To finish out the year, Cadalyst All-Star awards honor the best of the best—the products that stood out among those that earned Highly Recommended ratings from Cadalyst Labs in the past six months.

3D animation, rendering and modeling software.

Visualization software brings designs to life

Cadalyst All-Star awards recognize the most outstanding products among those that earned Highly Recommended ratings from Cadalyst Labs in the past six months.

Prices on large CRT monitors have dropped substantially since our last CRT review in September 2003. Not so many years ago I remember paying triple what these current CRTs cost. What you don't get for these lower prices are multiple connectivity optionsthere's usually no USB connectivity whatsoever. The overall quality of these behemoths is, however, excellent.

Table 1. 2D Publishing Features

Much of what you sacrifice in AutoCAD LT over more expensive-and more powerful-standard AutoCAD lies in two areas: 3D functionality and programming interfaces, especially the popular AutoLISP programming language.

When Discreet's 3ds max and Autodesk VIZ diverged as products, 3ds max evolved its core modeling, animation, and rendering features with additional capabilities specific to game design and film and video effects while VIZ offered AEC-oriented features.

Some purists like to create everything from scratch, including texture maps. There's nothing wrong with this, if you have the time and skill.