud data collected from laser scanners. Scans can be made of anything from a small part to an entire oil refinery. The software is not cheap, because it caters to industrial users; think in terms of tens of thousands of dollars.

From the entertainment world comes Thinkbox, a company whose CEO has spent more than a decade thinking hard about how process points ever more efficiently. First, he figured out how to simulate effects for movies, like water, smoke, and fire using millions of points, then billions of them for even greater realism.

Thinkbox founder and CEO Chris Bond told us that he realized recently that his algorithms could be applied to another kind of point, 3D point clouds collected from laser scanners. This is because effects firms now scan the interior and exterior of buildings to make bring them into the backgrounds of digital movie sets. Stepping over to the CAD market is not a much of a stretch, especially when he foresees his algorithms handling trillions of points.

Right now, his FROST software can render 40 billion points in 28 minutes, turning them into meshes. He says that's 37,000 times faster than Geomagic, but we can only take his word for it. "That's points," he emphasizes, "not volumes. And we create water-tight meshes." As proof, he hands us the 3D printed model of a run-down industrial building that's also displayed as points and meshes on the monitor overhead. His TOOLS software fills in occlusions.

Mr Bond's ultimate aim: to model every cell in the human body, all 300 trillion of them. "Is this done by just his algorithms, or with hardware?" We wonder. Just algorithms, he reassures us. Well, his algorithms need the support of large and fast hard drives, specifically an array of solid state drives to hold all that data. He does not use GPUs, because all data would have to fit into the memory of the graphics board, for which even NVIDIA's new 12GB board is insufficient.

Thinkbox and FROST potentially could shake up the point cloud industry, if their claims are valid: processing tens of thousands times faster, handling thousands times more points, at one-tenth the cost.

www.thinkboxsoftware.com  

SIGGRAPH Attendance Falling Despite Rise in M&E Graphics

by Ralph Grabowski

ANAHEIM, CA (SIGGRAPH 2013) July 24, 2013 - Those that put on shows, like SIGGRAPH, have ways of making them seem big and busy. They can block off a large part of the exhibit hall with curtains, hiding unrented space. They can pack it with students.

Jon Peddie shows slide in SIGGRPAPH attendance

But Jon Peddie Research, a small firm, has examined the graphics industry for about twenty years. They are not fooled.

Each year at SIGGRAPH, the firm sponsors a lunch for invited guests. The lunch features a panel discussion by experts in the graphics field -- albeit M&E (media and entertainment) graphics, not CAD graphics.

Before the panel began, however, Mr Peddie presented some of his research. The slides he showed included the following trends:

• Attendance at SIGGRAPH is falling but falling even faster is vendor participation (I would suggest, however, we should be glad SIGGRAPH is around at all)
• Attendance is falling even as the M&E industry is growing exponentially
• Mobile devices are at the tipping point, because of this year's introduction of OpenGL 3 to mobile chip sets
• Tablets will soon switch from being consumption devices to creation devices; all that's needed is for Android OS to become better, Mr Peddie concluded.

The panel discussion, about democratization, was, unfortunately, nearly impossible to follow, due to the horrid acoustics on the hotel ballroom. The best I could gather, it was all about film issues, not something that interests us CAD nuts.

Dell Whispers of the Biggest Monitor and the Highest Resolution for Laptop

by Ralph Grabowski

ANAHEIM, CA (SIGGRAPH 2013) July 24, 2013 - Dell called it their Whisper Suite, a hotel room in which new and secret products were being shown to the media. Their product manager began the brief event by asking, "What are we doing here [at SIGGRAPH]?"

Well, it turns out that for Dell's workstation division, M&E [media and entertainment] and CAD are the two most important markets. A few years ago, they decided to take CAD seriously by showing up at events like Autodesk University; now they are taking M&E seriously by showing up at SIGGRAPH.

Here in this hotel room, they are giving us sneak peeks at their new 32" 4K monitor and a number of new workstations -- all of which will be introduced in September or later, and some of which we can talk about today.

Dell's very cool M3800 mobile workstation's 15.6" touchscreen has a whopping 3200x1800 resolution.

Sitting on the coffee table in front of us is a fat red laptop, the type that Dell became famous for, too heavy to be portable and with a power supply the size of a brick. The product manager lifts its lid, and it proves to be a fake, much to our amusement. Nestled inside is the new M3800, which Dell calls the world's lightest workstation. It has a carbon fiber bottom, and its 15.6" touchscreen boasts a remarkable 3200x1800 resolution.

"We're spanking our competition, especially one named after a fruit."

Really, Dell considers Apple a competitor?

"Not in CAD, but in M&E, yes"

It is a workstation because of the iCore 7 quad-core CPU, and NVIDIA Quadro graphics with 2GB video RAM. It ships later this year, and so no other specs are available, nor is the price. And it lt looks better in real life than in pictures. "What about the power supply, is it still a brick?" we ask. The product manager reaches under the table and pulls out a reasonably-sized power supply.

32" Monitor

Last week we had installed Lenovo's new 30" workstation monitor, and so we found ourselves very interested in how Dell planned to up the competition. Their new one is named UP-32, is bigger at 32", and has more pixels at 3840x2860 -- popularly referred to as 4K resolution. "It's like four 1080p monitors in one," the product manager boasts.

"What kind of graphics board can work with such a high resolution," we wonder. The answer: Graphics boards with DisplayLink ports. The monitor also has ports for HMDI, DVI, mini-DisplayPort, and a USB hub.

The stand is aluminum. To keep the size of the size of the stand smaller, this monitor does not pivot to portrait orientation.  The monitor will not ship until Q4, and the price is unknown, although 30" models go for $1500 today.

And that's all we can tell you, because reporting on the remaining hardware shown to us is embargoed until September.

Leonar3Do Go Bird A Steal for Sculpting Models

by Ralph Grabowski

ANAHEIM, CA (SIGGRAPH 2013) July 24, 2013 - In the weeks prior to SIGGRAPH, we were inundated with invites to visit exhibitors, both on the show floor and off. One of them was from a small new company we were glad to have visited. Leonar3Do from Budapest makes infrared tracking hardware and 3D sculpting software. They were anxious to show us the software; we were anxious to try out the hardware.

Briefly, then, about the software, Leopoly. It is a lot like other polygonal modelers, think Mudbox from Autodesk. The twist here is that Leonardo made it social: when someone downloads a copy of what you modeled, the original is the parent while the modified copy is a child. A facility for 3D printing is built-in (complete with pricing), so that we can model a coffee cup and then have 3D-printed in a choice of colors.

Now onto the hardware. Go Bird consists of two parts: (1) polarizing glasses so that we can see models in 3D -- and it doesn't have to be Leopoly; it works with AutoCAD, apparently; and (2) a bird-like 3D "mouse" for editing the 3D model and selecting commands from the screen. (A third component are the two infrared cameras that monitor the position of the glasses and the bird.)

The Go Bird is held like an airbrush, and vibrates when it makes contact with the 3D model

Two infrared scanners sit atop the monitor, and polarizing glasses view models in 3D. On the screen is the polygnonal editing software and its circular user interface.

The bird is held like an airbrush; it has two buttons: the small one selects commands from the on-screen interface, while the large one interacts with the model. As we moved the bird close to the 3D model, we could feel it vibrate as it made contact with the bulges of the 3D model -- which we saw standing out from the monitor's flat screen. Moving our head rotated the model, for the glasses also connect to the infrared sensors.

Right now, the bird is attached with a wire, but Leonardo is working on a wireless version. (We noticed that the bird was 3D printed.) The hardware-software bundle is $2000; the hardware alone is $495. Buy the tethered version now, and get the wireless one free when it ships.

At $500, this bit of hardware blows away the pricing of older competitors.

www.leonar3do.com

Keeping it Real - Christie HoloStation

by Ralph Grabowski

ANAHEIM, CA (SIGGRAPH 2013) July 23, 2013 - Christie is not a familiar name to CAD insiders. Wall sized displays, super high resolutions, usually 3D ones. CAD users just don't see much of that.

Christie's Larry Paul, Senior Director of Technology and Visualization, was able to broaden our horizons  -- starting with the world's largest touch screen and ending with the world's smallest CAVE (computer-aided visualization environment).

The company added a frame to an 84" panel that can show four times full HD, and at twice the frame rate of consumer UHD TV sets. It uses infrared technology to sense up to six fingers at once. Whiteboard software lets us place and size images, and then draw over with finger-paint like motions. Mr Paul showed us how he could make the sketched lines fatter and thinner by using wider and thinner parts of his thumb. Standing a yard (meter) away from the giant screen felt like the screen was the wall.

Next door was the wall, against which an enormous projector (the size of a shopping cart) was displaying a huge image. It even had its own smoke stack for releasing heat. That's our second-largest model, says Larry. It was hooked up to four specialized workstations that were rendering automotive models in realtime 3D. The resolution of the Christie projector is the new 4K standard (4096x2160), because, you know, hi-def (1920x1080) just isn't high enough anymore. Anyhow, the full spec is 4K resolution at 120Hz (60Hz for each eye). Wear active shutter glasses and the car can move by in subtle 3D, depending on how the content is formatted.

 Christie's projector displays 4K-resolution images in 3D

The final star in the booth tour was the HoloStation, designed as a turnkey installation, and available for purchase - as long as you are in North America. Christie is reluctant to give price information, but will say "typical configuration can cost between high $200K to low $300K." It uses four Christie LCD projectors to display a 3D image onto five orthogonal surfaces. When we stand close, wearing polarizing glasses and holding the remote control, we can walk through a CAD-designed apartment, pick up and move chairs. HoloStation reads 3D models from CAD programs, converted into OBJ format. the entire setup is designed to fit into an office elevator.

Christie's HoloStation makes 3D displays immersive.

www.christiedigital.com

Autodesk's Fix for Slumping Special Effects Industry

by Ralph Grabowski

ANAHEIM, CA (SIGGRAPH 2013) July 23, 2013 - The revenues of Autodesk's M&E (media and entertainment) division have been declining for several years. On the first morning of SIGGRAPH 2013, Autodesk threw a breakfast for the media across the road at Disneyland.

In the opening speech, Autodesk admitted the industry is facing a lot of challenge and turmoil. The film industry is growing 5% year-over-year, but the same time none of Autodesk's customers are turning much of a profit. This is because the complexity of special effects continues to increase, so the cost of visual effects is outpacing growth in revenues. He gave the example of a controversial Canadian company that went out of business after doing the effects for the movie 'Journey to The Center of Earth', despite receiving tax subsidies.

"So, what can we do to help our customers?," Autodesk asks. The answers were "standardize" and "open": - standardize production cycle (customers keep reinventing ways of doing production) - standardize ways to exchange data, such as creating OpenData to access the dataset of their Maya software - scalability - support of open workflows

New M&E Products

Most releases of new M&E software will not occur until Q3, and so "we are short on news for the SIGGRAPH show, and which is why we are not at the show." They did, however, make two announcements:

• Autodesk FBX Review is a lightweight standalone 3D viewer of FBX files (usable by AutoCAD users) for Windows 7 and 8 and uses DX11 but not required. It performs dynamic tesselation (see more wireframe as you zoom in further), view from lights and cameras, and see animation. Also handles 3ds max, obj, dxf, mcd, and other formats. For instance, the demo showed an interactive view of a Revit model, which I presume was exported in DXF. Available from Windows 8 Store or Autodesk Exchange store. Other platforms are being looked at, such as Android, iOS, and OS X.
• Creative Commons has been applied to all M&E support and learning material for 2014: 20,000 documents, 70 video, 140 3D assets; can be modified and remixed. See the Autodesk Maya Learning Channel online. This will apply to all Autodesk support material, actually.

Autodesk will anounce additional products and upgrades in August.

Leap Motion

A canned demo was given of the Leap Motion controller ($80), which is about the size of a deck of cards. It tracks fingers at 200 steps per second, in a 2x2x2-ft box. Use your hands and fingers to edit -- "it lowers the barrier between humans and screens." It works with Maya through a free plug-in at Autodesk Exchange -- and 75 other apps. 

www.leapmotion.com/

NVIDIA Launches the Quadro K6000 for High End Graphics

by Ralph Grabowski and Roopinder Tara

NVIDIA likes to try to own SIGGRAPH. Attendees wear NVIDIA badgeholders around theri neck. They throw parties in the evening. Their booth is enormous, complete with a Tesla electric car, for the car uses a pair of NVIDIA GPUs to power the two dashboard screens.

The Tesla is the only successful electric car, and it uses NVIDIA GPUs to power its dashboard displays.

The new K6000 is the top-of-the-line graphics board from NVIDIA, and with 12GB RAM on-board it probably holds more RAM than your computer. (It is Kepler-based, replacing the former Fermi-based 6000.) It is not meant for CAD users; indeed, NVIDIA suggests that top-end CAD users consider the K2000 or K4000 at most, leaving alone even the K5000.

In the booth, we got to see what the K6000 can do: animators can preview near final-frame quality in near realtime. At one station, we saw how car makers can render models with 50-70 million polygons. (A polygon is the smallest smooth area in a 3D model.) This means that designers spend less time cutting out fewer unseen parts of car interiors (like the engine) to squeeze the entire model into memory. At another station, a graphics designer was mapping a 1GB 360-degree photograph onto a LIDAR point cloud scan to create an interior that could be used for games or movies, along with motion-captured actors.

Taking a quick look at the physical stats, the K6000 will be roughly in the $2,500 price range, shipping probably in September, takes up two slots in desktop computers, and uses 225W of power.

http://www.nvidia.com