A Short Criticism of RealFlow

Just as fitting a round peg through a square hole can yield obstacles, using particle simulation software to model architectural environments can sometimes prove aggravating. I have a few criticisms:

1. The OBJ export always leaves holes in the mesh (same with the LWO export). Even after using extremely fine polygon sizes and using the fill all mesh holes script in Rhino, the model still has holes. Needless to say, you can’t send it through for rapid prototyping…

2. When you insert a mesh, you can’t turn off the mesh for further particle creation: every subsequent scene exports the corresponding mesh, which can take forever. To fix the problem, you could delete the mesh, but then you loose the node parameters set up for both the mesh and the fluids inside the mesh. If there was a way to temporarily “turn off” the mesh object (a la Rhino/AutoCAD/etc.) it would essentially solve the problem. I have a solution for this, but its not very elegant. I’ll try posting it in a later post.

3. RealFlow has the elegant interface help solution which allows for you to highlight a node parameter  and press F2 to pop up a short help summary of the parameter. However, if you hit F1 a tiny window pops up and, upon closing said small window the whole program crashes.

4. When you close RealFlow, the program acts like its crashing. Not a bid deal, but it makes you feel uneasy about using the software for in-production work.