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Ahh, It’s one stormy day before April. What better time than this to give away a SpaceNavigator courtesy of 3DConnexion. Don’t know what it is? It’s a 3D mouse that allows you to move every which way in a 3D environment. I’ve been using one and really like it after getting use to it.
So, in honor of being able to manipulate things in 3D, I’m giving a SpaceNavigator away to a randomly chosen person. All you have to do is a leave a comment below. Tell me what you think the future of CAD will be like or how you want to use this thing. As an added bonus if you follow me on Twitter and send me a message, your name will be entered twice. Just type:
@solidsmack I want to win the SpaceNavigator!!
The winner will be announce this Friday, April 4th at noon (CST)!!
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Future of CAD? I’d go for a world where I can put on a real “thinking cap”, think what I want to see on the screen and have the software model it.
Now that’d be the ultimate in laziness.
If I won, I think I might model what said thinking cap may look like, and let someone else think of how to make it a reality.
-James
Just a comment to James before I leave my own comment:
I have the beginings of the “thinking cap” at home. It doesen’t work yet but right now it consists of a spaghetti strainer, jumper cables and a bunch of tinfoil.
Anyway, when I think about future CAD, I think about holographic displays and voice recognition. So I guess I do not see the use for an input device. The way I see it, the input would be voice and actual manipulation of a 3D holographic shape.
For rudimentary stuff, you would ask for a rectangular or cylindrical shapes to start. Next you would command for additional features, like an axial hole or radial hole and place it with your hands. You’d place or input dimensions by touching surfaces with verbal input for values.
For the ID side of things, shapes could be pulled from a holograhic library that would appear and float next to the part you’re designing. Just select and place where you want it then massage with your hands or verbally instruct how to blend in place.
At the end of either process, the next step would be to make a proto-type of actual part. This would be done by voice command to instruct the current geometry to be processed using a yet to be invented process, such as HER (Holographic Energized Molecularization)
I may be uncreative and boring, but I’d like to see CAD that is stable, does what it’s supposed to do well without excessive flashy capability that’s not really capability because it doesn’t work. The CAD would be easy to use with powerful tools that a designer NEEDS and uses everyday to save time and accomplish his job, which is to design accurate, functional tools and/or products.
I think that designers will still want tangible ways to manipulate models so some sort of 3D space navigator will exist, it just might be a lot different. Possibly, it will also be used to “mold” the part-kind of a squishy (but firm) shape that when poked or squeezed does the same to the model.
This is an easy one. The future of CAD will be … CAD obviously. Clay assisted design.
I’m waiting for a good pair of 3d glasses and virtual reality gloves to become a solidworks add-in (but then I wouldn’t need the spacenavigator!)
If I win it I could use it to make 2 web sites in dreamweaver (I think it works pretty good with adobe) one for a solidworks related help site with tutorial videos and the other for my evening and weekend 3d design business that I’m planning to start.
Future of CAD… bascially do it all online… load nothing locally. Sure makes collaboration easier!
Start with a library of primatives… cube, ball, car, room, person, refrigerator, … push, pull, drag from there.
Cosmic Blobs anyone??
The future of CAD will be smacked into my head on a Daily Basis. Every morning I’ll wake up thinking I know what CAD is all about, and that I know what I’m doing. Then once I arrive at work, I’ll get a good smacking to realize… Hey, I don’t know nuthin’ about CAD, this SolidSmack guy just tought me something new!
How about this, Josh? We don’t have time to wait for the future of CAD. We need it today, here and now! Reliable, robust, faster and, oh,yes, why not affordable too?
hoping to use this thing together with my just bought tablet pc: pen in the right hand, spaceNavigator in the left, and sketch/model away …. pretty please?
Future of CAD now hold on something when your reading this.
Where going star trek!
You will be designing in a virtual world. You will work in the place where your product is needed. If you need to build a machine you will be making it in virtual but exactly the same place tools will be your bare hands. For small designs you could shrink yourself for really big designs you could scale yourself up. Gravity can be manipulated in this virtual world so you can design for mars standards. Standard parts will be offered by the Internet (like google adds but then on your design). Bolts will be obsolete because we can manipulate atoms to grab each other. At the end your design will automatic being optimized to every unused atom.
If your finished designing, robots will build your real design. And parts will be made by a machine that builds with atoms (real 3d printer). (how did star trek called those food things?)
Real world placement will only be for food processing or enhancing the virtual world or for exploring space all other stuff will be in a virtual world (next next next gen Internet).
As a intern student that is the only one on this department without a 3D mouse I deserve the 3D mouse. 
Age of a designer will be around 10 years because most thinking barriers are not present at the age of 10.
If you don’t like my point of view …we will be dead when this happen
Future of cad will be open source.
Right now, the 2D/3D CAD world has two huge problems
- high buying and maintenance costs.
- myriad of different and not interoperable proprietary formats. Working in a R&D office, I usually get files from various suppliers. In my last week emails, I can see nine different types of 2D/3D files, mostly requiring a specific software
CAD is a necessity for most companies, and smallest ones can barely afford those expensive licenses.
I think it is a matter of time before an open source project will address those needs, and the result will eventually be a stable, fast, cheap (or free), reliable software.
Of course, this software will be ignored and criticized for a long time before becoming a market standard.
It happened in the server apps (like apache or mySQL) and office suites (OpenOffice) market, and is happening now with vector graphics (inkscape), publishing (scribus), 3D render (blender) and such.
Why not CAD too?
The future of CAD — Holographs
The future of CAD will be generally in space. I don’t mean space outside the Earth’s atmosphere, I mean space above your current desktop. Imagine if you will, a machine that will be able to project a very high resolution 3D holographic image above your current desktop box. You’re still going to have to do I/O on a keyboard but all the graphics will be holographic in nature and very high resolution.
Steve
I just want to be as cool as all my co-workers who have one.
@solidsmack I want to win the SpaceNavigator!!
The future of CAD will be………………..hell if I knew that I’d be moving my Company to Italy.
I just want tomorrow’s CAD to work on today’s high end computer.
Dreamer I know!
I just want it so I can be the cool new kid at work with the crazy contraption everyone is super jealous of. Yeah, I can see it now, this 3d mouse will definitely finally make me cool and popular and get me tons of friends.
I see holographic displays (The university I attended already has one, but us peons can’t afford it, and it takes up an entire room). I still see 2-D input devices, however. I just don’t think humans have enough haptic control to do real 3D input. So I think the meat and potatahs of the software is mostly there! We just need some hardware upgrades to get us better interfaces.
I see a blog with an edit button to correct my crappy grammar
The space navigator is just what I have been waiting for. With only one arm (the other is there but doesn’t serve much of a purpose any more) to do my CAD and other computer work, the Space Navigator would be a time saver, as well as an energy saver.
The future of CAD is 42.
I plan to rig up the 3d mouse to control my toilet….through controlled flushes I’ll be able to conserve water and prevent clogging the toliet. Plus I finally get to make the water swirl in the other direction.
The future of CAD??? Neural Interface — Jack in just like the Matrix!
I see the future of cad being good.
…thats all, I make very vague predictions so I’m always right.
I seriously want to use this 3D mouse with SolidWorks on my MacBook Pro…. and save my right hand all that extra zoom/pan/rotate work, great idea eh? I’ll go as far as saying I may deserve it more than anyone else. Because…. I’m a newly married man on a tight budget (sigh), but life is good =)
… I like the blog, keep up the good work!
Tight budget and having a mac book pro is that the cause of your tight budget?
Marijn… hah, good point! The MacBook Pro “clearly” falls under business expense =)
I would like to see maybe fewer releases, possibly one every two years, but have a more stable product that does not require constant service packs after it’s release.
Future of CAD…?? I think it will be like the ipod touch interface. Using your fingers to do the walking…!
The future of CAD will be tied to real time physics calculations being processed by incredibly powerful desktop computers or grid computing corporate networks. We will be able to push a mechanism through its range of motion and instantly see reactions and stresses and strains as a result. CAD and Analysis of CAD models will become linked together so that it appears they are the same. If I won, I would use my motion controller to eliminate the pain in my wrist and upper shoulder. Sorry I can’t send you a message on twitter - my company blocks it.
The future of CAD is virtual reality models manipulated with the designer’s hands via tactile feedback. Eventually the link between the model and the human will be through thought and we can get rid of the limitations that our hands have.
I need one of these for the new laptop my boss just bought for the department. Everyone loves the guy who donates the best loot.