Power Solids and Power Translators are the first products in product series of 3ds max plug-ins entitled the "Precision Modeling Plug-ins". These first products will introduce support for a new type of shape representation called a Boundary Representation (Brep). This is the representation used in most modern day CAD systems. Robert McNeel’s Rhino, Dassault’s Solid Works and Catia, PTC’s Pro Engineer, EDS’s Solid Edge, Bentley’s Microstation, Nemetschek’s Vectorworks and Autodesk’s Inventor are among the more popular CAD systems that use Boundary Representations as their primary form of shape representation. Our Boundary Representation uses double precision NURBS-based geometry and Non-Manifold Topology.

Power Solids is specifically designed to be animation friendly. It includes high level solids modeling tools that work on a solid primitive level. Power Solids contains all of the functionality available in Power Translators plus the following:

1) Booleans with optional rounding
2) Extrusion, Revolution, Sweeping, Skinning Solid Primitives
3) Rounding of selected primitive features
4) Offset/Inset of Shape curves used in primitive creation
5) Conversion of existing MAX shapes and Editable Meshes into a Brep Object
6) Conversion of Power Solids Brep objects into Editable Polygon or Editable Mesh.
7) IMPORT, Adaptive Mesh, Material Assignment, Filleting Selected Edges & Faces, Offset/Shelling (see Power Translators Above).

What is the Difference Between Power Boooleans and Power Solids?
The difference between Power Booleans and Power Solids is like the difference between modeling with triangles in meshes or modeling with patches. Power Solids works with curved geometry much like Patches. The Power Solids BrepObjects can be tessellated at different levels during render time. For example, you might specify a 1/2 pixel chord height rendering tolerance to remove all polygonal artifacts and see very high quality smooth results. The number of polygons would then vary depending upon how close the object is in a given rendered view.