Autodesk ALIAS SURFACE Brochure

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Autodesk®

Alias® Surface

Perfect your designs.

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Master Complex Shapes

Model high-quality production surfaces with speed and control. Autodesk® Alias® Surface gives you all the advanced surface creation tools you need to create high-quality surfaces ready for manufacturing.

Image cour tesy of Daniel Simon, Cosm ic Motors

Contents

Design Modeling ......................................... 3

Precision Surface Modeling ...................... 4

Reverse Engineering ................................... 5

VisualizationandCommunication .......... 6

Productive Environment ........................... 7

Process Integration .................................... 8

Autodesk Alias Product Line .................... 9

Learn More or Purchase .......................... 10

Perfect Your Designs

Deﬁne inspiring and ergonomic shapes that meet functional requirements, with the powerful tools in Autodesk Alias Surface software. Alias Surface helps you sculpt 3D models to achieve the perfect union of aesthetics and engineering. Power your creative process with industry-leading curve-based and direct modeling tools that help you ﬁne-tune designs in a single software environment, in less time.

Communicate Your Vision

Alias Surface makes it easy to create highly realistic models. You can shade and light models to communicate your design vision more clearly, and conﬁrm that your surfaces meet exacting standards. Reviewers can evaluate high-quality imagery that reﬂects a range of materials and colors. The result is quick and conﬁdent design-review decisions— without time-consuming renderings.

Speed Up Processes

When engineering teams need to redo surfaces, it delays projects and can result in unintended changes to your models. Alias Surface supports a highly streamlined workﬂow that lets you control design intent further in the product development process. You can exchange design data with engineering CAD software, such as Autodesk

Inventor create such high-quality, Class-A surfaces in Alias Surface that engineering teams don’t need to recreate them.

Specialized Design Tools

Alias Surface oers a full set of dynamic modeling capabilities for shape development, reﬁnement, and control. The software’s functionality helps meet your requirements for:

• Designmodeling

• Precisionsurfacingmodeling

• Reverseengineering

• Visualizationandcommunication

• Processintegration

• Productiveenvironment

, to preserve design integrity. And you

Image cour tesy of Technicon Design

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Design Modeling

Take your 3D models to the next level. Evolve concepts through a creative, iterative process.

Flexible Modeling

The concept development phase demands close collaboration between designers and engineers to produce concepts that are new, yet technically feasible.

Take advantage of a range of product modeling techniques to visualize any form. Autodesk Surface combines fast, repeatable curve-based modeling tools with the ability to directly sculpt 3D models.

Dynamic Shape Modeling

Experiment with shapes at any stage of the design process. Quickly manipulate your model, exploring variations on 3D forms without rebuilding geometry, or make real-time modiﬁcations in design reviews. Shape objects dynamically with these powerful tools:

Lattice Rig—Sculpt geometry by manipulating a • customizable lattice created around an object. Transformer Rig—Use curves and surfaces as • controls to modify or constrain portions of existing geometry. Bend—Bend geometry using a curve to control • deformation. Twist—Twist geometry around a single-axis curve. • Conform—Conform geometry to the shape of • another surface.

Alias®

Rapid Prototyping

Build physical prototypes more eciently from digital models. With rapid prototyping, you can develop and reﬁne designs before committing to production. Print in 3D using STL output for stereolithography by exporting data to computer numerical control (CNC) machines. Alias Surface supports 3D printing in color.

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Precision Surface Modeling

Develop the Class-A surfaces engineering teams need to create tooling. Dynamic modeling capabilities help you develop Bezier or NURBS geometry in less time.

Advanced Surface Creation Tools

Advanced tools for creating surfaces ensure that your surfaces maintain positional, tangent, or curvature continuity with surrounding surfaces—for high-quality results ready for manufacturing.

Semiautomated Surface Modeling Tools

Do surfacing work faster. Autodesk Alias Surface provides semiautomated tools for creating clean, complex surfaces ready for tooling. For example, you can create a ﬁllet and accompanying ﬂange in a single operation.

Surface Evaluation

Verifythequalityofcreatedsurfaces,including

curvature and radii analysis. This ensures that geometry can be used by CAD programs and will meet manufacturing requirements.

Align Tool

Accurately line up surfaces and curves, directly controlling geometry alignment. Achieve highquality surface modeling and Class-A surfaces with new math capability for surface construction.

Explicit Surface Control

Maintain control over surfaces, creating the lightest, highest-quality geometry. Choose single-span (Bezier) geometry or multispan nonuniform rational B-spline (NURBS) geometry, then deﬁne the number of spans and the degree of created surfaces.

Curve on Surface Paradigm

Precisely trim and form edges of new surfaces. Share trimmed geometry among modelers while retaining precision.

Direct Surface Modeling

Sculpt surfaces directly by adjusting surface control vertices. Alias Surface’s curve-based tools let you deﬁne a shape at its edges, or you can use direct modeling to adjust the shape at any point. Maintain complete control of Bezier surfaces to achieve the exact form and surface quality you need.

Bezier Surface Fillet

Create and manipulate Bezier surface ﬁllets to address Class-A surfacing requirements. Provide superior surfaces with strict Bezier output.

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Reverse Engineering

Move easily between the analog and digital worlds. Autodesk Alias Surface lets you incorporate changes to a physical model into your digital model.

Scan Data Workﬂows

Import and conﬁgure data from 3D scanners to visualize and reverse-engineer consumer product or vehicle models. Alias Surface helps you simplify and remove data with tools for cutting, smoothing, automatic hole ﬁlling, and reducing mesh. The software can handle large models with millions of polygons, so you can extract and evaluate shape and form.

Feature Extraction

Spend less time creating and updating surface models. This specialized tool lets you extract feature information from scan data quickly.

Analysis Tools

Get help ﬁne-tuning your models with Alias Surface analysis tools. They provide instant numerical or graphical feedback on surface quality.

Hybrid Modeling

Integrate NURBS data into scan data. With Alias Surface, you can evaluate and reﬁne the resulting hybrid model without resurfacing an entire model— saving time and eort.

Surface Reconstruction

Automate the multistep process of ﬁlling holes in scan data. Alias Surface recognizes exterior curvature through user-deﬁned sections by generating a mesh patch.

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VisualizationandCommunication

Communicate your design intent—bring your ideas to life. Help team members and customers understand and visualize designs, so they can easily evaluate design options.

Interactive Shading

Use shading models to enhance realism and to evaluate surfaces and design form. Autodesk Alias Surface reduces time-consuming renderings by providing immediate visual feedback on your designs. The software supports material color, texture, glow, incandescence, bump, and displacement, and lets you quickly verify surface conditions such as curvature maps, zebra stripes, and draft angles.

Annotation Tools

Evaluate and review designs with ease. Take advantage of your entire screen space to work with just the necessary interface aspects. Alias Surface provides a full set of annotation tools such as bookmarks, fullscreen capabilities, and pencils and markers.

Compelling Output

Get high-resolution images without a full software rendering. With Alias Surface, you can instantly save high-resolution images of any modeling window. Compose images that display wireframes, canvas planes, or fully shaded models to create turntables or 360-degree interactive QuickTime

Software Rendering

Photorealistic rendering capabilities in Alias Surface let you create images for print, video, or interactive presentations. Alias Surface raycast and ray-trace renderers incorporate ambient occlusion calculations (soft shadows) and high dynamic range imaging (HDRI) support for added realism.

VRles.

Reference Data Workﬂow

Generate and compare an unlimited number of design variations for engineering and design reviews. The Reference Manager lets teams review massive amounts of 3D geometry and interact directly with detailed digital models.

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Productive Environment

Shorten the learning curve and speed your workﬂow with the intuitive Autodesk Alias Surface user interface.

Marking Menus

Quickly select commands without looking away from the design. Patented marking menus let you use context-sensitive gestures to select commands.

Customizable Interface

Customize your user interface—including hotkeys, tool displays, and marking menus—to suit any workﬂow.

Uniﬁed Shading Environment

Click through tasks faster with task-centric marking menus that reduce the use of dialog boxes. You can choose materials and assign shaders directly on surfaces with only a few clicks.

Mac OSX Operating System

Use Alias Surface 64-bit on your Apple

Windows Vista Support

Use Alias Surface 32-bit or 64-bit with Microsoft

WindowsVista

Mac®.

Data Organization

Improve workﬂow and performance by organizing work and speeding navigation through complex models. Alias Surface helps you categorize and organize model components into layers, for more ecient navigation.

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Process Integration

Reliable data exchange with CAD software is important throughout the design process. Imported engineering data can be used as references for sketching and modeling. After the design model is created and approved, data can be exchanged with CAD software to help preserve design integrity in the engineering phase.

Data Exchange

Exchange digital design data with engineering teams using fast, high-quality CAD translators for industrystandard data formats such as DXF

Data Exchange with Autodesk Manufacturing Products

Exchange data with mechanical design and engineering products, such as Autodesk Inventor software, using the industry-leading DWG format. The Alias Direct Reader add-in for Inventor makes it possible to directly read a native Alias. wire ﬁle in Autodesk Inventor. The translator reads surfaces, shells, solids, and curves from the .wire ﬁle. Autodesk Alias Surface also directly reads native Autodesk Inventor data.

™

, IGES, and STEP.

™

data

DirectConnect Data Translators

Integrate Alias Surface into your development pipeline by exchanging data bidirectionally with CAD software packages such as CATIA Pro/ENGINEER

Model Veriﬁcation

Test geometry created in Alias Surface to predict and diagnose problems when transferring to CAD systems such as CATIA, Unigraphics ENGINEER.

DWF File Format

Create DWF single click. DWF protects the integrity of a design and allows for precise publishing, rendering, and printing of even the most complex digital models.

, PTC Granite®, JT, and SolidWorks®.

™

ﬁles from Alias Surface data with a

, UGS® NX,

, and Pro/

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Autodesk Alias Product Line

The Autodesk® Alias product line, part of the Autodesk solution for Digital Prototyping helps optimize the creative design process with industry-leading sketching, modeling, and visualization tools that help you quickly realize ideas in a single environment. The product family includes Autodesk® Alias® Design, Autodesk® Alias® Surface, and Autodesk® Alias® Automotive.

Autodesk Alias Design

Autodesk solution for Digital Prototyping, is for consumer product designers who control the entire design process—from ideation to the ﬁnal surfaces that are passed to engineering. It enables designers to rapidly develop and communicate product design concepts using sketches, illustrations, photorealistic renderings, and animations.

Autodesk Alias Surface

Autodesk Autodesk solution for Digital Prototyping, oers a full set of dynamic 3D modeling capabilities that enable virtual modelers to evolve concept models and scan data into high-quality production surfaces for consumer product design and Class-A surfaces for automotive design and styling.

Autodesk Alias Automotive

Autodesk the Autodesk solution for Digital Prototyping, is an industry-leading application for automotive design and styling and the choice of leading automotive styling studios throughout the world. The software provides a comprehensive set of visualization and analysis tools for the entire shapedeﬁnition process, from concept sketches through Class-A surfacing.

Alias® Design, part of the Autodesk

Alias® Surface software, part of the

Alias® Automotive software, part of

Tas k Deliverables Product

Creation and Communication of Design

Advanced Surfacing and Reverse Engineering

Transportation Design •ScanData

•Sketches

•Illustrations

•D concept models

•Productionmodels

•Rapid prototypes

•Visualization

•Animation

•ScanData

•Class-ASurfaces

•ReverseEngineering

•AdvanceEvaluation

•RapidPrototypes

•Visualization

•Modiedscandata

•Class-ASurfaces

•ReverseEngineering

•AdvanceEvaluation

•3Dconceptmodels

•Rapidprototypes

•Visualization

•Sketches

•Illustrations

•Animations

Autodesk

Alias® Design

Alias® Surface

Alias® Automotive

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Digital Prototyping for the Manufacturing Market

Autodesk is a world-leading supplier of engineering software, providing companies with tools to experience their ideas before they are real. By putting powerful Digital Prototyping technology within the reach of mainstream manufacturers, Autodesk is changing the way manufacturers think about their design processes and is helping them create more productive workﬂows. The Autodesk approach to Digital Prototyping is unique in that it is scalable, attainable, and cost-eective, which allows a broader group of manufacturers to realize the beneﬁts with minimal disruption to existing workﬂows, and provides the most straightforward path to creating and maintaining a single digital model in a multidisciplinary engineering environment.

Learn More or Purchase

Access specialists worldwide who can provide product expertise, a deep understanding of your industry, and value that extends beyond your software purchase. To purchase Autodesk Alias software, contact an Autodesk Premier Solutions Provider or Autodesk Authorized Reseller. Locate a reseller near you at www.autodesk.com/reseller.

Autodesk Learning and Education

From instructor-led or self-paced classes to online training or education resources, Autodesk oers learning solutions to ﬁt your needs. Get expert guidance at an Autodesk Authorized Training Center (ATC®) site, access learning tools online or at your local bookstore, and validate your experience with Autodesk certiﬁcations. Learn more at www.autodesk.com/learning.

Autodesk Services and Support

Accelerate return on investment and optimize productivity with innovative purchase methods, companion products, consulting services, and support from Autodesk and Autodesk authorized partners. Designed to get you up to speed and keep you ahead of the competition, these tools help you make the most of your software purchase—no matter what industry you are in. Learn more at

www.autodesk.com/servicesandsupport.

Autodesk Subscription

Get the beneﬁts of increased productivity, predictable budgeting, and simpliﬁed license management with Autodesk® Subscription. You get any new upgrades of your Autodesk software and any incremental product enhancements, if these are released during your Subscription term. In addition, you get exclusive license terms available only to Subscription members. A range of community resources, including web support direct from Autodesk technical experts, self-paced training, and e-Learning, help extend your skills and make Autodesk Subscription the best way to optimize your investment. Learn more at

www.autodesk.com/subscription.

*Free products are subject to the terms and conditions of the end-user license agreement that accompanies downloa d of this software.

Image courtesy of Daniel Simon, Cosmic Motors

Autodesk , Alias, Autodesk Inventor, DWG, DX F, and Inventor a re registered tradem arks or trademark s of Autodesk, I nc., and/or its subsi diaries and/or aliates in the USA and/or oth er countries. All othe r brand names, produc t names, or tradema rks belong to their res pective holder s. Autodesk reser ves the right to alter pro duct oerings and speci ﬁcations at any time wit hout notice, and is not responsible for typ ographical or grap hical errors th at may appear in this docu ment. © 2009 A utodesk, Inc. Al l rights reserved . 736A1-0 0000 0-MZ02