SketchUp, acquired by Trimble in 2012 from Google, is an easily accessible software at a very affordable price. Polygon surfaces work great for rendering but for FEA (Finite Element Analysis) and manufacturing, NURBS surfaces are needed.

Polygon (also known as mesh) model vs NURBS model They’re better known as CAD files and can be easily exchanged with other Nurbs applications such as Dassault System’s Catia or Solidworks, Siemen’s NX, Autodesk Alias, Robert McNeels and Associates’ Rhino 3D to name a few. The most common 3D formats used in Nurbs software are IGES and STEP formats. On top of that, NURBS surfaces have the advantage of exporting its 3D data towards simulation packages such as for CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) used in aerodynamics or other fields of expertise like acoustics or structural & stress analysis. Therefore companies from the aerospace, automotive, architectural and product design world rely on NURBS surfacing tools to better capture the design intent and then move on towards manufacturing. Thanks to the constant evolution of technology, CPUs (Central Processing Units) and GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) have become better and faster in rendering complex scenes even when using NURBS surfacing applications. This was particularly true 25 years ago when computers did not have the same kind of computing power we see nowadays. Therefore one can add a lot of design details and maintain the 3D scene relatively small compared to a NURBS type design tool. On the other hand, polygon based applications such as Sketchup and the likes have more control over the polygon counts when the 3D model is created which makes rendering calculations much faster than NURBS type applications. Why is it important? Companies designing and manufacturing products need to create digital data that require very tight tolerances for manufacturing purposes ( CNC machining, rapid prototyping ). It is based on mathematical equations, using polynomials, that best capture the exactness of a surface design. NURBS stands for Non-Uniform Rational B Splines and it is the best way to describe a 3D surface in the digital world.

Rhino 3D is a NURBS-style package while SketchUp is a polygon-based ( also known as mesh-based ) application.

The videos are regularly updated | By Alexandre Galin Explore Course NURBS vs. Learn from the ground up with these easy to follow videos in Rhinoceros 3D.

Sketchup vs home designer pro