Hey there 👋
It’s Robin from CFD Engine & I’ve been cheating on Rhino for a week or so 🤫
I found an affordable, new CAD package & thought I should take it for a spin.
It’s kind of like “early SpaceClaim meets Blender” with a bit of Rhino surfacing thrown in.
It’s different (good different) & I think you might like it.
It’s called Plasticity.
Hard to describe
The tag line is “CAD for artists” but ignore that, it’s more than that.
It feels like Blender (if Blender had a nicer user interface) with lots of keybindings, a dark aesthetic & even that default cube.
But where Blender excels at poly modelling, this is real CAD.
It’s built on the same CAD engine as SolidWorks & NX. Solids, fillets, chamfers, booleans & G2-continuity for those nice flowing surfaces, it all just works.
Plus…it’s got that direct modelling workflow that I first saw in SpaceClaim.
Grab a bit of geometry (a point, a face, an edge or a solid) & move it, scale it, offset it, extrude it or delete it. It makes mods & ideation super-fast (once you get used to it).
And while you’re getting used to it, there are guardrails to stop you doing stupid stuff & ending up with a degenerate mess.
There’s a lot to like…
Likes (plural)
The keybindings & modelling workflow are a joy. You might need to change how you do stuff, but once you embrace it, you’ll be flying 🚀
It’s pretty cheap for proper CAD (it starts at $150 + tax for two seats) & you own it (as opposed to it being a subscription).
It runs on Windows, Linux & Mac (Intel & Apple silicon).
It’s actively developed – there’s a new release every few weeks.
The docs are mega 🙌
Plasticity 💛 solids, which makes it dead easy to create watertight geometries for meshing.
Finally, it has a great STL/OBJ export that creates nicely faceted input geometry for snappyHexMesh but here’s the issue…
…you can’t get named parts straight into snappy 😬
Dislike (singular)
To get into the weeds for a second, you can name things in Plasticity but they’re exported as OBJ objects & the OpenFOAM tools expect OBJ groups.
There are workarounds (a bit of sed or a trip through CAD Assistant) but you can’t (currently) go straight from Plasticity to snappyHexMesh & keep your part names.
It wouldn’t surprise me if this changed in the future. Plasticity has groups & sub-groups, maybe they’ll make it into the export one day 🤞
Check it out
I’ve not done it justice, but you should take it for a spin. There’s a free 30-day trial that includes most of the features you’ll need to give it a good workout.
I’d also check out the docs. Many of the tool entries have an animation showing what they do & how you might use them (like these fillet examples) – it’s good info.
There are plenty of YouTube videos on it too. Check out these quick modelling examples by a hairy monster or this excitable chap who has heaps of Plasticity content.
Thoughts?
I like it, but I’m on the fence about buying it.
I have Rhino & you could create the same geometries in both tools.
It seems quicker/better than Rhino at some operations & it’s possible to go back-&-forth between packages using STEP/Parasolid as an interchange format.
Perhaps Plasticity is a complement to your existing CAD, as opposed to a replacement 🤔
Watch this video if you have a minute, or go for the trial if you have more time.
Do you think it would fit in your CFD toolbox? Or are you already sorted for CAD?
Let me know your thoughts.
Until next week, stay safe,
