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Whether you’re an architect, designer, civil engineer, or visualization specialist, Autodesk® 3ds Max® Design 2011 software provides a powerful, integrated toolset that helps you to more rapidly iterate on design concepts and accurately analyze daylight effects, and to create higher-impact visuals as you explore, validate, and communicate the story behind your design.

Smart Data Workflows
Save time, manage resources better, and deliver higherprecision results with new workflows in 3ds Max Design 2011 that help you handle data from numerous sources more intelligently. Visualizations for Autodesk® Revit® Architecture software designs can be refined, even while changes continue to occur, by using the new Autodesk® FBX® file link. Solids or surfaces can now be imported from Autodesk® Inventor® software or from SAT files while retaining the mathematical description of the solid or surface. Now, cutaways and reveals can be shown with fewer artifacts, and dynamic tessellation parameters can optimize memory usage or performance. The new Autodesk Materials Library helps simplify data exchange with the AutoCAD®, Autodesk® Inventor®, and Autodesk® Revit® families of software, while a new SKP importer provides higher-fidelity files from Google® SketchUp™ sketching software.

Refine Your Design
Productivity enhancements in 3ds Max Design 2011 mean more time to iterate on your design, enabling you to be more creative and produce higher-quality results. Expanded Graphite and Viewport Canvas toolsets deliver intuitive new brush-based interfaces for 2D/3D painting, texture editing, and object placement, while a new in-context direct manipulation UI helps make polygon modeling faster. At the same time, the enhanced ability to view most 3ds Max texture maps and materials in the viewport means you can make interactive decisions in a higher-fidelity context, helping reduce errors and saving time. And, for projects where collaboration is critical, a significantly enhanced workflow with Containers enables multiple team members to work in parallel, making tight deadlines less of a challenge.

Higher-Quality Presentations in Less Time
Throughout the design process, you need to present your evolving design to internal and external stakeholders—and the way you do that can make the difference between winning business and walking away empty handed. 3ds Max Design 2011 brings new tools that enable you to create compelling presentations even when time is at a premium. An intuitive new node-based material editor, Slate, helps make it easier and faster to create and edit complex material networks, while the innovative Quicksilver hardware renderer supports advanced lighting effects, and can render at incredible speeds, even at larger-than-screen resolutions. And, with the addition of Save to Previous Release, you can save scene files in a format compatible with the previous 2010 version*. This enables you to take advantage of the new features in 2011 before your entire studio, pipeline, or client base is ready to upgrade. Plus 3ds Max Design 2011 offers plug-in compatibility with the previous version.

Quicksilver Hardware Renderer
Create higher-fidelity preview animations and design dailies in less time with Quicksilver, an innovative new hardware renderer that uses both the CPU and the GPU to help produce higher-quality images at incredible speeds.

FBX File Link with Autodesk Revit Architecture
Receive and manage upstream design changes from Autodesk Revit Architecture software with the new FBX File Link. This intelligent handling of data helps reduce rework of visualizations in 3ds Max Design 2011 when original designs are revised and refined.

Autodesk Inventor Import Improvements
Take advantage of new Smart Data™ workflows when importing data from Inventor software into 3ds Max Design 2011. Inventor is no longer required to be installed on the same machine, while support is improved for solid objects, materials, surfaces, and composites.

Viewport Display of Autodesk 3ds Max Materials
Develop and refine scenes in a higher-fidelity interactive display environment that enables you to help make better decisions in context with the enhanced ability to view most 3ds Max texture maps and materials in the viewport.

Modeling and Texturing Enhancements
Accelerate modeling and texturing tasks with new tools that extend the Graphite and Viewport Canvas toolsets to provide intuitive brush-based interfaces for assisting with 2D/3D painting and editing textures, creating geometry within a scene, and editing UVW coordinates.

Native Solids Import/Export
Nondestructively import and export surfaces and solids between 3ds Max Design and certain other applications supporting SAT files: Inventor, Revit Architecture, Rhino, SolidWorks®, and form•Z® software.

Google SketchUp Importer
Import Google SketchUp sketching software (SKP) version 6 and 7 files into 3ds Max Design 2011 more efficiently. The enhanced SketchUp Importer supports SketchUp entities: layers, groups, components, materials, cameras, and the daylight system.

Autodesk Material Library
Exchange material data between 3ds Max Design 2011 and certain supporting Autodesk applications (AutoCAD, Inventor, Revit Architecture, Autodesk® Revit® MEP, and Autodesk® Revit® Structure) with the new Autodesk Material Library.

Local Edits to Containers
Collaborate more efficiently with significantly enhanced workflows for Containers that enable you to meet tight

Operating system: Microsoft® Windows® 7 Professional, Microsoft® Windows Vista® Business (SP2 or higher) or Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional (SP2 or higher)

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