What has Fur, Bumps, stereoscopic 3D support and reeks of SolidWorks Import possibilities? The brand new version of Luxology’s modeling/rendering/animation package, modo 401. Yes, all of that, in one integrated tool. Since first being show early this year, many a rendering fanatic has been anticipating the new rendering capabilities, while deep in the lair of…

I found it! Right here under this bowl of oats of all places. Now how does something that furry end up under a bowl of oats. I think we need to have a talk with the committee and subject them to these links. Industrial Decay – Who doesn’t love to see how things rot? Here’s…

Attack I say! Attack and plunder the riches… of … imported… geometry and… stuff. Ok, battle faces everyone, we’re on a warpath today, a warpath to create usable 3D geometric data from imported files. It’s an interesting issue submitted by a user tired of recreating sheet metal part when he already has a 3D .IGES…

I wanted to get this up last week, but ya know, you gotta let fine content like this simmer in it’s own meaty juices for a few days. Yes, It’s been nearly two weeks since the PTC/USER event in Orlando, but I’ve continued to to receive emails from users asking about it. So, to wrap…

I hope you all are ready for a fun and enlightening experience. I know we’ve pushed this iPhone modeling in SolidWorks clear around the table, but this is the model that everyone is and will be looking at for the foreseeable future. Nelson Au was kind enough to share his model and his process for…

You are lookin’ sporty. Really, you are stylin’ the design and engineering process like no other and everyone wants to know just how you do it… or at least, we do. Is it possible that you use more than one process or program to design and engineer products? We may not even realized it if…

It’s not so much that everything in the future will be built around the idea that we’ll need a proper vessel to study the organs of extraterrestrial life, but you can imagine very quickly that it would need to look stinkin’ cool… and have lights and bolts and stuff. For instance, it would almost certainly…

Raise of hands! Who wants to blow $489 for 3G Wireless and PDF Support? Huh? Huh? The MASSIVE 9.7″ vertical screen of the new Amazone Kindle DX is available Wednesday, June 17th for your monochrome viewing pleasure. You (or your company) could pop for one of these badboys so you can store ‘3,500 books’ on…

Just look at all the shiny mac-induced fun that happens when a highly branded product company *cough*Apple*cough* wants to develop it’s products, with it’s own product…. or so some would think. Well, for some of you, it’s time to put that Apple sticker back on your rear windshield. Siemens PLM software has announced the commercial…

Imagine, you’re five years in the future, trying desperately to get a handle on the new touch-screen gestures for CAD and it’s not all it’s cracked up to be… for designing products. Suddenly, it seems easier to strangle the people forcing multi-touch tech down your throat, along with the bloggers that keep going on about…

Ok, maybe not ‘Crush’ so much, maybe more like, boot it into the future. You need to drop your bagel, Blackberry or coworker on the ground and run, nay I say sprint, to read Oleg Shilovitsky’s 6 reasons Why Google Wave will Change PLM Collaboration. Pivotal, my geometry-glazed friends. Oleg briefly points out how Google’s…

Mwuuhaha!! I’m telling you, this is a viciously cool amount of noodles. I could never throw this many noodles at innocent people enjoying a leisurely stroll through the park, but I shall! Noodles at you! Noodles and links!! Marek Denko Buggy Series – We all love buggies, but these by 3D ar-test Marek Denko are…

I know, you have a few Class III Vault doors already and probably regifted a couple last Christmas, but maybe this will give you a little appreciation for the amount of torching and hammering these massive doors can take. Vault Structures has been creating security doors for a while. Their newest 9000 lb. vault door,…

While you’ve been gallivanting around reading posts about Pro/E and eating crumpets and cold pizza by the pool, there’s been a load of SolidWorks and other CAD-related goodness you’ll want to catch up on. Here, in the briefest way possible, are all the thing that I you may have missed over the past few days.…

You may have suddenly gagged on a dry crumb of muffin just now, so just give yourself a nice hard wallop in the chest and take another swig of scalding hot coffee. We’re actually about to expel muffintop all over SolidSmack with some tidbits I took away from the PTC/USER 2009 event I’ve been at…

Wow, looky here, SolidSmack is out in Orlando for a conference. It has to do with CAD, the 3D kind, and also users and also interacting with users, but it has nothing to do with SolidWorks. It’s the PTC/USER event. PTC is the company behind Pro/E, WindChill, CoCreate, and MathCAD. My favorite experience with Pro/E…

It crawls? Yes, it crawls. Slow at first and then before you know it your gripping your face skin for dear life pleading with anything nearby to let you have one last look at these links. 1895-1910 Hotel Luggage Labels – Like you’ve never seen them! Be prepared. Really, be prepared… ok, ready? ok. Morskoi…

Don’t ya just love slapping down a couple grand for a smokin’ hot 3D model pumpin’ workstation? There’s a whole heap memory-laden machine to smooth out design, render and simulate, but there’s comes a point when you hear what has worked best for others. Today we take a look at the magnificence of a perfect…

What’s in the wide, wide world of 3D CAD is going on? I’ll tell ya what’s going on, technology that has been presented over the past two weeks at E3 and various display and developer conferences has completely changed the way we are going to collaborate with people and design projects. They’re technologies that will…

Yep, can you believe it? There’s more insanity going on in the whole touch-screen market and 3D CAD is getting in on the action and finally starting to be included in the mainstream coverage. What use could touch-screen technology possible have with developing products in 3D? Is it even feasible? With new highly sensitive, capacitive…

If you’re like any other normal person, you occasionally sit at your desk putting stickers and labels on your face, thinking there’s got to be a quick and easy way to create labels in SolidWorks. There is and it’s much faster than importing AutoCAD files filled with RomanS terror. So, ignore the looks from your…

It’s here folks. A new search engine. The new one from Microsoft. Bing. Fresh into Beta and ready for you to compare to all those years spent in the glory of Google’s search results. It’s got some nice features, some nice lag on video, image and site previews and a fresh look at how browsing…

Raise your eyebrow in a menacing way if you’ve ever received a really crumby .pdf, concept print or model data to create a production model from? If only there was a little more info or a way that the data could be transformed into usable 3D parametric data huh? Adobe has just release a interesting…

You suppress one feature and everything underneath it gets suppressed. You cringe, a volcano erupts under the sea and five babies are born, slapped and all at once and named Llyod. Don’t you wish those ornery SolidWorks Features would just behave sometimes? Well there just so happens to be, not one, but two single ways…

Oh, well, now that strawberry jam and smiles have been spread all over it’s exterior, we’re never gonna full resale value. It does however make me feel like dancing, fist punching the air and checking out these snazzy lookin’ links. Almacan 3D Surreal (fer real) – You’ll be scared for just a few minutes, then…

The last time I saw something this lovable and all together creepy, Sigourney Weaver was watching mama Alien get sucked through a quarter-size hull breach. Shown at the D3 in New York as part of the FUTURE.city exhibit earlier this month, the ‘Autonomous Living Unit’ by Eduardo McIntosh, is the all-in-one The idea? That this…

If you’re an old hat at using public transit, or someone trying frantically to go site-seeing, in the bustling, historic cities of Europe, you’ll know how important bus information can be. Bus stops, as we know them, are about to get a makeover. They’re not just for use as a goal for small dogs anymore.…

Cover your hair. We are firing up the burners on the Feature furnace of SolidWorks about to drop some gas-drenched geometry into the flames. There’s a slew of Features that thrive on 3D geometry alone, but I’m not gonna say, “You, go learn about Features!” eight times. Post like that are useless and annoying. This…

Oh, It starts innocent enough. First, it’s, “Let’s turn this desk into liquid-cooled, quad crankin’ beast!,” then suddenly it’s, “Papa, can I replace my spleen with hybridized nitrogen cooling units?” Nonetheless, we’ll gladly accept this experiment into liquid-cooled awesomeness from the guys at Popular Mechanics. Yes, choke another one up to excess, the elimination of…

So what do ya think, is SolidWorks ‘old lady CAD’ out for a stroll only to trip over a small grain of feature-based modeling, tumbling face-first into a small ditch mumbling, “hebber, hebber..” Hmmmm. I see some CAD vendors lookin’ on in anticipation. They may not be tumbling, but some people are probably wondering what…

Simply smashing I say! A small child climbing backwards up a river of chocolate with two poodles and a baby penguin dancing atop his head? Amazing! Have you finished your tea dear? Yes! On to… the links! iunwind – Classy and elegant design. not a bit too early in the day for it either. Celebration…

I know your brainpan is sore from beating it against the wall of deadlines you have looming, but if you have a website in one hand and some 3d models in the other, you can smash those together right now to splatter everyone with your 3D genius. Good ol’ Cliff from 3DVia shows you how,…

Yep, SolidSmack is starting to reek of greasy touch-screen bliss. Let’s pummel this iPhone stuff even further into the ground. You remember that eDrawings on iPhone poll last week? The one where over 50% of the people would use it if they could? Well there’s hope for you and it’s all wrapped up in a…

It’s not directly CAD related, but it says 3D and has ‘Graphics’ is the headline, so it’s gotta be kinda interesting. It’s the History of 3D Graphics from MaximumPC and it’s 10 pages choke full of specs and insight to the GPU evolution. Have you ever wondered how much graphics cards have change over the…

Five days and five version later the original iPhone 3G model has been slapped around and optimized to use some of those best practices we all tuck away in our back pockets from time to time. On top of that, we have a image-rich “here’s how you go about doing this”, some important SolidWorks and…

The excessive amount of arm motion and flared eyelids was just too much to bear. So, Iwhat do you do? Detached some of the arms and installed these links instead. That’s what ya do. Daniel Widrig – If you’ve ever wondered how strangly odd and complicated 3D can be, check out these structures. Creately -…

Since we’ve been talking about viewing SolidWorks files on an iPhone, how about we talk a little about viewing an iPhone in SolidWorks. Better yet, how about we model up the back of one to see how we can get those continuous smooth shapes in SolidWorks. We’ll be using surfacing, and the fine art of…

So, here we are. the iPhone market is growing like genetically modified corn and SolidWorks ships a million licenses. Seems something should be going on here. Some people I’ve heard from recently think an eDrawings App for the iPhone is in order. They travel, they need access to drawing info, models and yes, even AutoCAD…

Are you tired of people going on about Twitter? Well, it’s not going to ends anytime soon with talk about them being bought out and the value their search provides. One outfit, TwitterJobSearch.com, is bringing value to people, even those that don’t use Twitter, by compiling all the data about jobs on Twitter. What’s even…

There’s hope for your carpal tunnel syndrome, worn out wrist supports and squeaky chair. In the future, they may be replaced by the joy of getting into your work… literally. Lauren Argo put pen to paper to churn out the idea of pen to air on 3D canvas. The idea uses “iGPS”(?) to capture a…

They’re about as tall as muffin tin and sound like eight monkeys drinking whiskey in a hailstorm. But ya know waht, they gave me these links and everything was just fine. Glennz Concepts – it’s apparent that these are awesome illustrations. it’s also apparent I ate something with garlic. Sweet Optimization – and free too.…

Nice. Just look at that. Your LinkedIn profile looks sizzlin’ with all that professional info, a nice smiling photo of your mug and a catchy headline. However, you just lost out on a dream job to that anal guy that knows a little about ‘web obtimization’ – ARRRGH! How did he do it?, you think.…

This is how it all ends, my friends. They pull us in with their human-like emotions and then crush our wills to live… and also maybe our faces. The mechanical and overly productive counterparts of society, many are anxious to release upon civilization, has seen some intense development as of late, Recon bots and the…

If you had one thing to change about how you discussed design iterations, what would it be? I can imagine a few ways, starting with destroying useless email conversations and firing that one guy who can’t seem to do anything on his own. Unfortunately, there’s no program to make people more competent, but there is…

How many times do you look at somethign and say, “yeah, that would be MUCH COOLER in 3D.” Ya know, stuff like a book, a movie, or set of schematics for a miniature fusion reactor. Yet, with all of the possibilities, there’s just something way to simple about the glyphs representing the English alphabet and…

He’ll eat’em all and then just leave the crumbs… That’s when it happens. The crumbs turn into a giant ‘crumb monster’ and chase the cats and butter everything. Only way I can stop it is to distract them with this set of links! Mike Mitchell – Little skull people on hummings birds. Birds with jetpacks?…

Shhhh, in all actuality, this will not only show you how to add custom lengths to a Bill of material (BOM), but will allow you to harness the almighty power of custom properties in SolidWorks. It’s quick, it’s easy and it’s this week’s two-minute Tut. Often, the shop or purchase department need a little extra…

Or if you prefer, go to this gas station and drink the coffee to dance with an atypical gas station clerk and entertain grizzly truck drivers. SolidWorks is after it to juice up your Standard edition of SolidWorks with a Premium upgrade, brought to you in this coffee-flavored, commercial form. It doesn’t make you wonder…

Ah, the wild world of 3D Interfaces technology. It’s bad enough you’re being forced down the multi-touch path, huh? Well, for those that enjoy the bliss of moving graphical elements around the screen with your hand, the research and experimentation continue. There’s two sides of the UI tide – restricting you fingers to the screen…

Put the crackers down. The shop is calling. Nope, not to tell you they have to remake everything, but to let you know the part-makin’ is going perfectly. Why? You knew what to look out for. On the screen it looks spectacular, right? but can it actually be made? For many designers and engineer’s designing…