Ah, fall: that season when the leaves change color, the geese fly south, and CAD vendors push out their next major releases. Today, that vendor is Kubotek3D, and its next major release is KeyCreator 2019.
KeyCreator is one of the world’s earliest CAD programs, tracing its roots back to 1984, when it was known as CADKEY and developed by Micro Control Systems. That early product preceded even the development of Pro/ENGINEER (now Creo) in 1987, which introduced the world to parametric, history-based modeling. KeyCreator remains one of the foremost CAD programs offering an alternative to this approach with direct, history-free modeling.
KeyCreator 2019 continues the product’s long lineage with a few significant improvements. There’s not exactly a host of sexy new features, but users will appreciate the software’s performance and productivity enhancements, as well as new CAD file import translators. There’s also added support for the latest CAD formats, but that’s basically a gimme in any new CAD release.
Arguably the biggest update is KeyCreator’s improved graphics performance, with Kubotek3D claiming a 300 to 600 percent improvement in frame rates for models with a large number of faces. This is the result of Kubotek3D restructuring the product’s internal data architecture and using Tech Soft 3D’s HOOPS Visualize engine to render graphics.
As for productivity improvements, KeyCreator 2019 has added DynaHandles to its file import and cut/copy/paste functions. These handles enable users to manipulate any object with six degrees of freedom. The Bounding Box function, which creates a block around selected objects, now has automatic associative length, width and height dimension entities, and can support offset values to add material around those objects. Finally, surface modeling has been enhanced to allow users to dynamically extend a surface and deform a curve with multiple control points at the same time.
KeyCreator 2019 has also added new CAD file import translators for JT and Solid Edge files, which are available at the Pro and Max levels. Additionally, there is added support for files from Inventor 2019, CATIA V5 R2018, Creo 5.0 and NX 12.
“KeyCreator 2019 was built to enhance overall performance and speed of graphics displays,” said Ram Eswaran, CTO of Kubotek3D. “We took an already strong product, and pushed the boundaries of technology to enable users to get their jobs done better and faster.”