The AIA 2008 National Convention and Design Exposition is in Boston, May 15-17.

Come and meet us at stand 22134 in the Software Pavilion, and ask about our show specials!

 

Piranesi 5 for Mac has been nominated in the Creative Design Software of the Year category in the prestigious Macworld Awards 2008.

Winners will be announced at the Awards Ceremony, to be held on 12th June at the IndigO2 in London.

Reviewed in the March edition of the magazine, Piranesi 5 scored 4 out of 5 stars and was described as offering 'compelling painterly results' and having an 'excellent interface and new context-sensitive tools'. The full list of nominations can be seen by clicking here. To nominate Piranesi in the Reader's Choice awards, follow this link.

 

Mastering Piranesi 5 is an updated version of the tutorial guide to Piranesi's tools, features, and effects, written by Bonnie Roskes.

The PDF version can be downloaded, with no shipping charge, from our online shop.

The printed book is 412 pages long, full colour, 8½" x 11" and spiral bound for easy viewing. Now in stock and also available at a discount when purchased with Piranesi 5.0.

 

The highlight of the show calendar is nearly upon us, and Informatix are once again getting ready to attend the International Builders' Show, held in the Orange County Convention Center, Orlando, Florida, from February 13-16, 2008.

Visitors to our Piranesi booth (W3788), in the Western Hall at the Convention Center, will be able to see demos of all the new features of Piranesi 5, be taught best practice and receive 'pro tips' on how to produce the most compelling artists impressions possible.

It's also an opportunity to have your questions answered by members of our development and marketing teams, and to get your requests onto the development plan for 2008 and beyond.

We hope to see you in Orlando!

 

Piranesi 5 for Mac OS X is now available. Mac users of Piranesi can now enjoy the extensive functional enhancements and wide range of UI improvements delivered with version 5.

Please click here for more details.

You can buy your copy, or upgrade, in our online shop. We also offer a free 30-day trial of Piranesi 5.



 

This year's MicroGDS User Group will be held on Thursday, 8th November 2007 at RIBA, 66 Portland Place, London W1B 1AD.

This will be a great opportunity to discuss MicroGDS 10 with the Informatix team and other users, see demonstrations of the new features by Brian and Nick, and hear about our future development plans.

Presentations and breakout sessions are also scheduled and a full buffet lunch and refreshments will be provided. For a reservation form, please contact info@informatix.co.uk

 

The 2007 ASLA EXPO will be held in the Moscone Convention Center, San Francisco, on October 6 - 7.

Come and see us at booth 1561 - we'll show you how Piranesi works with your landscape architecture presentations, and there's a special discount for show attendees (valid till 31st October 2007).

 

Building Design talks to Paul Tunstall, cad manager at HLM Architects, about why he continues to stick with MicroGDS.

"MicroGDS is by no means a minor-league cad program. The power of this software to support many thousands of files within one project, enabling several people to work on the same drawing simultaneously, is not matched by other products."

Read the full article in Building Design, 24 August 2007.

 

The category winners of our 10th birthday image competition have been announced. See the winning images here.

 

The AIA 2007 National Convention and Design Exposition is the premier event for architects and building industry professionals, San Antonio May 3-5.

Come and see the new Piranesi 5 at booth 11168 and take advantage of our special offers for attendees.

For more information about the convention visit www.aiaconvention.com

 

Informatix Software International Limited is proud to announce that version 5 of Piranesi® - its award-winning "3D painting" technology - will soon be released on Windows®.

Much of the power of Piranesi comes from its ability to combine different tools and effects together, but sometimes the number of possibilities can be bewildering! Piranesi 5 addresses this by promoting a number of effects - such as Edge detection, Restore, and various kinds of Cutout placement - to Tools in their own right. These facilities are now easier to find, and if you're new to the system you can turn on the new Help Assistant which tells you step-by-step how to use your current Tool to get the result you want. The most common settings for each Tool are now right in front of you on the Tool Options toolbar, while the more advanced settings can be ignored or combined with other palettes as tabs on a single window to reduce screen space. Meanwhile the new Style Selector gives you easy access to saved style recipes for each Tool, fitting conveniently into the same Tool Options toolbar.

Piranesi 5 isn't just about user interface improvements - there's a raft of new capabilities. You can quickly populate whole scenes with people or plants using the Multiple Cutout placement Tool, and Cutouts can be grouped and moved together, or modified with motion blur and silhouetting effects. There's a new Light tool for re-illuminating a scene with four types of light with adjustable strength and direction; a new Pencil tool for drawing lines and areas; and a Stamp tool for burning in raster images. You can export to Photoshop PSD files, or import SketchUp or 3DS Cutouts complete with textures.

As well as the enhancements to Piranesi itself, its sister Vedute program - for rendering models into Piranesi format - has new features for handling materials, textures and paper sizes, and generating 3D cutouts. Last but not least, there are 200 new royalty-free cutout images of people, plants, and street furniture.

For more information see our Piranesi 5 information page

 

Informatix Software International are now welcoming entries for their image competition. The competition is being held to celebrate their 10th birthday on 25th April 2007, and is open to users worldwide of their products MicroGDS and Piranesi. The top prize from Informatix is a Nikon D40 digital SLR camera; also on the prize list are an HP iPAQ hw6910, Archos AV700, and Nintendo Wii. Prizes have also been donated by Google/SketchUp, Entourage Arts, Marlin Studios, Vismasters, Realworld Imagery, and F1 Books. See http://www.informatix.co.uk/10yearcomp.shtml

Prizes and judging will be in the categories of '3D', 'Plan or elevation', and 'Student submission'. The closing date for entries is 31st March 2007, and prizewinners will be announced on 25 April 2007. Paul Richens, Professor of Architectural Computing at the University of Bath, will lead the judging panel.

Informatix Inc. of Tokyo is running a similar competition in Japan, with the winners automatically qualifying for the international competition.

MicroGDS is a 2D/3D computer aided design program renowned for the artistic appeal of the drawings it generates. Piranesi is a 3D painting program, producing realistic or hand-rendered images of 3D models.

 

MicroGDS, the 2D/3D CAD system from Informatix Software International in Cambridge UK, has passed the tests of the Japanese Open Cad Foundation (OCF) for conformance with their SXF standard. Founded in 1998 after an action program by the Japanese ministry of construction, the OCF (www.ocf.or.jp) is highly influential in Japan, carrying out research and education activities and promoting the use of CAD within the construction industry. Members include such well known names as Fujitsu, IBM, Hitachi, and Autodesk. The SXF standard for the exchange of CAD data has its origins in STEP, and is widely used in Japan.

For more information on MicroGDS visit the Informatix web site at www.informatix.co.uk/microgds or email info@informatix.co.uk.

 

The ASLA EXPO, which runs from 6-10 October in Minneapolis, USA, is the largest trade show in the industry for landscape architects and allied design and construction professionals. Come and see Piranesi at booth 1642 and take advantage of the special offers there.

For more information about the convention visit www.asla.org

 

Misawa Homes Co. Ltd. of Japan has added Piranesi, the unique 3D paint rendering system, to its mission-critical 'MCAD' presentation system for home design. Misawa sold 12,700 houses in 2005 and will use Piranesi in its branches throughout Japan.

Until recently the creation of realistic computer graphics was a difficult task, requiring particular skills and computer resources. It was either performed by a full-time employee in charge of this duty or outsourced to a company specialized in the field. Consequently, computer graphics were rarely used when presenting design proposals. MCAD and Piranesi have allowed Misawa Homes to automate and improve the ease of use of its computer graphics processes, and now any employee from the Sales and Design Department can create quality designs.

Sales representatives are able to provide customers with compelling computer presentations at an early stage of negotiations, and quickly propose alternative designs that simulate several combinations of exterior and interior materials. By allowing the sales representatives to deliver convincing presentations that are rich in variety and quality, Misawa Homes distinguishes itself from its competitors and increases customer satisfaction.

Misawa Homes chose to use Piranesi in its presentation system because it encourages the creativity needed for quality home designs that are unique to Misawa Homes; and because Piranesi can easily be customised to automate a series of operations and integrate Misawa's existing CAD data to produce detailed drawings.

Kazuaki Uchida, manager of the Design and Promotion Department at Misawa Homes Co. Ltd. explains: "Ever since we started creating computer graphics home designs using Piranesi, we've been able to provide customers with a clearer image of their homes at the early, mid, and late stage of the negotiations. The system also generates additional business during meetings on specifications after the contract has been signed, when Piranesi images are used to discuss various exterior materials, or outdoor facilities and landscaping ideas. Above all though, what is good about Piranesi is that whoever uses it can quickly create consistent quality home designs."

 

AEC Infosystems will be showing Piranesi at the DesignDC show (co-hosted by the Washington DC & Potomac Vally Maryland chapters of the AIA) on 19-21 July, at the Ronald Reagan Building Center in Washington DC.

AEC Infosystems is at Booth 212-214. See the DesignDC website for more details.

 

The latest version of AccuRender® contains a built-in interface to Piranesi® , the award-winning '3D Painting' technology from Informatix Software International. AccuRender provides raytrace and radiosity rendering for AutoCAD and Revit.

As a result of a collaborative development project, AccuRender 4 allows you to render to the Piranesi EPix image format in which every pixel has a depth and material value as well as a colour. Piranesi can then rapidly paint in textures and details that are difficult to model such as people, furniture, or plants. Piranesi users can also create a wide range of impressionistic styles. Perspective is handled automatically.

Brian Woodward, managing director of Informatix Software says "We have had many requests from AutoCAD and Revit users who wanted a better way to create renderings which they could further develop using Piranesi. AccuRender 4 provides exactly this possibility".

Bob McNeel of Robert McNeel & Associates, the developers of AccuRender, adds "AccuRender and Piranesi together cover the entire 3D rendering spectrum from high-end photometric accuracy to hand-drawn effects. The Piranesi interface and many other new features in AccuRender 4 further establish it as the renderer of choice for AutoCAD and Revit users in the architectural and construction industries".

 

Users of Cheetah3D - the 3D modelling, rendering and animation tool for Mac OS X - can now improve their images with Piranesi, the award-winning '3D Painting' technology.

As a result of a collaborative development project, Cheetah3D version 3.0 allows you to render to the Piranesi EPix image format in which every pixel has a depth and material value as well as a colour. Piranesi can then rapidly paint in textures and details such as people, furniture, or plants that are difficult to model. Piranesi users can also create a wide range of impressionistic styles.

Martin Wengenmayer of Cheetah3D said, "Cheetah3D version 3.0 is full of new features, including the interface to Piranesi which adds a range of new possibilities to what can be produced from a Cheetah3D model."

Brian Woodward of Informatix Software International added, "Piranesi is a unique rendering product for Mac OS X, and we are delighted that Cheetah3D users will now have easy access to its capabilities."

For more information on Cheetah 3D visit the Cheetah3D website.