Simulation of a Prototype Part II

Here's a shot of a new iteration of the SLS Brazil material, the noise has been made 'bigger' and I tried to get more of a hint of the layer structure in the more vertical areas.

A simulation of a prototype

I thought I'd try to make a Brazil material to approximate Selective Laser Sintering. Without some sort of actual displacement(which Brazil supports of course, though I'm not sure if that's even the answer to creating the 'stepped' appearance of the flatter areas of a rapid prototyped part, maybe it's best to simply brute-force turn the model into many many thin slices...)it's not going to look convincing up close, but at arm's length it's not too bad, the biggest problem with this shot being that the bumpiness on the rounder parts is too smooth and subtle. If I develop it a little more I might post a tutorial about it.

Revamping the website

I've been redesigning the hydraulicdesign.net site and have a test version posted. The content is not complete, the design needs tweaking, some of the images are placeholders or haven't been scaled so the load times may be insane...so essentially it's not done at all, but the new order form setup, which is the important part, does work and I'd like to hear comments. UPDATE: I just went live with it.

Flamingo 2

McNeel haven't made their official announcement yet, but (I am nonetheless authorized to say)that it is shipping now. The upgrade is $100 off for a limited time. See the order forms.

LG W2600H-PH first impression

Why is it so hard to find reviews of monitors? All my usual sources of hardware advice spend all their time on things like motherboards and RAM, taking 20 pages comparing products that perform within 2% of each other.

I picked this up yesterday primarily because it was on sale at Future Shop. My old LCD, which was my first LCD, is a 2004 vintage 20" Viewsonic VP201s, so I'm looking for something bigger. The 25.5" LG W2500H is certainly a nice size, and it does do a better job at DVD playback, but otherwise it's rather disappointing. I guess it wasn't a good sign to find that it only came with an analog cable, what sort of miserable bean-counters decide to ship a monitor in 2008 without a bloody DVI cable?

I knew there had to be a reason why it's half the price of something like the only slightly bigger Samsung 275T--and indeed not far from half what my old LCD cost new--but I guess I was expecting to see more progress in four years than simply being cheaper and bigger. Compared to my 4-year-old monitor, the viewing angles are worse and the colour...oh, the colour. It's shocking how bad it is. It's like a jumbo version of a cheap laptop panel. Wait, no, I'm writing this on a cheap laptop and it's capable of showing a bright red as red, not hot pink.

If I keep it it will only be because nothing else in the same size and price range would be much better, at least I can still use my old LCD for anything where colour matters.

Recent Project

Lately I've been working quite a bit with with the marketing firm Lulham Black on bottles for various household products for Simplicity Clean.

Accelerated Rhino Training

The standard Rhino Level I and II training courses are each scheduled for three days. What I've found through recent experience is that, at least for small groups, two days is quite adequate, so that's less time off work for you or your employees. Level III training, based on my own material, can also be squeezed into two days, it's a matter of focusing on your needs.

I can come to your office or you can travel to Ottawa, Ontario. Contact me for more information.

Are you going to be in Berlin this April?

A German Rhino reseller, Visual-Dream, is presenting a Rhino-centred 3D modeling symposium from April 7-9 at the Universität der Künste Berlin. Among the participants will be yours truly, putting on an advanced modeling "master class" about using Rhino for concept development.

A question for Canadian visitors

My credit card processing provider has recently made available the option for Canadian customers (only, at this time) to pay for orders by debit card, through a process that involves logging on to your own online banking site. Would this be an attractive feature?

Euromold 2008

I will be visiting EuroMold and Holland from December 3rd to 9th.