Lyon, France Ð 3-D CAD has finally arrived on the NeXT, but it may be a while before it makes its U.S. debut.
ZZvolume, authored by GŽry d'Ivry and available for several years now in France on the Atari platform, will be available in France on the NeXT in November and may be available in the United States by December if a distributer is found. Pricing has not yet been determined.
Aimed at architechts and designers, ZZvolume is based on a custom 3-D engine, allowing it to run under NeXTSTEP 2.1. The engine optimizes wireframe rendering speed but is capable of working with Photorealistic RenderMan in NeXTSTEP 3.0 for solid-model rendering.
ZZvolume will ship with a library of 200 predefined objects and a language for describing new ones. 2-D and 3-D support for DXF, DEF, EPS, RIB, STAR-UX, and the Atari 3VD formats should make switching programs tolerable. An English-language interface and documentation are set to be released with the U.S. version.
GŽry d'Ivry can be reached at ARES, 8 rue Victor Lagrange, 69007 Lyon, France. Or telephone 33/72/73.06.54.