Opinions

SpaceClaim Professional – SketchUp on Steroids

I just got off a GoToMeeting with SpaceClaim. They gave me a short and sweet presentation and then a demo of the product. And now I cannot wait to get my hands on that piece of software.

If you are reading this I guess you have already used SketchUp. To put it simply, SpaceClaim is SketchUp on steroids – very powerful steroids. Powerful because in SketchUp you pushed and pulled planar surfaces (basically polygons) to create your objects. Here you push and pull actual NURBS surfaces to get solid B-rep models, all in real time. It’s truly amazing.

In an earlier article, I had wondered whether SpaceClaim’s strategy of targeting the “extended development team” was actually a back door entry plan to get to the “product designers”. I am now totally convinced that this is the case. There is little chance that a designer will want to go back to his strictly parametric solid modeler after he has tried SpaceClaim Professional.

Once in a while comes along a product that changes the way people do things. SpaceClaim Professional is one such product. I just wished they had a trial that I could download.