3d Design Software For Cars

Whether you are a designer or an engineer, a CAD software is what you need to develop a 3D model with finesse. Similarly, you need the CAD software for designing automotive. These software programs help you to create a blueprint of construction document, find design ideas, or envision concepts using photorealistic depictions and acts a how a design works in reality.

Given that the automotive industry is making full use of the 3D modeling software, it's also used in designing or manufacturing a car. Here are a few software tools to help you design a car for manufacturing new vehicles.

AutoCAD Revit LT Suite

Revit LT Suite by AutoCAD allows you to raise the level of your architectural design using 3D BIM software. It comes with a set of handy tools for 3D designing that helps you to gather automotive parts, effortlessly. This is possible due to the much-simplified software in comparison.

Features:

Allows you to create 3D orthographic or outlooks.
Reviews of the design gets automatically updated.
Keeps the design files structured and recent.
Automatically constitutes building component schedule.
Verifies material quantities to help estimate.
Option to change files with a person using any other Revit product.
Provides content templates that include office cabin, windows for commercial and residential use, appliance library, and furniture.
Facility to save securely, and even preview and share the design.

Price: free trial available; upgrade available at $430.

ZBrush

ZBrush is one of the best car designing tools that equips you with great flexibility to build models using its dynamic features. Apart from tools like XTractor or HistoryRecall to DecoCurve, it also introduces the No Back&Forth modifier that allows you to limit your brush strokes to only forward actions.

Features:

Offers MorphUV that allows you to view the exposed UV layout of a model.
The Sculpt & Paint in Morph UV feature helps you to design and paint on a 2D bare model.
Option to create a model and PolyPaint on an unfolded mesh of a model.
The three Xtractor brushes transform specifics of the model into a new baseline that can be reused in the future.
HistoryRecall brush allows you to undo a part of your designing without losing on the rest of the work.
Freedom to change your brush to add details to any design.
Option to adjust the color, contrast, tint, gamma, or the intensity of a PolyPainted or a textured model.
The mesh analysis feature offers tools like Wall Thickness, Real-Time Draft Analysis, and Surface Area Calculations.
Offers Cam Silhouette and Cam View feature to view the model's orientation and offering a view of your model from a fresh perspective.
The ZSphere Mannequins can be easily edited and made to fit any creature or character.

Price: pricing starts from $29/month.

Alias

Alias by Autodesk is a design software that assists you with actions like sketching, surfacing, modeling, concept, and visualization. It offers an integrated hybrid modeling solution with built-in SUBD modeling ideas. It supports communicating ideas, design modeling, real-time view of designs, technical surfacing, and more.

Features:

Equips you with built-in tools, circles, predictive touches, capture lines and more to help you draw and edit, effortlessly.
Offers flexibility in product modeling, speeds up the concept modeling process, or option to copy/paste a layer within a folder.
Option to link sketches from Photoshop, allows you to move over to a point of interest instantly, enhanced color assignment for layers, and customized clutch keys.
Facility to view in Curve Planarize, improvements in the surface fillet, set of skin tools, option to get a variable degree in fillet surfaces, and more.
3D sculpting, powerful shape modeling, the option to move easily between and VRED software are some of the other major features of its concept modeling.
With multi blend tools, automatic stitches and seams, accurate feedback on the quality of surface model, or option to generate intricate replicable patterns are some of its other significant features detailed design and surface analysis.

Price: Free trial available; upgrade starts from $530/month.

3Ds Max

3Ds Max is another great modeling and rendering software by Autodesk that helps you with design conceptualization, games, and animation. It gives you complete artistic control and helps you to create huge game spheres, and striking scenes for design conceptualization and attractive experiences in virtual reality.

Features:

Allows you to design and animate geometry in different responsive methods.
Option to create OSL maps within the material editor.
It makes the blending process seamless with the help of Morph visible.
Handle the most challenging tasks easily using Chamfer Modifier.
It offers a range of selection and styling tools to adjust the hair and furs.
It helps you to procedurally adjust your models using vertex, edge, and face information.
3D Booleans allow you to design Booleans functions on two or more splines.
Allows you to design parametric and organic objects, efficiently.
From creating liquid behaviors in 3Ds Max, or shaping animations right in the viewport to designing proce5dural animation, implementation of keyframe and procedural animation tools, or animating simulation data in CFD, CFD, or in OpenVDB formats, there's a lot to offer in 3D animation and dynamics.
3D rendering comes in enhanced viewport quality, equipped with built-in MAXtoA plug-in, option to simulate the settings of real-life camera, and more.

Price: Free trial available; upgrade starts from $153.

Lumiscaphe Patchwork 3D

This real-time digital modeling software is undoubtedly is the coolest of all. It helps you convert CAD data into photorealistic 3D prototypes for industrial purpose. Besides, it also makes real-time rendering effortless hat helps reduce the span of the design cycles. In fact, it can also support your marketing and communication aspects on striking renders.

Features:

Fully customizable sun-like light offering real-time light with or without lightmaps.
It offers up to three clipping planes that have the ability to get animated, and that exposes the product layers. This is while clipping through only the surfaces required.
Change from the 360-degree atmosphere in just one click affecting the color impression, illumination, and the surface reflections.
Multitrack timelines, animation stimulants, and animation limitations are something that drives both easy and complex animations.
Facility to modify standard, shadow or multi-layer materials using material editor.
Provides lighting layers that bring in variations in lighting environment while making the use of lightmaps in animations.
Offers one of the word-class features called surface unfolding that's an exclusive offering for industries.
It comes with built-in CAD support for communicative NURBS tessellation and topological stitching of NURBS patches.

Price: pricing starts from $395/user/month

Blender

A free and open-source software, Blender helps you to create stunning 3D designs, seamlessly. It supports the complete 3D process including animation, video editing, modeling, 2D animation pipeline, rendering, rigging, and compositing and motion tracking.

Features:

Helps you create stunning renders using Cycles, that are advanced production path tracer.
With the modeling feature and an extended set of tools, you can sculpt, model, curve, and do retopology.
Empowers you with the flexibility and capability to design efficiently in different stages of the process using the digital sculpting tools.
It offers a seamless experience in Animation, Rigging, VFX, Simulation, Video Editing, and Scripting.
The Grease pencil feature allows you to go beyond the limits for Story Art and 2D concept design.
Option to integrate with several different pipelines at a time in many productions.
Equipped with a fully customizable user interface.

Price: free and open source.

HDR Light Studio

HDR Light Studio by Lightmap is the perfect lighting software for 3D designers. It allows you to create and edit HDR quality lighting using your current 3D software, effortlessly.

Features:

Best known for studio lighting, it offers specially designed reflective materials.
It offers the most lifelike light effects by loading HDR images as light sources.
Features a library with more than 200 high-quality HDR images that include windows, even clouds, and softboxes.
It provides a Render View that helps position lights. All you need to do is to click and drag on the Render View option.
Offers HDR Area Lights that work seamlessly with programs like 3ds Max, Maya, Cinema 4D, MODO, VRED, Houdini and Octane Render Standalone Connection.
Render View and LightPaint perform at the same speed even with massive scenes.
Makes the mixing of photography and CG imagery elements smooth as silk by speedy creation of an ideal lighting atmosphere.
Option to load HDRI maps captured on location and include extra light sources to make images lifelike.
The procedural sky shader to control the horizon and the softness of the sky.
It allows you to alpha ramp to mix more than one HDRI map when required.

Price: Free trial available; upgrade starts from $121

SolidWorks

Solidworks introduces you to a new dimension with its vast experience in 3D car designing. It's a simple, yet powerful software that helps you focus on your everyday work using a responsive, and built-in 3D design surrounding. It takes care of the complete aspects of product creation while boosting your design and engineering efficiency.

Features:

Offers the facility of 2D CAD that offers the freedom to do more using an improved 2D drafting and 3D design environment.
Helps aerospace manufacturers expand their business productively while rapidly retorting to RFQs (Request for Quotes) and RFPs (Requests for Proposals).
From modeling simulation or visualization to communication and manufacturing, it offers all the solutions to product designers helping them create products rapidly and efficiently.

Price: pricing starts from $1295 for an annual subscription.

Adobe Photoshop

This digital imaging software is one of the popular platforms to explore your creativity, be it with car designing or any other animations. From graphic designing or animation to photo editing or blending to digital painting, it offers all the options t bring your imagination to life.

Features:

Offers professional photography tools to make it convenient to edit or transform complete images on all devices including iPads and desktops.
It allows you to blend images and texts to form completely new images.
It even allows you to start a project on the iPad and finish it on your desktop by saving the work automatically on the cloud.
If using an iPad, you have the option to open full-sized PSDs, design refined blends, retouch photographs, and get control over the brushes using your fingers or Apple Pencil.
The object selection tool allows you to design faster and select accurately.
The Warp control helps you to include control points in any location or split the images with a configurable grid.
The enhanced properties panel offers all the controls in one place.
It offers some of the most responsive, extremely organized and easy to use presets.

Price: Free trial available; upgrade priced at $29.99.

Creo Parametric

Creo Parametric is another great car designing software that helps you to design 3D models, effortlessly. It's empowered with core modeling benefits in manufacturing additives, creating model-based definitions, and intelligent connected designs.

Features:

It offers a wide range of capabilities including 3D solid modeling, direct modeling, powerful assembly modeling, and Weld modeling and structural framework design.
It allows you to optimize your design by automatically identifying the best design based on the required parameters.
Provides support for creating and updating2D designs, automatically.
The Unite technology lets you open the CAD files in just a couple of clicks straight into the software platform.
The CAM software boosts productivity by lowering scrap and material costs with shorter lead times.
It offers detailed guides with 2D and 3D designs.
It helps you visualize 3D Creo models, instantly on all devices, from any location.
Capabilities in designing for additive manufacturing, industrial design tools for technical surfacing, and freestyle surfacing, or data exchange facility are some of its other major features.

Price: Free trial available; basic license starts from $2200.

Conclusion

While there's no specific software in the market that's only for car designing, the above selected CAD software and additive manufacturing tools serve the purpose. These are automotive software programs that are also useful for car designing. Choosing the right software based on your exact requirement can help you bring your concepts to reality.

Madhu 5 Min

I find passion in writing Tech articles around Windows PC and softwares