Real-time Modeling and Visualization

By DE Editors

In mid August ICEM Ltd. (Southampton, UK), a developer of surface modeling, analysis and visualization software, announced it had begun shipping its new automotive styling and industrial design software, ICEM Style, to customers worldwide. The rollout comes after the completion of beta testing of the software at a number of ICEM’s leading customers, including Lotus Cars, Volkswagen, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Porsche, Seat, Ital Design and Pininfarina.

Designers with an interest in finding out for themselves what ICEM Style has to offer are now able to download a free-trial version of ICEM Style from the the company’s website, icem.com. Included with the download is a Quick Start Guide, together with a modeling environment, basic material libraries and a selection of packaged data sets to help people get started as quickly as possible. Although the evaluation software includes all of ICEM Style’s sketching, modeling and real-time visualisation functionality, it has limited data import and export capabilities, unlike the full production version. 

Using ICEM Style it is now possible to design in a real-time photo-realistic modelling environment. This means that third-party, stand-alone visualization products are no longer required to visualize the complete design, says the company, and users no longer need to wait for a static rendering to be generated. Modeling and real-time visualization for concept design can be performed within a unified environment.

As an aid to both original and face-lift design projects, ICEM Style also provides digital tape facilities for the first time, says ICEM, in an integrated product styling and concept modeling tool. Multiple tape sizes, styles and colors can be saved and used for different purposes and - just as with real tape - the user is able to ‘pinch’ and ‘pull’ the tape in order to achieve the desired character line.

Using ICEM Style, the ease with which true digital geometry can be created and edited - with tools such as geometry sketching, digital taping and automatic surface generation - means that designs can be created and evaluated much faster than with traditional tools. ICEM Style is designed to ensure that only the tools needed to model and visualise the design are presented to the designer, thereby avoiding the complexity and confusion often experienced with other software.

ICEM Style uses the same data architecture used within ICEM Surf - the company’s Class A surfaces development software suite. This, according to the company, ensures that the original design data remains intact and fully re-usable downstream once the design data is ready to evolve. The more sophisticated surface construction and analysis tools found in ICEM Surf can then be used to iterate the design through to final production tooling design.

Visit icem.com for more on ICEM Style, and to download a free-trial version of the software.