Xnurbs - thoughts

[KQuigley]

This kind of follows on from a thread I did on the Solidworks forum a while back. XNurbs is a little single function add on for Solidworks and Rhino. I took a punt on a couple of licenses of it a couple of years ago. We don't have the Rhino version, just the Solidworks version.

https://www.xnurbs.com/

I'm curious to know who else is using this? At the time we got it we had Creo and Style (ISDX) . There were cases where we struggled to get decent surfaces in Creo that Xnurbs produced the goods. The only benefit in using Style over xNurbs was the live feedback on the surface that Style provides.

It did take a couple of versions to get right but honestly, this little add on is what keeps me using Solidworks. Like all surfacing it isn't perfect. But it is damn good. Regardless of what they say, it is a kind of supercharged Fill Tool (which is still one of my favourite Solidworks tools), but with the added benefit of not being a pain to use sometimes.

XNurbs isn't perfect of course. The Solidworks surface tools don't like playing with it that well (so the solution is to ensure all your G1 and G2 linked surfaces are XNurbs - G0 you can use the driving curves). The licensing is a pain - don't expect to move licenses around by activating and deactivating.

But for the money (we bought it on the pre launch offer) - and compared to what we were paying annually for Style for Creo, it was a bargain. one of the very few add ons that actually Added genuine functionality to Solidworks, rather than simply automated things it could already do.

If you do any surfacing related stuff in Solidworks, give it a try. It won't work for everyone, but when it does it has the same magical "get out of jail" capability as fill did.

[zxys001]

It's powerful and V4 made it become useful... I'd consider it but, I found I can workaround or get what I need using other methods and imho, it's still too expensive (for a one person shop). Although, some of his surfaces are very clean... wish we had those additional boundary controls natively.
I saw/read he was looking into doing a Alias addon as well. (they use to have nsided controls.. so?)
Maybe some day.. ?
Oh... looks like he also has a competition for a license for a experienced xnurbs / subd user.... kewl!

[KQuigley]

I've just seen they offer a cloud license as well - might do that!

[Arthur NY]

A LOOOOOOOOONG time ago when xNurb first dropped I mentioned to Mark Biasotti (Yea that far back) that this is something that SW needs to either acquire or come up with a solution to match. Makes NO sense there there have been NO new surfacing tools in over 10 years!!!! CAD softwares in general have stagnated quiet heavily over these past few years.

That said it is a nice add on to get and borders on a "need to have" line. Can definitely say that there are times when I cursed the CAD Gawds that I didn't have it for just such a feature that xNurbs brings to the table.

[matt]

A LOOOOOOOOONG time ago when xNurb first dropped I mentioned to Mark Biasotti (Yea that far back) that this is something that SW needs to either acquire or come up with a solution to match. Makes NO sense there there have been NO new surfacing tools in over 10 years!!!! CAD softwares in general have stagnated quiet heavily over these past few years.

That said it is a nice add on to get and borders on a "need to have" line. Can definitely say that there are times when I cursed the CAD Gawds that I didn't have it for just such a feature that xNurbs brings to the table.

Totally agree about CAD development stagnating. It's all been diverted to the cloud, or other elements of the PLM platform. But Siemens does seem to have developed more CAD functionality with the addition of all of the mesh-cooperative tools, which I think are important, or an important start in any case.

Do you have an off-the-cuff comparison between some of the tools in xNurbs and Power Surfacing? I know it's not a 1-to-1 comparison, and PS is significantly more expensive, but if you have an idea of their relative capabilities, that might be useful. Thanks.

[Arthur NY]

OH MATT!!!! Come on man.....

Have to agree....CAD companies have been focused on these "other" things. Maybe this is just the evolution of things because at some point there will be a saturation point that these companies need to generate revenue from other sources which does suck for us users. I did see that Siemens added SubD modeling inside of SE which is great. This means that it's in the kernel but you know that SW/DDS will never pay to upgrade their kernel to run this inside of SW. This new BREP Mesh path that SW is going down is just ALL over the map and is painful to say the lease. Also the "What's New" PDF is something I use to really look forward to when it came to new releases of SW. This is purely speculative but "I feel" like they've gotten smaller and smaller over the course of the past 5 - 10 years. But on to your inquiry....

WHEW this is a tough one. xNurbs vs PS. Honestly the upside to xNurbs is the control over curvature continuity which generally doesn't exist in subD modeling and that it is NURBS and not a mesh means there's no conversion needed. But of course the exception to this rule is PS because they do have some very capable options that offer a two way street inside of Solidworks. Meaning that you can bring in SW geometry into the PS environment and use it as a reference to then get the curvature control that's similar to xNurbs. Once you "exist" from the PS environment the SubD will then convert to a SW surface. In this way PS does have kind of a leg up on xNurbs.

That you can do the "infamous"...... "Y" modeling technique with xNurbs is amazing to me and that it's not in SW is just horrible ( to put it mildly)!!!

[matt]

OH MATT!!!! Come on man.....

Sorry to put you on the spot here, but you seem to have a handle on this and a good way of explaining it. Thanks for giving it a shot. That helps.

That you can do the "infamous"...... "Y" modeling technique with xNurbs is amazing to me and that it's not in SW is just horrible ( to put it mildly)!!!

SW can do the Y technique, but not with the gaps the way xNurbs shows. Paul Salvador showed the technique on his website at least a decade ago, and I learned it from him and it has showed up in my books.

[AlexLachance]

A LOOOOOOOOONG time ago when xNurb first dropped I mentioned to Mark Biasotti (Yea that far back) that this is something that SW needs to either acquire or come up with a solution to match. Makes NO sense there there have been NO new surfacing tools in over 10 years!!!! CAD softwares in general have stagnated quiet heavily over these past few years.

That said it is a nice add on to get and borders on a "need to have" line. Can definitely say that there are times when I cursed the CAD Gawds that I didn't have it for just such a feature that xNurbs brings to the table.

That's not very flattering

[Arthur NY]

That's not very flattering

No need to pull punches here....we all have Big Boi Pants on!!!!