solidThinking announced a breakthrough in digital product development with the release of morphogenesis, a new technology dedicated to providing industrial designers and architects with the capability to explore virtually countless design options. This innovative morphogenesis form generation technology is included with the launch of solidThinking 8.0 Inspired, solidThinking's latest software version for the design community. solidThinking 8.0 Inspired adds unique computational capabilities to the newly released solidThinking 8.0 design tools suite for advanced 3D modeling and rendering available on both Windows and Mac operating systems.
Drawing on the principles of biomimicry, the premiere release of solidThinking 8.0 Inspired mimics processes and physical laws in nature to help designers and architects generate forms and structures in response to environmental conditions, and leverage the results to stimulate their designs.
"Designers and architects have looked to nature for inspiration for some time, but until now they have been limited to visual studies," said James Dagg, vice president of software development for solidThinking, Inc. "Because the processes and physical laws that influence natural forms are so complex, designers have had to rely on intuition when selecting and adapting biological forms as their sources of inspiration. With the debut of morphogenesis form generation in solidThinking 8.0 Inspired, designers are provided with an environment to replicate biological growth processes in nature where structure develops and takes shape in response to environmental stimuli."
Using solidThinking 8.0 Inspired, designers can create design space models or import them from other systems. After defining environments around the models, designers can run the software's morphogenesis feature to grow efficient shapes in response to these environments and form controls. Results can be used as loosely or literally as users wish while formalizing their designs. The morphogenesis feature ultimately acts as a complementary idea generator and inspiration for form.
"The time is right for a 3D modeling software to take the conceptual design space to the next level," said Alex Mazzardo, vice president of product strategy and marketing for solidThinking, Inc. "solidThinking software has always served as a vehicle for designers to generate, explore and interpret form in their own creative language. solidThinking 8.0 Inspired now brings nature and natural growth processes, the most fundamental sources of design inspiration, to the fingertips of industrial designers and architects - something that has never been done before - allowing users to springboard their ideas in directions they may have never previously considered."
By getting nature to work for them using the technology within solidThinking 8.0 Inspired, designers and architects will be able to discover forms that are aesthetically interesting, unique and often unexpected while being well-adapted to their intended structural function. Forms created in solidThinking 8.0 Inspired are also typically very efficient due to an economized use of material and are less likely to be radically changed by engineers later in the product development process.
In addition, solidThinking 8.0 Inspired provides users NURBS-based surface and solid modeling, best-in-class ConstructionTree technology, fast and high-quality photorealistic real-time rendering capabilities and bi-directional functionality. It presents a highly efficient and intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) and is compatible with CAD/CAM/CAE systems. Using solidThinking 8.0 Inspired, designers can enhance geometric 3D CAD data from virtually any CAD environment and visually explore, apply and style the results of the software's morphogenesis functionality.
solidThinking's NURBS-based 3D conceptual design software inspires innovation in industrial designers through a number of features including an advanced construction tree history that enables users to change their minds anytime during the design process. It also features simultaneous parameter editing and control-point editing functionalities, a streamlined user interface and a fast rendering engine that produces rich photorealistic images with a wide array of color options, finishes and global illumination. solidThinking is available on both Windows and Mac platforms, and is compatible with computer-aided design, manufacturing and engineering (CAD/CAM/CAE) software, encouraging collaboration between industrial designers and engineers during the product development cycle.
"solidThinking 8.0 Inspired is a testament to our objective to develop and market flexible, user-centric design/styling tools to aid in the industrial design process," said Robert Little, president of solidThinking, Inc. "We are very excited to unveil a new dynamic that will surprise and intrigue designers and further stimulate their creativity. This is the beginning of much more to come."