Spaceclaim and Rhino
Rhino and Spaceclaim announce a relationship of sorts today. It looks as if Spaceclaim will be able to read and write to the Rhino format. This isn’t too surprising, since the Rhino format is open and used by other software such as Moment of Inspiration, reviewed earlier. You can read the press release for yourself, I won’t parrot it here.
Who is this good for? Its good for everyone, including users, but I suspect it is best for Spaceclaim. It adds some legitimacy to link up with an established player, especially a stylist product like Rhino.
It may also indicate that Spaceclaim isn’t laying claim to any future territory in complex shape development, which I think would be unfortunate. I’ve been holding out for these guys to try to create a complex shape concepter, an area which I’m guessing is going to become a battle ground here shortly for various reasons of unspoken intuition…
SW still seems to see these guys at the competition, but I’m not seeing it. Except for a little thing that I saw recently at Ralph Grabowski’s blog which says that SC is developing some sheet metal tools and other functionality. I think that would put them in competition with SW.