In 3D design File Sizes are a massive limitation, polygon by polygon files get larger and larger. For example when making a game every piece of geometry in a scene included in characters, guns, objects and the surrounding landscape add up to a massive file size. The minimum hard drive space needed for a game just released on the 13/11/07 by the name of Crysis is 12GB. This 12GB is for the finished product available to customers. Not only this it is important to consider the file sizes generated in the production process and the storage space required to store them.

Rendering times are another issue for 3D design as scenes and animations can take days to render. This can be due to poor hardware or software that isn’t efficient. There is a limit for what 3D software can do on current CPUs. This limit is based on memory bandwidth and the size of L1 and L2 caches.

Expense The cost of a 3D design software package along with a system that can handle the software fluidly and render effectively comes at a very expensive price. The RAM, CPU and GPU account for a lot of the 3D work within a system and they definitely need to be above average standards. Overall setting up a 3D design workstation requires a moderate amount of finance.

In The Architecture, Engineering, and Construction Industry for the 3D modelling of :

3D can be used in the form of CAD (Computer-aided design) to design, develop and optimise products, which can be goods used by end consumers or intermediate goods used in other products. CAD is  used in the design of tools and machinery used in the making of components, and in the design of all types of buildings, from houses to hospitals and factories.

CAD is mainly used for detailed engineering of 3D models, but it is also used in the engineering process in the concept design and layout of products. It is carried on into strength and dynamic testing of assembling products.

CAD has become an  important technology with benefits such as lower product development costs and a greatly shortened design cycle. CAD helps designers to lay out and develop work on screen, print it out and save it for editing so they casn save time on their drawings. The fact that ALL of this can be done from behind a computer moniter is an amazing benefit reducing costs massively.

This is a fully editable digital CAD production. Showing just how complex a drawing can become on 1 computer screen.

Photometric units are systems for defining amounts of light energy

Here is a breakdown of different photometric units:

lumen-hour   
lumen-second      

lumen/foot^2
lumen/meter^2
lumen/centimeter^2

The main difference between Local and Global illumination is that in local illumination it is only direct lighting that is a variable. Local illumination algorithms only describe how individual surfaces reflect or transmit light. Global illumination gives an overall lighting solution through algorithms that takes account of all indirect lighting.

In mathematics, computing, linguistics, an algorithm is a list of well-defined instructions for a task that, given a beginning stage, will proceed through a well-defined series of successive states. The two types of Global illumination algorithms that are used in 3ds Max are radiosity and ray-tracing.

Ray tracing described simply is the process in which rays are traced from the camera through a pixel, to the geometry and then back to their light sources.

Radiosity offers a significant solution to ray tracing in the fact that radiosity is not camera dependent and that ray tracing is dependent on a camera. 

Diffuse interreflection is a process where light reflected from an object strikes other objects in the surrounding area, illuminating them. Diffuse interreflection describes light reflected from objects which are not shiny or specular. 

Artifacts are misrepresentations of structures such as a building or in medical use a tissue structure. These misrepresentations (artifacts) are caused by a reconstruction algorithm’s inability to represent the anatomy.