''The good old days weren''t so great, after all, were they?'' asks Ved Narayan, VP, Asia Pacific, SolidWorks Corporation, a subsidiary of France''s Dassault Systèmes. He highlights the superiority of today''s graphics packages with their brilliant photo-realism and real-time rendering.

A decade ago, product design was strictly a two-dimensional proposition, and a monochrome one at that. Then, mercifully, 3D came on the scene. First it was wireframe, then shaded images over black and white, then coloured solids over grayscale, then full-color solid models. Each advance in visualisation delivered higher designer productivity and better-designed, more aesthetically appealing products.

Today, the state of the art in 3D mechanical design resides in products like SolidWorks 2004, with its embedded RealView, the only realistic real-time rendering tool included as a standard feature in a mechanical design product. Users can now create fully rendered images of their 3D models in real time without a performance penalty. This capability closes communication gaps between designers, manufacturers, partners and customers, resulting in better products getting to market faster and more effectively.

Coming next in the evolution of real-time rendering we''ll see more shaders — graphical objects that let developers create special lighting and effects. They will display more quickly a wider range of materials in more textures and colours, with a greater selection of lighting angles, illumination properties and other effects. In the next five years, we may even see real-time ray-tracing. That''s the process that lets one part of a model reflect another in the same view; for example, a wooden handle reflected in the finish of a stainless steel tea kettle. Every such advance in photorealism means a more vivid and accurate presentation of the product being designed, as well as fewer mistakes and misunderstandings.

Three factors will drive this evolution: hardware, standards, and talent. On the hardware side, look for graphics cards with more advanced graphics processing units (GPUs) — far exceeding the 256MB memory size, and capable of handling 256 instructions. On the standards side, look for the completion of OpenGL 2.0, the second generation of the industry-wide API for graphic software. Once this standard is set, vendors like SolidWorks can tune their software so that any high-performance graphics card will deliver spectacular graphics, not just the cards of the vendors leading the standards definition contest. Talent, of course, is a critical factor in the real-time rendering evolution. We''ll need artists who can look at texture and lighting and render an effect flawlessly in photorealistic fidelity, and then code it — or at least collaborate closely with an expert programmer.

The graphic revolution promises to benefit every aspect of design and engineering. The three areas most greatly affected are product design, design review and collaboration. The design of consumer products, medical products, machines — actually any product — will improve as a direct result of dramatic advances in real-time rendering. For instance, it makes a big difference, both aesthetically and functionally, whether a device''s handle is smooth or knurled. Why wait for the prototype to evaluate the difference? Moreover, more realistic designs will help designers and engineers discover errors earlier. The sharp edges of a ''perfect'' cube, for instance, will look unnatural in high-fidelity 3D, alerting the engineer to add rounded surfaces to the edges before moving to prototype.

In the design review stage, highly realistic renderings will make a designer''s customers, partners, colleagues and superiors more enthused, engaged, and informed — and more likely to sign off on a good design. This phenomenon will carry over into everyday business operations. It''s easy to imagine a marketing manager leaning over your shoulder and asking for a RealView image of your soon-to-be-manufactured product, so she can turn it into dazzling collateral. That''s collaboration; that''s your business moving faster with better graphics.

These are just some of the ways real-time rendering will continue to revolutionise design and engineering. Too often, however, the engineering world has dismissed graphics as mere sizzle. As you can see, it''s actually the steak.

*The author is vice president, Asia-Pacific, SolidWorks Corporation, tye 3-D mechanical design software subsidiary of France''s Dassault Systèmes.