Get Full Solid and Surface Modeling – Including NURBS – in Our Organic Workflow™
Cobalt’s flexible 3D modeling matches professional power with speed and ease of use in our unique Organic Workflow design process. Available for both Macintosh and Windows, Cobalt lets creative people work without worrying about their software. Designers save time and money by moving quickly from conception through completion in the real world of last minute changes. Primarily for designers, engineers and inventors, Cobalt provides on-demand, dimensionally constrained and equation-driven parametrics that make creating variations on a design faster and easier than ever before in 3D design software.
Expand Product Lines
Cobalt offers parametric design variations using equations or relationships so you can quickly develop product families from one concept. Unlike traditional enterprise-based CAD programs, Cobalt’s parametrics are extremely easy to use and available on-demand.
Bring Real Products to Life
Move beyond conceptual design to analyzing, marketing, manufacturing and sales. Cobalt’s precise 3D data guarantees accurate drawings and compelling marketing images. Generate renderings for sales, training and promotions, export data for fabrication, or send shop drawings to manufacturing.
The Sky is No Longer the Limit
When Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites focused on going to space they relied on Cobalt to realize their vision. And the result? They won the Ansari X Prize for reusable spacecraft. With Cobalt you can set your sites high – whether you’re building something that’s out of this world – or the next great consumer product – Cobalt is the ultimate in ease of use in precision CAD software to bring your ideas to life.
Connected to the Entire Strata Product Line – and the World
Using standard export formats, Cobalt projects to be brought into your other Strata apps to produce stunning photoreal images, expressive animations, virtual reality presentations and even augmented reality visualizations. Share, explore and realize your design vision with Cobalt and the entire Strata line of tools.
“The primary difference between Ashlar-Vellum’s product and other solutions available on the market is not the depth of Cobalt’s features, but the availability of all the features in a holistic, transparent way that enables the user to create concepts in an intuitive, unobstructed manner.”
Frost & Sullivan, Best Practices Research Product Differentiation Excellence Award
3D Printing: True Solids & Closed Surfaces
- Create true solids, not merely a collection of surfaces loosely knitted together.
- Use a real solid-geometric engine that knows how to handle:
- common edges
- tolerant edges
- closed sets of analytic geometry
- closed sets of NURB surfaces
- Start not only with a solid model, but optionally with wireframe or surfaces and still be able to bring them together as a water-tight solid.
- Control of meshing parameters individually for each solid in the file prior to STL export so that they can be set only once or adjusted more conveniently.
- Optionally export each part in a file to a separate file for more control while printing.
The Drafting Assistant
The Drafting Assistant™ facilitates intelligent snaps and automatic alignments in X, Y and Z. It anticipates your needs and quietly offers help without distraction or intrusion. The Drafting Assistant thinks like a designer. It automatically knows where you typically want construction lines and displays them temporarily when needed.
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The Drafting Assistant makes it easy to select existing points for construction by displaying information about the pointer’s location relative to the geometry. The Drafting Assistant displays:
• Center
• Endpoint
• Midpoint
• Intersection
• Quadrant
• Vertex
• Tangent
• Perpendicular
If a Drafting Assistant notation displays when you click, the construction snaps onto the geometry being created. Whether you’re working on a Mac or Windows machine, the Drafting Assistant is a key component of Cobalt, providing creative simplicity and efficient power.
The Cobalt workflow is addictive—ask any Cobalt customer why they use our products and you’ll hear about the magical feel of creative simplicity and efficient power. Cobalt anticipates your needs and quietly offers help without distraction or intrusion.
Work in a non-linear creative environment—Cobalt’s “Organic Workflow” allows designers to create outstanding products through easy design iteration, transparent tools, and hands-on control of the production process. Start anywhere necessary within the design process and move freely in any direction. This allows the creative process to sustain radical change while still maintaining integrity.
Design any shape imaginable—even the organic forms essential to high-end design. Traditional CAD lacks the flexibility to create truly aesthetic, uniquely beautiful forms. Not so with Cobalt.
Sketch in 2D and 3D—play with an idea, explore, discover. Only pencil and paper compete. Once you begin working with Cobalt you’ll understand why the product enjoys such a loyal user base.
Join the leaders—from renowned jewelry designers in New York and Paris to athletic equipment companies in the Pacific Northwest, from Apple Computer to Scaled Composites, Cobalt’s flexibility frees creative people to focus on design – and produce award winning, legendary products.
Control the workflow—you can manage files even in the real world of multiple systems and users. Cobalt provides seamless data integration and accurate file sharing through our unparalleled set of translators, all included free.
Realize profits sooner—can you afford to wait? Cobalt streamlines the design process from start to finish, saving you time and money.
- Unique Working Environment featuring Organic Workflow™
- Unified Associative, Dimensionally-constrained Parametric Drawing & Modeling Tools
- Holistically Integrated Tool Palette for Wireframe, Surfaces & Solids
- Vellum Drafting Assistant™ for Intelligent Snaps and Alignments in X,Y & Z
- Unique Hybrid Mac/Windows, Office/Home Licensing
- Complete Set of Precision Import/Export Translators Including ACIS SAT, Parasolid, IGES, STEP, DXF, DWG, EPS, AI, and more
- 2D/3D PDF Export and 3D Import
- Full Support 3D Printing
- Class-A, NURBS Surface Modeling
- True Solid Modeling
- Surface Analysis
- Full Photo-realistic Rendering & Camera-based Animation
- Design Explorer™ History Tree
- Associative 2D View Generation with Auxiliary, Section, and Detail Views
- True Associative Dimensioning
- Bill of Materials
- License optionally includes Graphite™ v10 in Plus price.
- Dimensionally Constrained & Equation-driven Parametrics
- Associative Assembly Tools
- Object & Assembly Properties (CG, Volume, Weight, etc.)
- Mold Tools including Core, Cavity, Rib, and Lip
- Geometric Dimensioning & Tolerancing (GD&T)
- 149,000 3D Mechanical Parts Library
- Windows / Macintosh
- Windows 7 SP1 / 8.1 / 10 (x32 or x64)
- OS X 10.8 / 10.9 / 10.10 / 10.11 / 10.13 / 10.14 (10.15 Catalina not yet supported)
- 32 MB Accelerated Video Card w/ Open GL (Standard on all business-class systems since 2005. Additional RAM will not improve performance.)
- Medium- to High-performance Workstation-class Graphics Subsystem Recommend for Real-time Environment Mapping on Complex Files
- 512 MB RAM Required / 2 GB Recommended
- 1 GB Free Hard DriveSpace Required / 4+ GB Recommended
- High Speed Internet Connection
Drafting Assistant™
Ashlar-Vellum pioneered the Drafting Assistant 20 years ago for both 2D and 3D design on Mac and Windows. This revolutionary tool facilitates intelligent snaps and automatic alignments in X, Y and Z for both our precision drafting and 3D modeling software. It anticipates your needs and quietly offers help without distraction or intrusion.
The Drafting Assistant thinks like a designer. It automatically knows where you typically want construction lines and displays them temporarily when needed.
The Drafting Assistant makes it easy to select existing points for construction by displaying information about the pointer’s location relative to the geometry. The Drafting Assistant displays:
- Center
- Endpoint
- Midpoint
- Intersection
- Quadrant
- Vertex
- Tangent
- Perpendicular
Class-A Surface Modeling
Surfaces with optimal aesthetic shape and high surface quality without undesirable waviness or kinks. Internally Curvature-continuous while providing the simplest mathematical representation needed for the shape and smoothness.
NURB Surface
A series of mathematically accurate NURBS control splines where the surface is fitted to the splines.
History or History Tree
A list of features and associations of a model in the order created. Found in Xenon and Cobalt, this makes changes to a model fast and easy because features can be selected and edited instead of portions deleted and rebuilt as in Argon. Changes are then rippled through the file and to drawing sheets using Associativity.
Associative or Associativity
Pertaining to the association of entities in a model and between features within a model. The function within Cobalt™ and Xenon™ software that automatically updates all related objects when changes are made to the defining geometry, thereby increasing the productivity of design iterations.
Parametrics, Parametric History, Dimensionally-constrained Parametrics or Equation-driven Parametrics
Pertaining to parameters that define the dimensions of any object. Paramerics in this context can drive the shape of a design by mathematical equations and relationships. When one dimension changes, others within the model will change or not, according to the parameters established to govern those relationships.
A very simple example of a parametric equation: the width of an object can be constrained with parameters to always be 30% of the depth. When the depth is changed, the width changes accordingly.
A very simple example of a relationship: a hole designated as centered on a form will remain in the center no matter how that form changes size and or shape.
Found in Cobalt and Graphite™ only, parametrics are good for part families with varying features. Unlike the parametric tools found in SolidWorks or Pro/Engineer, Cobalt’s parametrics can be used on-demand, so that they don’t constrain creativity.
GD&T or Geometric Dimensioning & Tolerancing
A dimensioning standard sometimes required by the U.S. government and adopted by certain corporations. (ASME Y-1994.5)
“Ashlar-Vellum’s Organic Workflow enables an iterative design process in a non-linear workflow, so that a designer has the freedom to make changes freely and move in any direction without losing any parametric history, which is instantly available when the user requires it via the ‘Parametric History on Demand’ feature of the Organic Workflow.”
Frost & Sullivan, Best Practices Research Product Differentiation Excellence Award
Art & Engineering in 3D Modeling
Luc Heiligenstein designed this sports watch using both Ashlar-Vellum drafting and 3D modeling software.
“Ashlar-Vellum products bridge the gap between the artistic aspect and the engineering requirements with everything needed in between.”
Product Visualization
Andy Marshall, guitar amplifier designer for THD Electronics was the innovator of these Yellow Jacket converters which allow different tubes to be used within the same amp.
“Cobalt’s ability to show me what a product and its component parts will look like (as well as exactly what their dimensions will be) helps me to completely visualize the product and ‘turn it over in my hands.'”
Design to Manufacture with 3D Modeling
Designer Kevin Quigley facilitates last minute revisions and client changes with ease using Cobalt for a new line of Victoria & Albert bathtubs.
“I always make sure that the parts are modeled with draft — which is easy to do in Cobalt — so that the basic form is manufacturable.”
Share Your Vision
Mark Gajewski of G Squared designed the luxurious Haven leather arm chair for Inpako.
“Using Cobalt has allowed me to translate my ideas into reality and to share my visions. Being able to model and photo-realistically render sculptural 3D shapes was very valuable in selling my ideas to others.”
