Cobalt, at $2,995, is the high-end member of a four-member family of products. The other three Ashlar-Vellum offerings are “Graphite”, “Argon”, and “Xenon”.

• Graphite essentially inherited the feature-set of Ashlar’s flagship product, Vellum. It offers 2D and 3D wireframe drafting and equation-driven parametrics.

• Argon is the most affordable, offering 3D solid modeling (but not history-based), ray tracing, and animation.

• Xenon is a less capable cousin of Cobalt, offering all of the 2D and 3D solid modeling functions of Cobalt as well as ray-trace rendering and animation. However, Xenon lacks Cobalt’s geometric and equation-driven parametrics, “Associative Assembly Tools” and the mechanical parts library, nor does it support dimensioning using geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T).^[7]

Cobalt includes freeform Class-A NURBS surface modeling for creating complex, aesthetic, or technical shapes. The self-running animation (lower right) demonstrates two capabilities of Cobalt: 1) how a limited number of control points govern complex NURBS surface geometry, and 2) demonstrates a fly-by animation produced by Cobalt whereby the “camera eye path” was attached to a 360-degree circle.

Cobalt features several modes for making animation, notably “Static” (where the sun and shadows move in a stationary scene), “Walk-through,” and “Fly-by”. Cobalt is also capable of six different levels of photorealistic rendering, from “Raytrace Preview Render [Shadows Off]” through “Auto Full Render [Shadows On, Antialias]”. Choosing less realistic modes for trial animations allows very quick rendering—even those with several hundred frames—because Cobalt fully exploits multi-core microprocessors during rendering.

The click-to-play animation (upper right) shows two industrial pushbutton switches surrounded by a virtual “photo studio” in a Cobalt model. The mirrored hemisphere enables the reader to see the back wall, floor, and ceiling lights, which all contribute to the nature of the light reflecting off the switches. Face-on images of these switches were used in the development of a touchscreen-basedhuman–machine interface (HMI) for use in industrial manufacturing settings.

To create fly-by animations, Cobalt prompts the designer to specify an path (a line or curve) for the “camera eye” to follow as well as a point at which the camera should point, and then renders the animation. A designer can specify such attributes as the angle for the camera’s field of view and can turn on settings such as perspective, which gives rendered images a vanishing point.

Whether the designer is rendering a single image or a multi-frame animation, Cobalt offers broad control of lighting, including the ability to illuminate images with sunlight wherein the date, time of day, latitude, and longitude are all user-adjustable to obtain accurate shadows.

Ashlar-Vellum’s patented, 23-year-old “Drafting Assistant” is the central component of Ashlar’s “Vellum interface”.^[5]

The Drafting Assistant tracks the position of the designer’s cursor and looks for nearby geometry. It then automatically displays information alongside the cursor regarding nearby geometric features to which the designer can snap. The designer can create new geometry at those snap points, or create construction lines to serve as guides. The Drafting Assistant is sensitive to the following geometric attributes:^[6]

• Centers
• Endpoints
• Intersections
• Midpoints
• Perpendicularities
• Quadrants
• Tangents
• Vertexes

Drafting Assistant remembers the last snaps with a weighted algorithm to intuit the designer’s intentions; thus, it is easy to snap to intersections in empty 3‑D space.

In the animation at right, the designer first snaps to the X-, Y-, and Z-axis coordinates at the midpoint of the top edge and then snaps to the same spot on the leading edge, which has different X- and Z-axis coordinates. He moves his cursor to a point in 3D space where there are no geometric attributes to snap to. Although there may be 3D surfaces underneath the cursor, Drafting Assistant intuits the designer’s intent and offers an intersection point comprising the Y- and Z-axis coordinates of the first edge and the X-axis coordinate of the nearest edge. At this location, the designer adds a circle freehand and then specifies a diameter of 200 millimeters by typing it into the box at bottom right. Last, the designer uses the “Remove profile from solid” tool to cut through the block. Here again, Drafting Assistant enables prompt definition of the depth of the cut by snapping to the back quadrant of the intersecting hole.

The Drafting Assistant also provides a “Message line” at the top. This displays instructions appropriate for the selected tool, prompts the designer with what he should do next with any given tool, and reminds the designer of optional modes for those tools.

Cobalt’s parametrics and history tracking work permits the designer to later edit the diameter and/or location of either circle—both of which have dependencies (holes in the block)—and the model updates accordingly.

Cobalt is a parametric-based computer-aided design (CAD) and 3D modeling program that runs on both Macintosh and Microsoft Windows operating systems. The program combines the direct-modeling way to create and edit objects (exemplified by programs such as SpaceClaim) and the highly structured, history-driven parametric way exemplified by programs like Pro/ENGINEER.

Cobalt integrates wireframe, freeform surfacing, feature-based solid modeling, photo-realistic rendering (see Ray tracing), and animation. Cobalt, a product ofAshlar-Vellum, is history-driven with associativity and 2D equation-driven parametrics and constraints. It offers surfacing tools, mold design tools, detailing, and engineering features. Cobalt includes a library of 149,000 mechanical parts.^[1]

Cobalt’s interface, which the company named the “Vellum interface” after its eponymous flagship product, was designed in 1988 by Dr. Martin Newell ^{[Note 1]} and Dan Fitzpatrick. The central feature of the Vellum interface is its “Drafting Assistant”, which facilitates the creation and alignment of new geometry.

Main article: Automotive market

The automotive market is formed by the demand and the industry. This article is about the general, major trends in the automotive market, mainly from the demand side.

The European automotive market has always boasted a higher number of smaller cars than the United States. With the high fuel prices and the world petroleum crisis, the United States may see its automotive market become more like the European market with fewer large vehicles on the road and more small cars.^[60]

For luxurious cars, with the current volatility in oil prices, going for smaller cars is not only smart, but also trendy. And because fashion is of high importance with the upper classes, the little green cars with luxury trimmings become quite plausible.^[61]

Main article: Automotive industry

The automotive industry designs, develops, manufactures, markets, and sells the world's motor vehicles. In 2008, more than 70 million motor vehicles, including cars and commercial vehicles were produced worldwide.^[52]

In 2007, a total of 71.9 million new automobiles were sold worldwide: 22.9 million in Europe, 21.4 million in Asia-Pacific, 19.4 million in USA and Canada, 4.4 million in Latin America, 2.4 million in the Middle Eastand 1.4 million in Africa.^[53] The markets in North America and Japan were stagnant, while those in South America and other parts of Asia grew strongly. Of the major markets, China, Russia, Brazil and India saw the most rapid growth.

About 250 million vehicles are in use in the United States. Around the world, there were about 806 million cars and light trucks on the road in 2007; they burn over 260 billion US gallons (980,000,000 m³) of gasoline and diesel fuel yearly. The numbers are increasing rapidly, especially in China and India.^[7] In the opinion of some, urban transport systems based around the car have proved unsustainable, consuming excessive energy, affecting the health of populations, and delivering a declining level of service despite increasing investments. Many of these negative impacts fall disproportionately on those social groups who are also least likely to own and drive cars.^[54][55][56] The sustainable transport movement focuses on solutions to these problems.

In 2008, with rapidly rising oil prices, industries such as the automotive industry, are experiencing a combination of pricing pressures from raw material costs and changes in consumer buying habits. The industry is also facing increasing external competition from the public transport sector, as consumers re-evaluate their private vehicle usage.^[57] Roughly half of the US's fifty-one light vehicle plants are projected to permanently close in the coming years, with the loss of another 200,000 jobs in the sector, on top of the 560,000 jobs lost this decade.^[58] Combined with robust growth in China, in 2009, this resulted in China becoming the largest automobile producer and market in the world. China 2009 sales had increased to 13.6 million, a significant increase from one million of domestic car sales in 2000.^[59]