Geomagic has a hankering for haptics. You know them for their reverse engineering and inspection software. Now, they add 3D software and haptic control devices to their line-up giving them a very strong portfolio of engineering/manufacturing products.
Tired from the long week? Looking forward to kicking back with an ice cold one while being feed steaks and cheeses by an Ukrainian mine worker? Let the SolidSmack Update take you there. KICK IT.
Fast and Easy 3D Capture? YES PLEASE. 3D Scanning is changing and MatterPort is a start-up that is convincingly leading the way. MatterPort is a hand-held scanning device that allows you to create incredibly accurate 3D models of interior spaces and objects “20 times faster” than any other technology.
Have you ever felt the burning compulsion to export an OBJ file from SolidWorks, only to find out it’s not possible? Well, now it is. Neil Larsen and macro-maker Karpena have released a macro to make it happen. Absolutely free and exports both .obj and .mtl files.
Falling amongst the brush, it lay. Unseen for decades, the rust did not overtake it nor did the sun etch its silver surface. As it happens, the young lad being thrown from his horse landed in the brush as well. Had his hand fallen but an inch further, this story would not be told, the…
How do you immortalize your loved one? Simple. You have them printed as a scrapyard miniature in glorious alumide or bronze. “You and Me” by Dr. Ulrich Schwanitz is a fresh Indigogo project in the beginning stages of funding. If you want to give that special person something unique, this would be it.
You’ll likely opt not to eat off of this table, but if you do, the site of precision gears while you’re chowing down on a flank steak and side of greens may be good for the digestion. The elegantly mechanized ASTROLAB Dining Table from the Design Studion of Roche Bobois is a site to behold…
Slap on your backpack and file this under survival gear of the week. The PowerPot is a thermoelectric power generator you can use after escaping a post-apocalyptic air-raid to supply power to small electrical devices like your phone, a light or a USB microphone you use to broadcast weekly survival tips.
Less than six months ago, My Robot Nation launched. Tuesday, April 10th, 3D Systems announces they have acquired them. My Robot Nation is the fabulous 3D customize and print Robot Factory – a web-based platform that allows you to choose and customize your very own robot collectible. Or in my case, allows you to go…
I know you’ve had your eye on a pipe organ, but you’ll change your mind after you see this. This is the Aeolus, a massive Aeolian wind harp sculpture built by UK artist Luke Jerram. You would think it summons the mighty power of the wind to create crushing, ethereal sounds and rhythmic pulses of…
The 10th app is imminent. It beckons from the ashes… ahem, PTC has formally announced the release of Creo 2.0. For those still clinging to Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5, it may have just the right gleam to get you past the rebranding/restructuring brought out with Creo 1.0. With it, PTC brings you the 10th app to…
When you’re planting the corn and you look up to realize you’ve suddenly been lifted off the ground, transported halfway across the universe and are sitting in a cafe with a small purple creature sipping tea and rubbing your legs, do not worry, it’s only the SolidSmack Update. KICK IT.
This is a robotic turret for your iPhone. It’s called the Galileo because Galileo himself was a robot, with hidden gun turrets. Fact. Unlike the Italian physicist, this iPhone platform has infinite spherical rotation capability and can be operated from remote locations. It’s the brainchild of Josh Guyot and JoeBen Bevirt, the duo who brought…
Unhappiness Alert: The models don’t actually pop out of the screen. I know, it’s hard to believe you’ve been without 3D viewing in AutoCAD WS all these years, but turn those tears of sorrows into finger slaps of joy. You can now view your 3D AutocCAD files on AutoCAD WS in… 3D (granted Turboviewer did…
Shifting wing to wind it steadied the spade, its feet and iron chest ablaze and back against the sun. What could this beast with razored blade, be rooting from the ground? A vine releasing plumes of smoke, burning red, wrapped in these links. Mart Biemans – Abstract, edgy and complex illustration and digital art. F-stops…
Prepare to project your bat signal or latest car concept in STYLE. The Kreios G1 LED image projector has won a highly-prized Red Dot Design Award for Product Design, selected amongst the ‘Best of the Best’ products within 1,800 entries. The extremely energy-efficient projector was developed by our friends over at Cambridge Industrial Design for…
Besides enjoying the warmth of freshly molten plastic against their skin, plastic part designer and mold makers appreciate parts that don’t shrink unevenly or have an excessive amount of undercuts. SolidWorks has launched an addon to help part designers of the world catch and ‘predict’ issues that may come up during manufacturing with a new…
What a week. I don’t know about you, but we had to open up the windows, take off our shoes and let the air blow through our toes. That is a wonderful feeling. You know what else is a wonderful feeling? THE SOLIDSMACK UPDATE (no matter how late it comes out.) KICK. IT.
It’s agreed. In scientific trials carried out in a family living room, 3 out of 3 children agree that this robot is cool. The Morphex is a six-legged, remotely-operated, servo-driven transforming ball-bot of beauty. From a standing (or walking) position it can contract and expand its legs or pull them completely in to form a…
I have a new favorite app. It’s called Paper. Now, before you think I’m trying to be clever and slap me upside the ear, read this. Paper is a new sketch/design app for the iPad created by an entrepreneur, a designer, an engineer, a filmmaker and an inventor. It takes the creation of ideas and…
What do you do with all those 3D models you’re hoarding away for emergencies? You could print them and glue them to your jacket or you could sell them and make some cold hard cash. On top of that, you could save you a few trips down to the blood bank and win $500 just…
Yes, you must. You must get your 3D Kung Fu on. One way to do that, in the least harmful and most efficient way possible, is through the viewing of videos. One in particular that will give you the chops to create endless variations of radial intensity not fit for the pudgy, weak wills of…
This week, SolidSmack was out at One Market Street in San Francisco, California for two days. One Market Street is the home of Autodesk corporate where they invited a slew of Press/bloggers out to get waylaid by the news and features of the Autodesk 2013 product line. The updates span the mechanical, construction and entertainment…
I often use my scimitar to slice through furniture. Typically, it’s to access something like a pen or cookie and sometimes to free feral cats that have made my desk their home. In much the same way, minus the scimitar and cats, Alessandro Busana created the Cutline project to explore the natural aesthetics of wood…
The screws dropped to the floor, growls and wrenching metal echoing down the blast way. The sharp stench always followed. The glowing finger cusps scraping the ships bare edges, felt out the dark interior. Should they find the vault, this time would be different. This time they would face these links. Seed Seven – Xavier…
If you thought people look funny running from crawling or large-eyed jumping robots, wait till you see the fury that is… a small, somewhat flat, not-all-that-scary automoton that launches itself atop buildings and large rock structures.
You may wake occasionally with night terrors of robots grappling your face, but that doesn’t mean there are not a few robots that can be helpful. Bruno Maisonnier of Aldebaran Robotics loves robots. For years he’s been developing technology in the area of personal robotics and since 2005, Aldebaran has been dedicated to delivering an…
There is but one word to describe the EvD Makerbot Absurd iPhone accessory design challenge. FREAKIN’ AWESOME. Not only were there over 180 entries, but over 180 entries that served up an iPhone biting eye-feast of unmatched proportion. There were so, SO many excellent entries, but we’ve narrowed it down and the winner is…
Well, it looks like your a webpage threw up multiple levels of structured data in your browser. Wonderful 3-dimensional throw up. Mozilla Firefox version 11 is out and with it a new developer tool that allows you to view a website’s Document Object Model (DOM) in the beauty of three dimensions. Fancy a look?
As I sit hear thinking on all the wonderful stories of the past week, a small sand weevil crawls past, looks me in the eye and says… IT’S TIME FOR THE SOLIDSMACK UPDATE!!!!!!! Kick it.
You’ve seen the chair designs of Kenneth Smythe on SolidSmack before, but that will not be the last you’ll see. With hundreds of chair and table variations in the works, he’s elevating the visual function of sitting, above the seat and creating designs based on a musical passacaglia of furniture design floating in a narrative…
Rumbling amongst the bracken, the crumb bumble thatched. Never once had he seen such treasure, glistening off each branch. The dew and mist were gathered there and rising up like fog, the runners of the brackens reach, climbed up these silvery links. Michael Kutsche – A subtle mix of comic, movie and Flemish renaissance painting…
Luxury mobile phones are most often super-glam on the outside, and filled with outdated crap tech on the inside, but Swiss watchmaker Tag Heuer has a new class of high-end, Andriod mobile phone and it’s sure to squeeze your eyes right out of their sockets. We take a look at the new Tag Heuer “Racer”…
Wondering what the future looks like? It’s all glass, lots and lots of glass. At least according to Corning, the glass manufacturer responsible for the ‘gorilla glass’ on your iPhone. In this interesting new video put out by the company you’ll see a montage of how glass is embedded (read: controlling) every waking moment of…
CAD Simulation just got a dose of direct modeling simplicity. Kubotek has launched KeyCreator Analysis which provides a new multiphysics solution for users of KeyCreator Direct Modeling application. They’re slating it as ‘CAD Analysis for Designers and Analysts’ and have the full analysis workflow embedded within the KeyCreator interface.
He’s finally done it. You may have heard of Jarno Smeets and his Human Birdwing project before, but this time he’s not trying to fly like a bird, he has flown like a bird. Has he actually cracked the mystery of human-powered flight?
A new player in the 3D collaboration space is on the scene with a site that steps up sharing, syncing and neck slappin’ your project management effort with the blazing efficiency of a web-based collaborative environment. TeamPlatform it’s much more than meets the eye. We had a chance to use it and talk with Scott…
The most awesome thing in the history of awesome things has just come to pass. The hack slappin’ crew at F.A.T. Lab has slipped the surly bonds of inoperable construction sets making it now possible to interlink your favorite blocks with the Free Universal Construction Kit. LEGO, Tinkertoys, Lincoln Logs and seven other sets are…
Low and behold. SpaceClaim, the company slapping the history out 3D modeling just launched SpaceClaim Engineer 2012. As the name implies it’s for Engineers only. Just kidding, it also works for people who write ‘Engineer’ on a piece of paper with crayon and tape it to their chest. Features? We talked with Blake Courter, co-founder…
We all know what happens when you sit young children down at a high-speed pottery wheel. It’s not pretty, especially when the cat is used to ‘improve carving technique.’ However, clay provides endless hours of moldable entertainment for young minds. Add an iPad to the mix and you’ve got days of pure, clean finger-jabbing fun.…
Founders and TEDfellows of web-based collaborative design solution Sunglass.io, Nitin Rao and Kaustuv DeBiswas, have raised US $1.7 million in seed funding from from top tier investors. We’ve got a pipin’ hot, fairly fresh interview with the founders of Sunglass.io with all the details web-based collaboration platform and a look at how the future of…
A new season is here! The swallows are chirping! The pollen is in the air and the SolidSmack update is GO. In this series of video podcasts we recap the titillating news and stories from this week in Design, Tech, CAD and FAB.
At first you may think these are structures you lay on the ground and hide under. You wait for children (or old people) to walk by, then with one quick motion rise up like a life-size pop-up book bringing delight and enchantment (or horror) to the children. Architect and Designer Robert van Embricqs is bringing…
Releasing the chain’s cusp did no good. It did not move. It would not move. Coated with scales and fur, stretching past the openings at each end of the gorge, it lay there, the last of them. As night fell, there was but one last hope. He wrapped the cord from head to tail and…
Turns out rearranging molecules sounds like the soundtrack to a blood-drenched, space-horror film. As you’ll see (and hear) in the video below, Scientist and Engineers from Stanford University and the US Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have found a way to move carbon monoxide molecules one at a time to create ‘designer electrons’…
I’m not sure if the following is pure genius or if it goes too far. Who am I kidding! 3D printed guitar bodies in the shape of spiderwebs and the brachy environment of butterflies, beetles and bugs. They’ve gone too far and that’s exactly why it’s pure genius.
Do Samurais kick? I’m pretty sure they do. Especially after getting an arm or two sliced off. Sensable is taking the sword to 3D Geometry launching the new version of it’s flagship modeling software Freeform, slapping a big ol’ Version 12 on the box and shipping out an app that can take on anything from…
The 3D Mouse. Quite the visage of refinement in the 3D CAD World. Sitting slightly to left of your keyboard in all its glory, carried in its padded case to and fro, even securing a special place on the nightstand next to your bed… ahem. The 3D Mouse. People love’em or… don’t use them. We’re…
There’s no end to the electrical implements of the future you can strap to your shoulder blade – laser canons, jet packs, robot cats with laser eyes – but what if you could project a multi-touch panel on any surface (wait, didn’t we see this before and before and before?) No one has probably thought…
KeyShot 3 came out a mere three months ago. Now, KeyShot 3.1 is here. It’s a mere point release later, but they’re slamming out a slew of new features and improvements with the update. Features like Environment Editing, Material Templates and Network Rendering. They’re adding supprt for 3DConnexion devices and improving the animation debuted with…