How long does it take to cook up a 3D print of a microscopic racecar? Not long at all apparently. A laser beam, some liquid resin and 4 minutes later you have a super tiny, super precise 3D print. It’s a new -printing technology using “two-photon lithography” in conjunction with new, highly-efficient photoinitiators which make…
A little dose of inspiration for your Monday. Can a spark be part of another spark? It most certainly can, especially when it comes to small fires, curiosity and that little thing called ‘an idea.’
Lying against the planks, he grabbed the edge, peering beneath the tilted deck space. Millions of them! All working away with their surroundings illuminated by the light coursing through their veins. The source of the energy was clear. Buried in the midst of them it glowed, a pebble hare clothed in these links. Andrey Lazarev…
I know star-shaped owls can be a bit nightmarish, especially the rabid ones with three eyes and wolf fangs, but this one is guaranteed not to carry you or your babies off in the night. Grant Miller of FigureBang is a toy makin’, 3D printin’ He-man fan from San Francisco, California and he’s in the…
We can slap some text into Photoshop, apply layer styles and churn out some quick LetterPress lookin’ crap, but the process that goes into creating the real thing is much, MUCH more time consuming. RISD students Phil Cao and Kebei Li show the intricate process behind the typesetting task of making one section of one…
Turns out good, energy efficient engineering is a lot more than removing a few extra ribs on a design and slapping a low power motor in it. James Dyson has something to say about that. This story at Fast Co.Exist gets the vacuum innovator’s take on lazy engineering.
Sitting at the ledge, the small boy bot lowered his visor. This is what he was made for and, as it happens, the only thing that made him feel quite human. They were close. He sensed them. Pushing off from the ledge he dove into the ravine, fire packs initiating. Around the bend, they came,…
If you’ve ever been at an all-you-can-eat buffet and started playing with the mash potatoes beneath the sneeze guard, dreaming of the future, you’ll be overjoyed at the 3D display tech coming out of Microsoft Research. It has nothing to do with mash potatoes (yet) but it does seem there are no bounds to what…
If the whole industry that PLM has been built on was a massive bear mama, Autodesk just grabbed it and gave its jowls a good shaking, then proceeded to mount and ride it. On February 29th, Autodesk launched their PLM product announced last year at Autodesk University, Autodesk PLM360. It’s a completely web-accessible, highly customizable…
At SolidWorks World 2012, Josh and Adam bagged an exclusive interview with the one and only Bernard Charles, CEO of a little French mom-and-pop known as Dassault Systèmes (that’s ‘Dassault Systems’ for you Anglophones). Bernard was kind enough to give us some titillatingly juicy details about things to come at Dassault.
What brilliance is this pray tell!!? A glove that wrappeth about the hand bestowing interaction with thine computery peripheral! Why this is just the type of technology to send Bluetooth headsets flying off the swollen ear of many a grinning businessman. Bellco Ventures is making your [insert futuristic movie title here] dreams come true with…
EngineerVsDesigner is teaming up with Makerbot Industries to bring you the first ever Absurd iPhone Accessory Design Contest! Have the perfect, insanely odd (or otherwise crazy) idea in your brain cage ready to spew forth? If so, you’ll be in the running to win a brand new, hot off the presses, Makerbot Replicator with a…
If you’ve often dreamt of iconic typefaces exploding from your chest as you vocalize a Shakespearean sonnet, the idea of printing out an 3-dimensional representation of your monologue may sound attractive. Ravensbourne, the UK-based digital media university, adores typeface and 3D fabrication as much as you do, so it only seemed natural to illustrate the…
Once, when roads were dirt and stick, dust falling from a travelers trip and stories from their lip, a girl. She sat in the meadow watching as they passed, adventure on her mind, a spritely girl of only nine. When passing by on a cloudy day, a tree-like man, with fingers eight to each hand,…
“This post is from guest blogger, JF Brandon. He works with Enrico Dini and the DShape. He likes 3D Printing, Naïve Architecture, Open Source, Mass Customization and Hockey. He lives in Vancouver, Canada.” 3D printing is part of my job. When I tell people this, I usually get the response “Oh, I heard about that…
If you were enjoying a mustard salad sandwich last week while watching our SolidWorks World Coverage and choked, we were not able to help you. As you gasped for air though, you probably saw the new features to come in SolidWorks 2013, which in all likelihood dislodged said sandwich from your windpipe, shooting it into your…
As you bask in the summer sun with the buzz of bees and bugs about, just relax with the thought that any one of those small creatures could actually be a miniature, pop-up insect manufactured at one of the world’s leading robotics development labs. “Do they suck blood??” you ask? No, no, no. That would…
The fine peeps over at Fireuser.com have just turned us on to a contest they’re having that could deliver a smokin’ hot AMD FirePro V5900 GPU right into your desktop. Sure, they’re totally biased as far as these CAD-cookin’, high-end AMD GPU’s are concerned, but that’s no excuse not to try your hand at winning…
When a swarm of chinchilla babies is seen floating through the air, the first thought is always to run. But few know, that running full speed toward them will form a magnetic field around yourself, lifting you from the ground to reveal these links. Takanori Aiba – Takanori is a designer and illustrator creating complex…
Day three of SolidWorks World 2012! It came and went with a quickness. Then the travel and the catching up. But not to worry, we’ve got the final overview video and some more details coming at you. As you may know, the Day 3 General Session is the day when the top ten enhancement requests…
Intense! SolidWorks World Day Two is always the craziest. Announcements, interview, lots of technical sessions and the off-site event that probably has people feeling a little shaky the next morning. We’ve got the highlights for ya and guess what… there’s one more day to go!
HP has delivered up the new HP Z1 line, a beefy new all-in-one workstation with 27 inches of IPS display catered toward the 3D and graphics professional. The slightly chunky (yet low profile) computer looks much like a thick monitor, sports a 2560 x 1440, IPS display, Xeon (i3 or E3) processor and options for…
Day one at SolidWorks World 2012. If there was such a thing as a firehose of flaming CAD vodka, this would be it. Attendees have been drenched with inspiration in the keynote, getting their geek on in the tech sessions and livin’ it up at the evening parties. One product, 5,300+ people, insanity. We caught…
Robots!! YES. You’ll see some like that cute little guy up above at SolidWorks World 2012. We’re on the scene at SolidWorks World and the show is in full effect with the Welcome Recpetion kicking things off Sunday night in the Partner Pavilion. We’re taking loads of video as well and will be blasting coverage…
CAM Mania is going down at SolidWorks World 2012 in the HSMWorks booth #313. If you recall, HSMWorks is the makers of the free CAM solution for SolidWorks, HSMXpress. They’ll be showing the CAM features integrated directly into the SolidWorks interface. And, you’ll definitely want to take the CAM Mania challenge with first prize being…
SolidSmack and SolidBox are bringing you the SolidWorks World 2012 goodness this year. We’ll be on site with cords and cameras we’ve unnecessarily hacked into our ocular cavities to scare off any would-be event security. We’ll be keeping those camera eyes open for anything that may be of interested or mildly offensive, covering the General Sessions LIVE…
We’ve stretched back the jowls and have devoured our share of 3D viewing tech lately, but it’s not over. There’s sunglass.io, a web-based 3D viewer, and Maide Cotrol that brings 3d model interaction to the iPhone and iPad. Now, we have another viewer that allows import, smooth 3D viewing and sharing.
And once he floated past the dock’s end, all scale disappeared from view. He could sense the foam, blue in it’s liquid hue, lapping against the distant rocks. A ferry’s horn creeping through the fog. Where would he hit? The light spoke. The flash blinding. There he lay in a field of white heather. Color…
I know. You’re like, Make it Real?? Wha!? Huh?! WHHHAAAT? I prefer to make it fake. So fake that it causes people to question if it’s really not real at all. However, for those of you who actually like to ‘Make it Real’, there’s a challenge for that and it’s being put on by the…
Today, Dassualy slips further into becoming the social cybernetic giant of the virtual product design world, with a few big bits of info announced today. Their revenue was up from last year, they have a new head of corporate communications and, at the same time, they’ve announced the acquisition of Internet social platform Netvibes and…
Have you ever been sitting in a presentation of a product you designed, screaming inside your head at the person giving the presentation as they fumble through moving your model about? Those days are at an end, my friend. Maide has released the CadRemote iPhone app that gives you (and anyone else you deem worthy)…
“This post is from our new guest blogger, JF Brandon. He works with Enrico Dini and the DShape. He likes 3D Printing, Naïve Architecture, Open Source, Mass Customization and Hockey. He lives in Vancouver, Canada.” I’ve seen a lot of videos promising a desktop 3D printer in every home, as ubiquitous as the inkjet. One…
I’m sure you have been tempted to switch from your iPhone to an Android, but are saddened by the lack of 3D CAD apps on the market, yes? Me? I’m happy with 1982 Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, but now that TurboViewer Pro is available, I’m thinking of taking the open platform plunge. IMSI design launched the…
Let’s just say one day your old, decrepit body needs a piece replaced – a hip, a skullcap, maybe a kneecap or two. Having bits of bone replaced is fairly common, but for the first time ever, an 83 year old woman has a new jaw… a custom 3D printed titanium jaw. The University of…
If there was ever any 3D cad app that could be compared with smooth, silky melted butter, TinkerCAD would be the one. If you’ve not experienced it yet, you must. You simply must. The web-based, 3D modeling app is out with a new version and it’s just about everything you would want and expect in…
I don’t like it, not one bit. Last night I awoke to a buzzing sound. I open my window and there, before my eyes, a swarm of quadrotors pulling maneuvers, laying waste to the neighborhood, scaring children and cats… Take a look. It could happen.
Blown up bandages wrapped the wires and wimples of the war torn wasteland. It would indeed be a challenge to find. Bending back sheets of steel from the surface, he began. Days turned to months, months turned to years and one afternoon, a glow from the ground and the chest covered in the shadow of…
I’ve always had a little bit of a problem with sustainability software. You jam some criteria into it and it throws a comparison of materials, location, the impact your choices have on the environment, and a pretty report you can give to your boss or client to prove you’ve done your research. The thing is,…
It’s a mouse. It’s a 3D mouse. Actually, it’s BOTH. It’s the Lexip 3D mouse and it combines the rotational power of a 3D Mouse with the click control of a traditional mouse. Lexip is a start-up out of France with a recent patent on the idea of a multi-axis mouse. If you’ve often feared…
For all the 3D reconstructionistas in the house, prepare to dilate your eyes with rays of glorious 3D capturing bliss. If you have a Microsoft Kinect at your house, you know the possibility that lies within its depth sensing lasers to capture objects, movement and movement of objects. It’s all coming together and these are…
This week on Engineer vs Designer we have a little chat with Matt Sederberg, co-founder of T-Splines, recently acquired by Autodesk. Matt dishes the goods on how T-Splines came about and takes evasive maneuvers when we pry on the future of T-Splines.
It may be completely mesmerizing to watch a wee desktop 3D printer do its thing layer by plasticy layer, but do you remember our interview with Enrico Dini? Creator of the D-Shape printer? The largest 3D printer in the world? Capable of printing large structures? The D-Shape printer. Imagine watching that thing in action. It’s…
Decidedly pertinent as it was, he set forth, silvery landscaped before him and each step sending a minor chord of mischief through the white haze layered against the ground. On his back, the survivors, a small lot, best know for their gun arts and the ability to form bullets from these links. Victorior – The…
After what I’ve just seen, I feel as if I could point my hand at a simmering pool of metal and shape it with the power of my mind. Dutch Designer Jólan van der Wiel is practically doing just that. He’s created a process (and a machine) to pull a metallic-formulated resin from a liquid…
Imagine a Record Executive going over to a 3D file sharing site downloading a pair of patent-protected headphones, laughing as he jiggles and listens to his DRM’ed music list. Ironic. You may think ‘big deal’ when you hear it, but thePirateBay.org, a site infamous for file-sharing and online piracy is making torrent-tearing waves with the…
Who loves wooden gears? We do! We do! Wooden hand high five all around for a tool that helps you create the gears and the templates to crank those creations. The Gear template generator from woodgears.ca is a magical web-based tool (probably) using little wooden mathematical gears on the back end to output a 2D…
AutoDesSys is peeling back the flexible underbelly of form-Z 7 and stuffing in a slew of new features. Form-Z has been around a while. It’s always had great features for architectural modeling, but this new version brings even more to the freeform table. New features increase the options you have for dynamic modeling of roofs…
Tony Fadell. You may have heard of him. At the very least, you’e seen, or let sweet sound emanate from the device he is know as the father of. Tony was Apple’s senior vice president of the iPod division as well as adviser to Steve Jobs. He’s now CEO of NEST, a company that reinventing…
Vapor rolled from the jaw of the ice glazed face. There were literally hundreds spread throughout the forest floor. Some behind trees, other frozen mid-stride, and still others frolicking in the leaves, with all signs of mischief pointing to these links. Mark Molnar – Concept art and illustration. Vehicles, characters, creatures and more are all…
Moore’s Law (or rather Kryder’s Law) has just been decimated. Researchers at IBM just tore out those Wikipedia pages, sneered at them, then proceeded to show the world how five years of work has lead to new possibilities for mass data storage.