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Using the Freedman Center Lab

Assistance for in-person use of the Freedman Center technology lab

Lab Software List with Descriptions

This page provides additional information about software packages in the Lab. All software with an * requires a little extra setup the first time a CWRU network ID holder logs in. See this page for more info. 

Quick links:

  1. GIS / Statistics / Development Software
  2. Multimedia Digitization, Editing, and Production
  3. A/V V/R 3D Software
  4. Artificial Intelligence and Language Model Software

 GIS / Statistics / Development Software

  1. *ArcGIS Pro - a comprehensive geospatial platform for professionals and organizations and is the leading geographic information system (GIS) technology on the market. We have installed deep learning libraries, which are a series of tools to use AI and Deep Learning to solve geospatial problems, such as feature extraction, pixel classification, and feature categorization. This makes some powerful digital maps! [Software Center]
  2. Gephi - open-source software for visualization and exploration of all kinds of graphs and networks.
  3. Google Earth Pro - A quick and easy way to get started making digital maps. Google Earth Pro can import geospatial data but also allows you to create maps with little to no coding background. 
  4. Mathtype - mathematical equation annotation software. [Software Center]
  5. Notepad++ - a free source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages.
  6. Nvivo - a software program used for qualitative and mixed-methods research. Specifically, it is used for the analysis of unstructured text, audio, video, and image data, such as interviews, focus groups, surveys, social media, and journal articles. [Software Center]
  7. Origin - software for interactive scientific graphing and data analysis. [Software Center]
  8. Python - a high-level, general-purpose programming language with a design philosophy that emphasizes code readability. There are more than 500,000 packages available for Python and it runs on every platform.
  9. QGIS - a free, open-source software that allows users to create, edit, visualize, analyze, and publish geospatial information. QGIS has the GRASS GIS plugin installed. This is an open-source alternative to ArcGIS that also makes some powerful digital maps. 
  10. R - a programming language for statistical computing and data visualization. It has been adopted in the fields of data mining, bioinformatics, and data analysis.
  11. RStudio Desktop - an integrated development environment (IDE) for R and Python.
  12. Tableau Reader - a free desktop application for data visualizations [Software Center]
  13. Visual Studio Code (VS Code) - a development environment for Windows, Linux, macOS and web browsers and supports many programming languages, including C, C#, C++, Fortran, Go, Java, JavaScript, Node.js, Python, Rust, and Julia.

 Multimedia Digitization, Editing, and Production

  1. *Adobe Creative Cloud (see special instructions) - a suite of powerful software for creating, editing, manipulating, and animating media in a variety of formats. FC computers have all but Lightroom installed. [Software Center]
  2. Audacity - free software for audio editing and cleaning.
  3. Handbrake - free software for converting video file formats.
  4. Insta360 Studio - video editing software for 360° video recorded on the Insta360 camera (lent at the Service Desk).
  5. Omnipage Ultimate 19 - Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software for converting scanned images into editable text documents.
  6. Stereo Photo Maker - a free stereo image editor.
  7. Stereo Video Maker - a free stereo video editor.
  8. Subtitle Edit - open-source software for creating, opening, editing, and converting video subtitle track files.
  9. TMPGEnc Video Mastering Works - software for editing video and converting across multiple file formats.
  10. TMPGEnc Authoring Works 6 - software to create a DVD / Blu-ray / AVCHD with high quality menus.
  11. WinX DVDRipper Platinum - software that allows you to Backup / Rip / Digitize from commercial DVDs (subject to copyright permissions).

 A/V V/R 3D Software

  1. Agisoft Metashape - a photogrammetry tool for turning photos into 3D models.
  2. *Autodesk Suite - a suite of programs for 2D and 3D modeling and animation.
    • 3DS Max - 3D modeling, animation, and rendering software for games and design visualization
    • AutoCAD - Software for 2D and 3D CAD.
    • Inventor Professional - Professional-grade product design and engineering tools for 3D mechanical design, simulation, visualization and documentation
    • Maya - 3D animation, modeling, simulation, and rendering software for film, games, and TV
    • Mudbox - 3D Digital painting and sculpting software
    • MotionBuilder - 3D character animation software
    • Netfabb Premium - Additive manufacturing and design software
    • ReCap Pro - Reality capture and 3D scanning software and services
    • Revit - Plan, design, construct, and manage buildings with powerful tools for Building Information Modeling Fusion with FeatureCAM - is used in CNC programming for milling and turning work and is ideal for mechanical engineering, prototyping and precision manufacturing
  3. Blender - a free open-source 3D creation suite that supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline including modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, even video editing and game creation
  4. Zephyr Free - a free photogrammetry tool for turning photos into 3D models.

 Artificial Intelligence and Language Model Software

  1. *Ollama - a lightweight tool for running open-source large language models directly on local machines. It supports models like LLaMA 3 and Mistral and runs efficiently on CPUs or GPUs with simple commands.
  2. LM Studio - a desktop app that lets you download, run, and chat with local LLMs through a visual interface. It also hosts a local API that can be used by other tools like AnythingLLM.
  3. Hugging Face Transformers - a Python library for using pretrained language models in tasks like text generation, summarization, and question answering. It supports thousands of models and is widely used in both research and applications.
  4. LangChain - a framework for building AI-powered apps using LLMs. It connects language models with tools, memory, and data sources to create custom assistants and workflows.
  5. TensorFlow - a machine learning platform developed by Google. It supports model training and inference for a wide range of AI tasks, including natural language processing and large model deployment.
  6. PyTorch - a flexible and popular deep learning framework used to train and run large language models. Most open-source models today are developed with PyTorch.
  7. Unsloth - enables efficient fine-tuning of LLMs on consumer hardware. It supports methods like QLoRA to reduce memory usage and training time when customizing models for your own data.

*All software with an * requires a little extra setup the first time a CWRU network ID holder logs in. See this page for more info. 

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