ESPACE IV

This new project offered me the opportunity to experiment ALIAS for real.

I used to begin each day with ALIAS, forcing myself to find my way through new problems. It reminds me the time I started with CAD. Suddenly, even simple tasks, I used to achieve easily with EUCLID, became tiedous and tricky. At first glance, working with ALIAS looked less precise and rigorous. And after one hour or two, I switched back to EUCLID.
Apparently, most of the collegues already trained and supposed to work definitely with ALIAS, used to do the same.
The graft was to be not working...Before the reject, the chief organized a big meeting to motivate people and reaffirm there would be no turning back to EUCLID.

The turning point

It arrived when I spent an entire day on a very tricky area. The kind of node where many different shapes have to merge smoothly. Where the quality requires a subtle balance between many unlinked "entry" surfaces you can't tweak (cheat?) just in the end to fill the hole...You know what I mean...

In general, the job is more easy when you can start with a clean and well defined shape and then build from it. But with complex nodes, it's not possible. You have to try and build, and retry and rebuild again.

So, late in the afternoon, after hours trapped in a vicious circle, I decided to try with ALIAS. And then, with history and interactive controls, it was possible to work on each entry surface and see immediately the consequences on the node. So very quickly, I knew what to do on each one to find the right balance. After 20 mn, the job was done!

Since this day, I changed my mind about ALIAS. I no longer consider it as a toy, but as a real tool. I used it more and more. And one month later, I was enterely converted to ALIAS.