SolidWorks World 2016 left 7,000 people overloaded by breakout sessions, inspired by customers, and smelling of the finest barbecue in the world. While the General Sessions were a bit all over the place, mingling product announcements amongst customer stories and keynotes (with beer, boobs and Yves Behar being the highlights), underlying it all was a…
It’s the first day of February, 2016. Time for the biggest CAD industry event for a single software package. SolidWorks World 2016 is on and there’s an ethereal feel in the air. Maybe it’s the rapturous, simultaneous geeking of thousands of SolidWorks users. Maybe it’s the 75 degree Dallas, Texas weather in the middle of…
We blew past them in a spritz of gravel and glass, popping the shrubberies like catapulted rocks into the air. We could handle the speed–oh, we could handle the speed–what we couldn’t handle was how fast our skin would recoil once we came to a stop. Five seconds before that happened, the unthinkable occurred. The…
When you’re barreling down that singletrack and decide to wrap yourself around a half-rotted pine, the first thing that runs through your head may be a branch with a frightened chipmunk stuck to it. The second thing will undoubtedly be finding your multi-tool to fix the bent wheel/pedal/derailleur. The company that wants to put the…
Today, we’re bringing back a segment that lapsed into a coma and suddenly awoke recently with a direct punch to an exposed solar plexus. Model of the Week: the best and coolest 3D models the SolidSmack audience is creating and sharing online. We’re in the future now, so there’s loads of amazingness and brilliance we…
We looked hither, we looked yonder, and all we saw was more than we could take in with our eyes. Light whipping from their fur, jowls blazing and toothless gums gumming their way toward our legs. We had to get out of the rising tide, and all we had were five wasp heads and a…
This past weekend I took apart a massive 2×4 workbench–it covered the entire side of a garage. It was large enough to lay two 4×8 plywood sheets end-to-end, dismantle a motorcycle upon, gut and clean five deer, or construct a normal size workbench–a workbench like this one.
A loud noise and thin sheets of metal fell. Though it had peeled off its thin cosmetic lid, the thick frame revealed how many porcupine quills it took to construct such a creature. Bare like their creation, they gnawed bark pails, dipping their paws into these links. Matt Tkocz – Matt does it all and…
Ya know, you can only gnaw so many LEGO wheel hubs before you’re like, “These should totally be made from a chunk of aircraft-grade aluminum.” Mark Carpenter is brilliant. As a qualifying ‘Father of the Year’, he and his three sons have started producing LEGO aftermarket mods, the latest of which is a set of aluminum rims, currently…
To our subtractive manufacturing excitement, we’ve seen an increase in the number of desktop CNC machines internetting their way into our lives over the past year. The latest of these is the Evo-One, a sleek package from MakerDreams that fits in 530cm (20.8″) envelope. A perfect size for that woodtop desk next to your well-groomed…
Discovery has a new way to experience all that happens in this world. DiscoveryVR covers everything from puppy dog sporting events to blowing things up–they avoid the combination of the two for obvious reasons.
The new Line/Shape/Space site has an interesting read by Autodesk CTO, Jeff Kowalski. It is, of course, to promote Autodesk’s Dreamcatcher project, a parameter-based, generative design project, but the headline is nice and controversial, just the way we like’em.
Crinkled skin and bloodshot eyes filled the light as it passed by. Once we had thought there would be plenty of dark to hide such a hideous sight, but whatever it was doing with its fleshy skin-cicles in the core chamber was changing things, and most likely, it had something to do with a moisturizer…
When I first saw the Shapr3D app, I was pretty impressed, as were some of you, but it left some lingering questions. A 3D modeling app on the iPad Pro that looks well thought-out, but why an iOS CAD app? So we gathered the questions and ask the founder and developer, István Csanády, more about…
I think you all know what a 3D PDF is–your 3D model and all of its views right within a PDF document. They’ve been around for YEARS. Quite convenient for sharing model views, protecting model data or emailing a PDF to grandma who can easily open your work and share with her quilting club, but…
Read our interview with Shapr3D’s István Csanády here. Ever wonder why 3D modeling wasn’t more like sketching? Or sculpting? Why we’re limited to mouse clicks? I’ve had that conversation with multiple people. Some thin modeling with a stylus (a pencil) doesn’t seem intuitive. I’d say the mouse is the device that doesn’t seem intuitive — especially…
A stick lattice fence grew against the prairie hills, looking half forgotten, but for the kempt hedgerow and berries picked clean. We watched for days wondering when their days started, ended and what they did between. It wasn’t that we meant to harvest them, but to learn how they moved. With lop-sided heads, half fur…
Onshape has had a bang-up year. After launching in March, upending CAD pricing, and locking down additional $80M funding (for a total of $144M), there were only two things left to do in the year: break out of beta and launch a freakin’ app store.
You grip that mouse so tightly at times, you hear its wee screws buckle and pop under the pressure. It’s ok. That’s just the result of the constant roller-coaster of excitement and frustration that consumes the life of those who use CAD software all day. We’re always on a lookout for a mouse that can…
It was a bottle of buns, and two of gravy. Though it took a few minutes for our eyes to adjust to the dim lit counter, we were able to form the gravy balls minutes before the attack began. We were ready, with just enough extra pepper juice to heighten our senses, squeezed and extracted…
Imagine having your own garage machine shop and successfully funding 11 Kickstarter campaigns. If you’re Brad Martin who runs Tactical Keychains (TK), that’s a reality. His latest project is the Ti-MQR (Titanium Magnetic Quick Release), hitting funding of $1000 within hours and pushing toward the $100k mark with time to spare. Brad does 100% of the work…
There’s a face people make when they’re overwhelmed with excess awesome. It’s somewhere between a wide-eyed pucker and explosive, jowl-shaking laughter. I saw some people making that face today when they tried out the new ThinkPad P40 Yoga, Lenovo’s newest machine that doubles as a tablet and a fully-loaded workstation. Lay it back, flip it…
Built on their foreheads, we travelled far and the days we’re indistinguishable. A golem? Yes. A rabbit? Of course. You couldn’t expect such a creature to stay dormant forever. Their size and a step will keep them moving for years, always, endlessly, in search of these links. Markus Lenz – Markus has a particular style…
Today, we’re looking at something a little different. We don’t often cover topics outside industrial design and engineering, but we’re all about the process, the business of design, and particularly about how to successfully bring a product to market. VESTIGE is a shirt brand created by Kyle Derleth and Mark DiMuzio in 2015. They started small,…
If you sit a computer all day, you likely have a speaker sitting there next to you, and if you like to take that speaker with you, it’s likely a portable, Bluetooth speaker. The sound quality among these is typically so-so, good enough to get you through the day. Most wouldn’t know the difference in…
Interdisciplinary innovation is expanding and Derek Hugger believes art and engineering should be no exception. The artist and woodworker uses intricate engineering designs to put nature and mesmerizing kaleidoscopics of abstract shapes into motion. We found out more about everything that goes into this process and how each piece goes through hours of development, so…
The orange popped. Not the color. The fruit. We thought we were the last on the platform, but something down the tunnel let us know otherwise. Its squeal burst the last of our food, then there they appeared, lapping up the juice and garbed in these links. Isaac Hannaford – There’s just something about good…
The papers clanged. But how? It was normal paper after all–white, some edges creased, even a coffee cup stain here and there. But they were different in the light. Silver they shown, and around their edges the glow of an aged cosmos burnt by the vacuum-cracking blast of a thousand bursting moons. No, this wasn’t…
Looks like GoldieBlox is diversifying a bit, going from the girl-focused, engineer-based board games to girl-focused, engineer-based action figures. Pretty savvy move on their part, and they’ve got a pretty interesting approach to how their presenting them.
The Glowforge laser cutter is the biggest crowdfunded 30-day campaign in history. $27.9M in 30 days. It didn’t launch on Kickstarter. It didn’t re-launch on Indiegogo. It launched on their own website, bringing in $27.9M in pre-orders alone. But even four months before the crowdfunding campaign, Glowforge had already secured $9M in Series A funding.
The chamber door sent impact shudders through the last nerves of the last inhabitants of the last inhabitable cave of the last inhabitable planet. How? Out in the darkness? The outer reaches of the outer reaches of the known beyond the known universe. One thousand years from then it would be obvious. It was they…
To date, there hasn’t been a desktop 3D Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) machine brought to market. There have been kits created and there are others in development. Add the Sinterit Laser 3D Printer to the list. The start-up out of Kraków, Poland launched the desktop device at Euromold 2015 with examples of prints from the…
An eye, no three, past in front of the crack made by its last wood-splitting hit. There hadn’t been any of their kind pass through here in months, so it was about due. All we had to do now is wait. You usually don’t attack someone when their back is turned–it’s proper killing etiquette–but with…
It was a party of pigeons and pygmy goats. One against the other? No, they were in cahoots. The pigeons, responsible for logistics. The goats responsible for ballistics. Together they were a team, nay, a force, that could only be described at lethal. And in the midst of all of them, their leader– hairless, war-torn,…
If you could make a 3D printed car, surely a bicycle couldn’t be much harder? Interestingly, it hasn’t been attempted, at least to the level that Industrial Design students Paul De Meeiros and Stef De Groot want to to take it. OBI 0.5 is the prototype phase, but the aim is simple, a modular, open-source…
The cones cracked beneath our feet, and the air was putrid, but we were able to finally find how the rasp moths had burrowed through. Though they were large, their main bodies were more like lubricated jelly sacks, able to squeeze through the tightest spaces, most likely moistened from the glandular excretions of these links.…
Ever since we first saw how 3D Hubs sources local 3D printers, bringing the 3D printer to you, we’ve had a different perspective about the direction of 3D Printing. 1) You don’t have to own a 3D printer and 2) You can make money off of it if you do. Now they’re adding a third…
When I think of all the desktop laser cutters available, the list is… well, extremely small. Tantamount to none, really. I can’t list any, because there are hardly any available. There are some decent DIY options, some Kickstarter projects that made a go of it and others that simply failed. There are just not a…
Do you remember way back in 2010, when SolidWorks was going to be available anytime, anywhere? Well, that’s finally happening… maybe, kinda. On September 22nd, at the SolidWorks 2016 Launch Event in Boston, Gian Paolo Bassi demonstrated what he called ‘SolidWorks Online Edition’, his ‘favorite feature,’ being the one that puts the 300 innovations in…
The rice grains pelted our faces–our faces shielded by pan-seared tortillas, haha! The joke was on them. Not even the soggy, beef soaked jabs of their tendrils could turn us away. However, we knew the corn-based shielding wouldn’t survive the night, forcing us to sizzle up some charred rabbit fur to weave into the protective…
A lot of people are finding out that 3D printing is just as much about the 3D printing software as it is about the 3D printing hardware. But it starts way before that, with software to design the object to be printed. The sole purpose of the Morphi App was to simplify 3D modeling for printing–to…
The fight has begun. Or maybe, it ended before it even began. The Apple Pencil isn’t available until November and already it’s giving all the other styluses a run for their money. Apple Pencil or Wacom’s Cintiq stylus? FiftyThree’s Pencil or a stick wrapped in aluminum foil? In a recent article, designer Linda Dong tries…
Four pinstripes and a melon. That’s all the payment we could gather. Down among the shantie with tattered cloth and mud holding make-shift walls to the ground, droids would peek from the blinds, unsure if they would be extracted or provided parts. Why we were able to get a melon in these parts, we’ll never…
Just six months after they announced $30M in Series C funding, Onshape has announced $80M in new funding, led by Silicon Valley firm Andreessen Horowitz, known for their investment in Airbnb, Box, Facebook, Github, Twitter, Skype and others. This brings Onshape’s funding efforts to a grand, grin-inducing total of $144M.
When Joshua Lifton of Crowd Supply approached his mate Kurt Mottweiler to help design a variant case for hardware designer Bunnie Huang’s Novena open-source computer, it was hard for him to resist the opportunity. As a veteran, bespoke camera designer, Kurt was delighted to venture into a new area, where a non-touchscreen computer with a removable…
Meet Lily, a small drone you can toss in the air, to track and record your every move. This is what I imagine a more practical use of drones to be like in the future–Everyone with their own little drone assistant to film them… open doors, fend off would-be assailants, etc.
Well, wouldn’t you know it. The temperatures have dropped 20 degrees in the northern hemisphere, so that can only mean one thing, football season, less daylight, winter is coming, a new release of SOLIDWORKS is here. It’s SOLIDWORKS 2016 launch week and this year Dassualt is adding something to the mix.
“What a large box of meats!” said I, hiding the pan of heated oil behind the swollen belly of a grossly oversized Patagonian Cavy. They looked at me puzzled, shimmying to the side, their feet stirring the dust, and quickly grabbing the buried cable to shield themselves with pulsating power of these links. Joel Rae…
When we first heard about Simplify3D, the internet was already hearting it mucho. Nine months later, they show no sign of slowing down.
Sauntering she stepped. The steel toed shift of air against steal echoed up through its structure. Side-stepping something that had tried before, she climbed, slow at first, then with speed, to kick through the membrane protecting these links. Pablo Carpio – What starts as really loose sketches, ends up as floating vehicle concepts, beautiful mountainscapes…