… I like the blog, keep up the good work!

…thats all, I make very vague predictions so I’m always right.

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.

I just want tomorrow’s CAD to work on today’s high end computer.

Dreamer I know!

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

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?

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?

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).
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 As a intern student that is the only one on this department without a 3D mouse I deserve the 3D mouse.

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.

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.

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)

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