Morpholio Trace, the CAD sketching app, has collaborated with Shapr3D, a modeling application, to roll out a new feature for its iOS 12 update, which Morpholio Trace has dubbed “Drag’n’Fly.”

Anna Kenoff co-founded Morpholio Trace in 2011 as a 2-D sketching platform for the creation of floor plans, elevations, sections, and any quick architectural drawing.  Over the years, the team knew it needed to address sketching with 3-D models as it was one of their users’ biggest requests. “We wanted to make it possible to effectively wrap architectural models with trace paper to continually adapt them as needed,” Kenoff said.

Drag’n’Fly answers this request with the creation of infinite 3-D views of an architectural model within a 2-D sketch platform. The views are automatically grafted over a perspective grid, allowing users to accurately sketch over generated scenes. Each image can be placed into a quasi-slide show format, creating a visual narration of a site’s design. The feature supports the iPad Pro’s Drag and Drop technology and the new 3-D file type USDZ, making it easy to work between modeling apps and Trace.

Shapr3D, an iPad Pro 3-D modeling platform with a wide variety of uses, ranging from production plant layouts to feasibility studies of tunnel boring machines, is the perfect complement to Drag’n’Fly. 3-D models can now be directly imported through an OBJ format into the perspective grid generated by Morpholio Trace.

While desktop applications such as Rhino remain the industry standard, mobile solutions are gaining increasing clout. According to Kenoff, “The iPad Pro has now become as powerful as our computers and has made it effortless to work between apps. This opened up the gateway for Shapr3D and Morpholio Trade to rethink the design workflow, finally fusing together sketching and 3-D modeling.”

Overall, the Morpholio Trace brings the flexibility and power of hand drawing and thinking to the front-end design process.