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3ds Max New Features for Mechanical Designers By Steven Schain The new release of 3ds Max has some tools that designers are going to love. As a mechanical designer and trainer, I’ve been a user of 3ds Max since the early DOS days of 3D Studio. Over that time, a number of new tools were released that have become critical to the work that I do: Boolean modeling tools, materials, and rendering capabilities. And in each release, I hope for even greater improvements in those tools. With major enhancements that directly affect the ability to work with Booleans, increase the quality and realism of materials, and make rendering faster and better, the release of 3ds Max 2017 has definitely not disappointed. Other than the addition of Proboolean as an alternative, the original Boolean tool has remained relatively unchanged since the early days of 3ds Max. Now, with the 2017 release, the Boolean tool has been completely updated and modernized. Boolean Tools Using new code and an enhanced interface, the user is able to work with scene objects to create an unlimited variety of objects. With the new Boolean Explorer, you can easily select operands to work with in the scene and change the operation type. Material Creation When it comes to material creation, 3ds Max has always been on the forefront, offering flexibility and advanced material quality. With the new Physical Material features, 3ds Max has once again made creating physically accurate and photorealistic materials a bit easier. The Physical Material features allow you to create materials using a layered approach, with a clear coat, base color, reflection, and sub surface scattering to make an even greater variety of 12 www.cadlearning.com