Longtime Rapidform/Geomagic Employee New to Forum, Ask Me Anything

Discuss Geomagic software here.
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3DSean
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Longtime Rapidform/Geomagic Employee New to Forum, Ask Me Anything

Post by 3DSean »

In the last 7 years I've spent with these companies, I've often encountered people asking if there's a Geomagic user group or help forums or anything like that and I've never had a great answer until now. I was personally part of the Geomagic Design/Alibre forums being shut down which was something that I fought (and lost) having known the value of internet forums from my days of building 4x4's. The issue was that we could not devote 3DS personnel to moderating the forums and it couldn't be hosted on a 3DS domain. The Avi days were dark indeed.

Very happy to see a somewhat active group of users here and hoping to promote LSF to help build this community! So, in light of Geomagic Design X 2019's release date (tomorrow) ask me anything!
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Re: Longtime Rapidform/Geomagic Employee New to Forum, Ask Me Anything

Post by Phil Marsh »

Welcome to the LSF Sean.

I’m sure you’ll bring some great value by answering these technical questions.

If only I had one to ask :lol:
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Re: Longtime Rapidform/Geomagic Employee New to Forum, Ask Me Anything

Post by Mortum »

Welcome!

I'm also "stuck" with Geomagic Design X, but i'm really loving the new/old interface of the most recent update (Rapidform days are back again :P )
Sincerely, Robin van der Molen

Gear and Software:
Ye olde: Faro Photon 120
Faro Scene: 2023
Geomagic Design X
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Re: Longtime Rapidform/Geomagic Employee New to Forum, Ask Me Anything

Post by orthogordo »

Hi Sean,

We are a dental lab that has been using Geomagic Studio 10 for a long time. Do you have any experience with that old software? We are having a problem with a Macro that was previously created for us. It seems like the axis coordinates have changed and it is not locating the true position of the models it outputs. any help would be great. Thanks.
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Re: Longtime Rapidform/Geomagic Employee New to Forum, Ask Me Anything

Post by 3DSean »

Thanks Robin and Phil, it's good to be here!

One of the things we noticed right out the gate was that the approachability of (legacy) Geomagic software was miles ahead of that of the old Rapidform tools, but generally Rapidform was more capable. The challenge we've had has been keeping the software easy to use without losing capability. That's why Design X was re-skinned to look more like SolidWorks/Inventor in 2016 and Qualify/Control was ported over to Rapidform's platform to create Control X last year.

It's been a pretty wild ride but hard work pays off and we're getting great feedback on our direction.
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Re: Longtime Rapidform/Geomagic Employee New to Forum, Ask Me Anything

Post by Scott »

Welcome to the forum -we haven't heard much about Rapidform/Geomagic in recent years.
It's the high price that's probably kept many individuals from using Rapidform/Geomagic. What is comparable to this software line? Why should we bother with another software product (please tell us)? How is Rapidform/Geomagic different from its competitors? Where does it excel?
Readers would benefit from a current review of the leaders in point cloud software. What is worth our investment (time and money) -what isn't?
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Re: Longtime Rapidform/Geomagic Employee New to Forum, Ask Me Anything

Post by Mortum »

Scott wrote: Thu Dec 13, 2018 7:11 pm Welcome to the forum -we haven't heard much about Rapidform/Geomagic in recent years.
It's the high price that's probably kept many individuals from using Rapidform/Geomagic. What is comparable to this software line? Why should we bother with another software product (please tell us)? How is Rapidform/Geomagic different from its competitors? Where does it excel?
Readers would benefit from a current review of the leaders in point cloud software. What is worth our investment (time and money) -what isn't?
Honestly i can't tell you exactly why we have GDX, what i heard is that at the time we started using it (2010) GDX was the only product who was a bit of a Jack-of-all-trades.

You can easily mesh, measure, create solids, etc. and also "Mesh deviation" is a pretty powerfull tool.

I use it to monitor the local church its movements during the seasons:
Afbeelding1.png
And honestly, i havent had a project yet i couln't complete with just GDX :)

The only dislike i have is that there is very few information available online. And the only available manual dates back to 2014.


[Edit]
Just googled it.. the only site hosting the manual now also is offline :(
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
Sincerely, Robin van der Molen

Gear and Software:
Ye olde: Faro Photon 120
Faro Scene: 2023
Geomagic Design X
Autodesk Recap
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Re: Longtime Rapidform/Geomagic Employee New to Forum, Ask Me Anything

Post by Mortum »

:oops:

I was thinking why my interface was all back to the Rapidform style....

Turns out a collegue installed the march 2015 version of GMDX...


At what version are we now? Ill let the sys-admin install the latest version then :)
Sincerely, Robin van der Molen

Gear and Software:
Ye olde: Faro Photon 120
Faro Scene: 2023
Geomagic Design X
Autodesk Recap
3DSean
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Re: Longtime Rapidform/Geomagic Employee New to Forum, Ask Me Anything

Post by 3DSean »

orthogordo wrote: Thu Dec 13, 2018 2:01 pm Hi Sean,

We are a dental lab that has been using Geomagic Studio 10 for a long time. Do you have any experience with that old software? We are having a problem with a Macro that was previously created for us. It seems like the axis coordinates have changed and it is not locating the true position of the models it outputs. any help would be great. Thanks.
Hi Orthogordo!

Studio 10 hasn't been supported since at least 2010, and there haven't been any updates to the software since 2012 (if you were on maintenance) that would break your macro (although Geomagic Wrap lives on with similar capabilities minus the parametric exchange which was dropped in favor of Design X).

I'd be interested to see what the transform portion of your macro looks like, it could be a simple case of the scan not being imported into the software in the same orientation as it used to be which could potentially screw up the transform prior to export. Have you shared this issue with tech support?
3DSean
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Re: Longtime Rapidform/Geomagic Employee New to Forum, Ask Me Anything

Post by 3DSean »

Scott wrote: Thu Dec 13, 2018 7:11 pm Welcome to the forum -we haven't heard much about Rapidform/Geomagic in recent years.
It's the high price that's probably kept many individuals from using Rapidform/Geomagic. What is comparable to this software line? Why should we bother with another software product (please tell us)? How is Rapidform/Geomagic different from its competitors? Where does it excel?
Readers would benefit from a current review of the leaders in point cloud software. What is worth our investment (time and money) -what isn't?
It's certainly a different market in 2019 than it was in 2010 prior to Geo and RF being purchased. A lot of lower-cost competitors have emerged, OEM software like VXModel and Cyclone are improving (and some OEM's are more resistant to partnerships) and 3rd party CAD like SolidWorks, Fusion 360 etc. are starting to work with point clouds and meshes natively better than before.

As you can imagine, the inspection landscape is much more crowded than the RE one, and Geomagic Control X remains competitive with the likes of PolyWorks, PC-DMIS, Verisurf etc. and it's much easier to use. Scan-to-CAD is a lot more fragmented price-wise and Design X remains the gold standard against which all other software is judged, and it always will be. But there's plenty of room for products below it which is why we released Geomagic for SolidWorks at ~40% of the cost of a DX license and there's still room below that for more basic software. Time will tell how our management responds to the pressure of cheaper RE alternatives while keeping quality as high as possible.

Based on feedback I get, PolyWorks Inspector is still the cream of the point-cloud analysis software tools. We lost a lot of market share to them when we were condensing the RF/Geo product portfolio in 2013/14. It didn't help that we changed the name of our inspection software no less than 4x in a 3 year period :roll: Verisurf, PC-DMIS and Spatial Analyzer are all deployed in big numbers as well and they support devices like CMM's that Geomagic doesn't, but are also considerably less approachable for new users than Geo and their scanning tools leave a lot to be desired.

Personally, I think Polyga is doing a great job with their SolidWorks plugin and Fusion 360 is a great RE tool for those on a budget, but neither have scanner plugins so data has to be collected elsewhere and imported, so multiple tools need to be learned which is a big advantage we have. The software that Creaform has developed (VXElements/VXModel/VXInspect) is excellent but it doesn't work outside their ecosystem and a significant number of my customers have multiple pieces of hardware from different OEM's, so having scanner-agnostic hardware is essential for them.

*climbs off his soapbox*
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