24.09.2019 • ODA

C3D Labs Premieres B-Shaper at Open Design Alliance’s DevCon ‘19 Conference

The Open Design Alliance (ODA) each year gathers software developers who create CAD applications with the ODA’s SDKs (software development kits). This year, the sixth annual ODA DevCon was held in Milan, Italy, September 10-11. During the conference, C3D Labs hosted a special session to present its latest component, B-Shaper. The company also showcased customers who are using the C3D Solver constraint manager in their development of DWG-based CAD software.

C3D Labs Premieres B-Shaper at Open Design Alliance’s DevCon ‘19 Conference, photo 1
Neil Peterson, ODA President, taking the stage at ODA DevCon’19

The team from C3D Labs brought to Milan two major updates that had been released just last summer. These included C3D B-Shaper, the fifth module of C3D Toolkit, responsible for polygonal mesh-to-B-rep conversion, and the 2019 release of C3D Modeler for ODA, a lightweight version of the company’s flagship C3D Modeler geometry kernel.

B-Shaper from C3D Labs

This was the European debut of B-Shaper, a component in which developers of BIM applications are showing great interest. BIM users in particular work with very large architectural projects saturated with 3D polygonal models. Implementing B-Shaper significantly improves the performance of CAD applications by accelerating calculations, simplifying visualization of models, and ensuring high-quality generations of sections and projections.

C3D Labs Premieres B-Shaper at Open Design Alliance’s DevCon ‘19 Conference, photo 2
Andrey Tumanin from C3D Labs presenting B-Shaper at C3D Labs’ special session

B-Shaper works by using its unique algorithms, first to segment meshes into sets of polygon subsets (or segments), which become the prototypes for probable faces. Next, it recognizes segments as basic b-rep elements, such as planes, cylinders, cones, spheres, and torsi. It then calculates intersection curves between adjacent segments, which become the basis for constructing edges of the body’s faces.

C3D Modeler for ODA 2019

C3D Modeler for ODA is designed to give members of the Open Design Alliance access to a wide range of solid modeling methods through the ODA’s standard API. The lightweight geometry kernel from C3D Labs creates 3D solid bodies as complex as extrusions, revolutions, sweeps, chamfers, fillets, thin-walled solids, and Boolean operations (between solids and solids consisting of faces and underlying surfaces). It also constructs bodies with sections and slices bodies with surfaces.

The 2019 release of C3D Modeler for ODA features new tools and enhancements, such as the abilities to detect intersections of bodies and to section 3D bodies with open shells. New this year is an enhanced interaction between C3D and SAT formats.

C3D Labs Premieres B-Shaper at Open Design Alliance’s DevCon ‘19 Conference, photo 3
Alex Spivakov from C3D Labs describing features in the C3D Modeler for ODA 2019

C3D Modeler for ODA is already familiar to the ODA community, because the component is in use by Nanosoft, MKA Software, and other ODA members for two years now. Nanosoft was the first ODA member to adapt C3D Solver through the ODA Platform. As C3D Solver provides both 2D and 3D constraint managers, it will support parametrization in the next release of the nanoCAD Plus CAD platform.

At the C3D Labs session in Milan, Alexey Fedorov from Magma Computer shared his experience in shifting to the C3D Labs geometric constraint solver. His company is involved in developing nanoCAD Plus.

C3D Labs Premieres B-Shaper at Open Design Alliance’s DevCon ‘19 Conference, photo 4
Alexey Fedorov from Magma Computer explaining how constraints are solved in nanoCAD Plus

C3D Modeler for ODA 2019 is available for testing at no charge. Open Design Alliance members may request an evaluation by going to https://www.opendesign.com/members/marketplace/c3d-modeler-teigha.

About Open Design Alliance

As a non-profit technology consortium, the Open Design Alliance is an “equalizer” for CAD development by providing high-value SDKs for engineering applications. The product portfolio includes solutions for interoperability, visualization, and publishing running on all common desktop, mobile and Web platforms.

For more information, please visit https://www.opendesign.com.

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