Congratulations to Antoine Dayer who recently won the Best Student & Faculty Rendering of a recent KeyShot rendering contest. Antoine used Shark to model components of a wristwatch which he then exported using OBJ to KeyShot for final renderings. Check out some of Antoine’s stunning designs. Be sure to click on the images for high resolution views.
For those of you interested in a video showing the work flow from Shark to KeyShot see Antoine’s video.
Here is a tip that shows how to set up the scale relationship between an imported image and your drawing. Some key points:
1. Find a known distance in the image.
2. Create a line along the known distance.
3. Create a second line that represents the actual model distance.
4. Use the scale command to scale the image to the desired model scale.
Shark has been localized for French, Italian, German, Japanese, Dutch and now Polish languages. Falina, Shark’s authorized reseller in Poland supports the products at www.sharkcad.pl. Check out an example tutorial from Falina that demonstrates modeling a candlestick and rendering. Additional, this tutorial shows the general interface components and using your own library of symbols.
For more tutorials and videos of Shark FX from Falina visit:
We have many ViaCAD users who also include Adobe Illustrator in their tool chest. One common use is to create text in Adobe Illustrator using their advanced text tools (kerning/tracking) and then importing into ViaCAD. Once in ViaCAD you can extrude into 3D and perform operations such as blending and chamfering. This video shows how you can share data between the two applications.
A design practice taught to me while in the aerospace industry is to use construction and reference surfaces where I would later trim these surfaces back into a final surface. This practice seems to produce smoother surfaces. For me, this practice has extended outside the aerospace industry into any shape that may involve complex surfaces. However, when you have many surfaces, the final trimming can be a bit tedious. With that in mind, I’m exploring a new multi-surface split tool inside Shark FX for V8. This tool would allow the designer to select a large number of surfaces, find all intersections, and split accordingly.
Check out the video below where I create an interesting bottle bottom using the multi-surface split tool. If you have any suggestions for improvements, please drop me an email at tim.olson@evo-soft.net.
Dragomir Ivicevic is the founder of XYZ Marine Products which is known in the marine industry for its highly rated Extreme Boat Anchor. Dragomir is also the inventor and mastermind behind the novel design approach that makes this anchor rated #1 in the industry and a preferred choice by demanding customers such as the US Navy and Oceaneering International. The Extreme Boat Anchor was designed using Shark FX.
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I’m occasionally asked by new users why some smooth objects appear to have straight edges. For example, if they zoom in on a circle they may see a collection of straight line segments making up the circle. This is because internally the circle is represented as a collection of line segments for the purpose of display. In our CAD applications, all objects are displayed as vectors or facets through hardware accelerated OpenGL drivers. Note this is only for display purposes. Everywhere else the exact equation of a circle is used such as in trimming, breaking, or LogiCursor references.
There are several ways to modify spline points with ViaCAD and Shark. This video shows two methods using the arrow key and the gripper.
Here is a tip for those of you creating custom decals for Shark FX’s photo rendering tools. In this video, Nick Johnson shows the steps to create the image and mask using PhotoShop and how to assign these images to a body within Shark FX.
Check out this tip from Nick Johnson regarding creating glowing lights with Shark FX. This tip shows you how to set the light attribute to cast volumetric shadows and to turn on fog for an atmospheric condition.