XNurbs releases a ground-breaking NURBS software

Any updates? need it for xmas!

1 Like

I’m afraid some day Dassault could buy XNurbs…

Apologize for the delay. If you read the thread from SolidWorks Forum SOLIDWORKS Forums (the most recent posts), you will see what caused the delay for our product release.

We do need to release new products. The following is an example from SW addin V2.0. (It achieves 0.0002mm deviation. There are numerous operations or scenarios how XNurbs could be used, and this example only demonstrates two of them.)

XNurbs surfaces do look much more convincing without showing zebras/highlights. I would just show shaders without edges on :slight_smile: Surface Experts see more problems as there are, Beginners misinterpret them often.

Is there any problem for the zebras/highlights? XNurbs’ variational surfacing tech is way more powerful than any existing variational surfacing developed by high-end software – this is why I got some problems with others. In other words, you guys “manually” create a surface by adjusting control points, which is time-consuming. Is that right?

For simple constraints like the one above, it is possible to “manually” create a surface. However, “manually” creating a surface would become more difficult when the models are more complex, e.g., the following 5-edge blending:

First of all the highlights you are choosing are dynamic. In automotive we usually evaluate on static, predominantly the z-highlight. This gives you a much more realistic lightning scenario and better surface evaluation. Usually static highlights better show you on how smooth your surface runs internally and they better show you wavy flows on a larger scale.
Your highlights show higher continuity at the edges but internally you can see, that there is some un-smoothness going on. Nothing bad, but you can see it.
Depending on the size, and field of application this matters or does not matter. For average applications of Rhino and Solidworks, I bet this doesn’t matter. What matters is that it looks acceptable good and that its fast. I’m just saying, don’t point on drawbacks if its not relevant. If you look at good metallic shader, the result is much more convincing. Furthermore many Cad user misinterpret zebras. That’s just what I’m saying. :slightly_smiling_face:

2 Likes

Tom,

Thanks for your explanations. Understand it now. For the screenshots, we did not use any professional rendering tool, just the most basic display.

The attached file is the model generated. It uses 7 XNurbs operations on the fly (six blendings and one filling. Yes it can use one XNurbs operation to complete this model, but I guess this one is better.). The achieved deviation is 0.0002mm. Could you check if there is any problem? Many thanks.
Fillet.IGS (146.5 KB)

2 Likes

Hi,

If all you care about are the numbers, you might want to check this>

My employer accepts 0.05 for G1, even 0.15 for early stages. The big advantage of XNurbs is the speed of creation and the diversity of its application.Patching boundaries like this will never beat manual approaches, but it enables acceptable quality for average application. And as such I totally see its value. Especially on a broad platform like Rhino. VSR, TSplines died not because of selling it to Autodesk, they died because of low sells and high piracy.

And besides the fact that anything regarding Nurbs requires a lot of brain and patience, we rather should support any kind of innovation, even if its just by having the right mindset. That of course includes the creator. Since the usage of „ground breaking and superior“ is kind of unlucky as well. Nevertheless well done so far :+1:

looks almost perfect. impressing.Some minor irregularities at the “white” edges.
static%20highlights


unsmoothness

Ok, I just figured his 0.0002 was in relation to g1 tolerance not g0 position.

I also want to try Xnurbs but still think that vsr is irreplaceable.

2 Likes

true

Tom you are ignoring the real reason they died: they where not very good in terms of performance, stability, easy of use, and marketing. Besides this nerd forum most Rhino users didn’t know these products exist. Also it was not easy way to buy them, deploy them, or lead a team of users on how to use them. VSR was particularly awful in these regards. I owned both and at my old job I could just fire a quick email and say: ‘buy X licenses of these, deploy them to everyone”. I didn’t do it because they made it hard, they where not stable, not good enough and mostly irrelevant.

Maybe Autodesk didn’t know this, that’s why they bought them. Autodesk don’t know a lot of things, and are obsessed and paranoid about trying to stop Rhino adoption, to the point of helping them by acquiring the dead weight of of their way.

I knew those plugins were not good. Most people here knew this (or at least not worth buying), McNeel I think knew this (they could have acquired both).

Making software and making a business out of it are two very different things. I think the only viable business of most plugin makers so far seems to be using Rhino’s platform to expose their skills to get acquired/hired/acqui-hired.

You are right that you can’t blame Autodesk for why these plugins are not around anymore, but you also can’t just say sales were poor and piracy high without context.

Yes you are right. Saying they had low sales does include this. I’m not saying its “our” fault, nor I wanted to talk about it in detail.

(Well I would disagree on performance and stability, since this is not true for VSR and even if, there is no perfect system from day one)

However, selling commercial CAD Plugins is in particular difficult, because you can easily get it illegal. And if you look in the forum, you see a lot of illegal copies. Whenever I see VSR Tools or T-Splines almost any copy is cracked. I’m also not against piracy per se. If you do not work commercially with it and you don’t have the money to spend, I absolutely have no problem with it. When I was at university, I simply did not have the money to buy educational licenses for all the 3d platforms I had to use. But now I’m working with legal copies all day. I probably would have not done so, if I had no chance during my academic times.
However in many countries, the amount of commercial-used cracked software is extremely high, and there is nothing a developer can do about it. This is limiting development. And if someone still takes the risk in doing so, I believe we should support that person and not expecting miracles. I actually stopped writing plugins for this reason. I was mostly getting non-factual complains for a free-to-use plugin. On the hand same people said they need an update for V6. How pathetic is that.

I would also disagree on “not good enough and not stable”.

Sure, it crashes once in a blue moon but so does rhino.

1 Like

imho you got it all backwards.
They succeeded in being bought by Autodesk, which was their plan from the very beginning if you ask me.
The creators/founders of VSR have been in the field of Class A surfacing software for a long time and Autodesk had been amongst their clients.
I think they knew exactly what they were doing.

Cheers, Norbert

1 Like

This looks very promising!

This is incorrect. I have met one of the developers. He told me they had to sell it to Autodesk, because otherwise this adventure would have been a financial disaster. They waited until they had a good deal. Actually they planed much more for Rhino.

Besides this, who invests 3 years fulltime development in hope to the get sold by a bigger company? This is a business model without any substance and totally irrational.

1 Like

And they would have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for us meddling rhino forum goers!

2 Likes