graphics modeling products

maya and 3ds max are the most popular in this category. maya is mostly used in production studios to create visual effects for movies. 3ds is mostly used in game development studios. maya is developed in toronto, canada by Alias. 3ds max is developed in san francisco and montreal by Autodesk.

Maya which was owned by SGI till last month was bought over by some investment firms for 57 million US dollars.

Some other products in this area are lightwave3d, cinema4D, electric image, etc. Rhino is another well known product (pure nurbs based modeler) used by people in a variety of professions.

Next blog will report about some reverse engineering software...

core modeling kernels

Two major geometric kernels available on the market today :
1. Parasolid - developed and owned by UGS. (Unigraphics - they use it in their products Unigraphics, SolidEdge) and also license to other customers. Development is in UK.
2. ACIS - developed by Spatial, boulder, colorado company owned by Dessault systems.

There are other propreity kernels used by other CAD companies.

Autodesk - has Autodesk ShapeManager used in Inventor, AutoCAD ,etc.
Think3
VX - varimetrix corporation
PTC - Granite

The interesting thing is competitors are heavily dependent on each other for their kernel and other libraries. For example, Solidworks (owned by Dessault) uses its competitor's product, Parasolid. Autodesk owns Mechsoft, a functional modelling software- used by all UGS, Solidworks, etc.

More rambling later...

Introduction to this blog

Hope to post hot news, comments, thoughts, discussions in graphics, game and the CAD industry. Focus would be on companies that provide software tools to help advance these technologies. Adobe, Alias, Autodesk, Avid, Bentley, Corel, Dessault, Geomagic, Intergraph, Microsoft, NewTek, GraphiSoft, Parametric Technology Corporation, UGS, products like ProE, CATIA, Inventor, Solidworks, SolidEdge, 3DS Max, Maya, Cinema4D, Rhino, Lightwave 3D, Softimage, Electric Image, etc...