Proof 3D (P3D) Open Beta Program
P3D is Wolverine's long-awaited 3D animator. It builds on the strengths of its 2D predecessors, P4 and P5, but offers new and exciting capabilities at a very affordable price.
The P3D Beta program is open to existing licensees of P4. We expect to end the Beta program in early summer, 2008. At that time, P3D users who have not already purchased P3D license will have to do so. Please take a look at our Pricing page.
Download information is given in the Beta Updates section that follows.
P3D Beta Updates
Release AY138 provides better support for DXF files containing 3D surfaces.
Click here to download release AY138 of P3D. Note that this download is a complete installation. You should remove the old version of P3D, if any, before installing the new release.
Release AY098 corrects problems with DXF importing and textured polylines.
Release AY058 corrects the following problems:
1. When importing DXF file containing arcs, P3D now properly handles arcs that lie in planes other than the X-Y plane, and it supplies correct defaults for arcs in the X-Y plane, but lacking explicit descriptions stating that the plane of the arc is normal to the Z-axis.
2. Fillet-drawing algebra has been revised to better handle roundoff errors that could otherwise result in spurious error messages.
3. P3D now issues more explicit error messages for degenerate filled polylines. P3D requires that the edges of a filled polyline intersect only at their endpoints. A good example of a degenerate polyline is a bowtie. To fill a non-degenerate polyline comprising N edges requires N-2 triangles. For example, a rectangle requires two triangles. When polyline edges intersect at points other than endpoints, the number of triangles required to construct a filled surface is ambiguous.
Release PR308 corrects problems with DXF file importing and with filled, extruded polylines.
Release PR288 corrects a problem with rendering zero-length text and messages.
Release PR248 is a minor update that tweaks some of the revisions made in Release PR218.
Release PR218 of P3D incorporates major revisions and improvements.
1. A number of math problems in P3D's algorithm for filling polygons. The most common symptom of these problems was an error message indicating a discrepancy between the theoretical number of triangles required to fill a closed polyline, which can be determined in advance, and the number of triangles actually drawn.
In addition, the requirement that the first three vertices of a filled polyline must form a border that is convex with respect to the region to be filled has been eliminated. When attempting to fill a closed polyline, P3D first attempts to do so assuming that the first three vertices are indeed convex, but if this assumption results in a triangle count discrepancy, P3D will retry assuming that the first three vertices are concave.
Note that degenerate polylines can cause legitimate triangle count discrepancies. For example, a polyline in the form of a bowtie has two edges that cross one another. P3D cannot handle geometry of this form.
2. A math problem with path segment selection has been fixed. The most common symptom of this problem was difficulty in specifying the first segment of a new path when one or both of the ends of the intended first segment were line/arc endpoints, rather than intersections with other lines/arcs.
3. A math problem that could lead to "RGP oscillation" has been fixed. This problem could arise with circular, but disjoint paths. When objects reached the end of such paths and continued moving at the start points, they could oscillate rapidly until they had moved a distance equal to the RGP distance from the start of the path.
4. View management has been significantly upgraded. P3D now saves information about class views. Once you set a view for a class, that view is retained for the duration of a run, and it is saved when you save a layout file.
A number of problems with interference between views have been fixed, so changing one view should no longer affect another view.
5. Several problems that could cause complaints of path corruption in draw mode when in fact no corruption existed have been fixed.
6. "Picture" commands in layouts generated by P5 are now automatically translated into textured, filled, closed, 4-sided polylines. (P3D's capabilities for filling closed regions with bitmap images exceed P5's.)
7. Any axis of a bar graph can have a zero range. A 2D plot always has one axis with a zero range, while all three axes of a 3D plot have nonzero ranges.
8. Clear Plot now works properly when the "thick line" option is used.
9. Message prototypes are now properly maintained and displayed in draw mode.
10. The geometric criteria for mouse click threshholds have been revised. In previous versions of P3D, click threshholds were generally too small, forcing users to be extremely accurate when clicking on layout elements.
11. Resolution of names when the same name is used in multiple contexts has been corrected. For example, it is now possible to use the same symbol as a path name and an object name. This has always been true in P4/P5, but since P3D allows nested class definitions, resolution of name conflicts is much more complicated.
12. A number of problems with demo mode, including upward compatibility with P4/P5, have been fixed.
13. P3D's text-rendering algorithm has been completely rewritten. P3D renders text asas a collection of small triangles. Prior to Release PR218, each layout/class text/message element had its own collection of triangles. For animations that employ lots of text, this approach consumed large amounts of video memory and CPU time formatting the triangles. Beginning with Release PR218, a single set of triangles is used for an entire font, and each character is drawn by specified range of triangles within the font. This introduces a some per character overhead and makes font setup more complicated, but greatly reduces video memory requirements. Animations with up to 1000 characters of text should experience only marginal increases in CPU time requirements.
14. P\3D's on-line help has been updated.
15. Proof3D.slx (for generating P3D commands in an SLX program) has been updated.
Release PR018 of P3D corrects the following problems:
1. Objects whose classes contain Messages are now rendered properly.
2. A problem with oscillation of objects that are blocked and unblocked multiple times on on accumulating paths has been fixed. In some cases, this oscillation was quite visible, and in other cases, it was imperceptible, but consumed CPU time. Most arithmetic in 3D graphics is done in single precision. Some of the "epsilons" that have worked successfully in 2D versions of Proof are to small for use with single precision arithmetic. While most of these problems have been corrected, users should report any oscillation or visible imprecision.
Release AR108 of P3D corrects a problem that occurred with ATI 1300/1550, 2400, and later video cards.
The EB268 release of P3D contains fixes to all reported P3D problems. This is the first release of P3D that contains a full development environment.
A student version of Beta P3D is included in our Student/Demo Download.