The grinders tore through the thick atmosphere, powering past the loops of canopied rail ivy. Mr. Trifler Husk cringed as the glass clattered up against his cane. I was silent, he thought. They never knew I was coming… no one… but these rabblerousers. Hmmppphh! Of course, they never had these links. Soukup – His process…

With the typical excitement that goes along with yanking USB cords from your mouth, Microsoft presented Windows 8 this week at BUILD conference Aneheim, with a precision and five-fisted blur of app-kickin’ karate chops that dropped the jaws of Windows users and Apple users alike. Microsoft is showing Windows 8 to be an OS that…

If beautifully ornate, 3D Printed skulls scare you, turn away, TURN AWAY NOW! You’ve been warned. If you listen to the EvD podcast, you know I have a Kickstarter addiction (hey, the first step to healing is admitting.) It’s exactly because of incredibly cool ideas like Crania Anatomica Filigre by Joshua Harker that are changing…

This week, TechCrunch Disrupt is showcasing new start-ups and emerging technologies that are bound to make a few of your face pores foam. Out of all of them though, none are making the impact that Bitcasa could. Infinite storage. However, there are two aspects to their technology even more interesting than mass amounts of storage…

The SolidSmack Awesome Sauce Design contest is tearing full speed ahead with over 70 entries already. From submarines to furnitures, motorcycles and concept cars it’s a wonderful array of creative ideas . You can see all the entries here and get all the details for the contest here. However, if clicking that frightens you and…

Who woulda thought that September would arrive, we’d begin prepping our Mason jars for the winter pickling and SolidWorks 2012 would be released to the early adopting hoards of SolidWorks users. Like many thing that come with a change of season, SolidWorks has fermented this release with tools taunted at SolidWorks Worlds of year’s gone…

When the once orange line had been pulled through the rubble, clipping past the wire and rot, skipping over the broken pipes and membraned glaze of their metal husks, it all went quiet. There was something there. The veined splits appearing across our faces made it evident. It wasn’t dead. Without even thinking, we reached…

I tell ya, did someone just squirt a dwg bubble out their eye socket or do we have a new iPad CAD app on the market? THE LATER my friends. You’ve seen the IMSI TurboViewer app of the free variety. Now, they have the Turboviewer PRO version to tempt your 2D/3D tastebuds. It brings in…

The tools clanged against the carriage. When had the mist been so thick? he thought. Even though they hadn’t seen a bonestripper in days, the stench was there. They were close. The mist masked it well, but there over the next rise, a clearing, sparkling with the power of these links. Ken Wong – His…

Have you ever tried to render glorious rays of light with your mind? It can’t be done (unless you have a perfect mix of abysynth and electricity.) In lieu of that you’ll want some easily adjustable, totally customizable HDR images to slap in your renderings. That’s where HDR Light Studio comes in. They’ve developed a…

If you’re a student, educator or sly enough to get an .edu email from your alma mater, it’s your lucky day. Solid Edge has made Solid Edge Student Edition available for free. So, say you’re a parent who has been trying to convince a young mind about Synchronous Technology and the ability to float (somewhat…

10 pounds of dual screen laptop! ORDER UP. They’ve done it. GScreen, the Alaska-based hardware company, has finally announced a launched date for their screen-stretching LED backlit powerhouse. After two years of being taunted by photos and renderings, gScreen has named November as the month you will finally be able to take up two tables…

Why there’s nothing I quite like more than buttoning up the finest faux suede longcoat, donning my tophat and printing colorful componentry into the wee hours of the morning. There’s just something enjoyable about it that frightens people slightly. Part of that may be the amazing color assortment of plastic filament I have wrapped around…

Earlier this week, in an amazing cavalcade of suspense, mystery and PR firm mailings, SpaceClaim slapped a little plus sign on their current release. SpaceClaim 2011+. Some say it has the features to reduce a hurricane from a category 3 to a category 2. (We’ll see this weekend if that is actually is true.) A…

Once the cardboard was wrapped completely around the small creature, they were able to flip the switch. At first, nothing. Then some distinct whirs and clicks. And less than a minute later, a fully active cat-bleater was active, pulsing with the power of these links. So Much Monsters! – The CG creature bliss of Joe…

Don’t you just love art installations that make your optic nerves twist around each other in jaw-tightening delight? LOVE IT. This is just such an installation. It’s an exploration of process brought to life in a 3D environment by Christoph Bader of DepotVisuals. What at first seems abstract shapes become a duo-tone delivery of slices…

Here we go! PTC is steppin’ it up a notch and lathering our cad bagels with another free-to-squeeze ‘Creo app.’ No fiddling about with ‘Friskets’ and splines this time though. Now it’s all creamy, 3D infused app slapping that allows you to toy with their emotions direct modeling. And guess what? It’s also free. Let’s…

I’ve considered a 24 hour Inception marathon – watching it attached to the ceiling whilst eating large quantities of burritos inside of burritos inside of burritos. Instead, I think I’ll just stare at this wonderfully cool Inception Chair design for a few hours and call it done. Created by Vivian Chui from a fine specimen…

Have you heard about the SolidSmack Design Contest yet? Well, the contest is underway, but we’ve got a couple updates, plus the short and simple version of how to submit your design. There are a lot of prizes to giveaway and plenty of time to get those designs in, so hit the jump and see…

Dark hulls slipped through the waters. In the distance, we waited, breathing heavy fumes of better days, in our thoughts. Surely death was better, but what was this? A wave of electric pulses riding on the back of a thousand sea horses, carrying with them a large bowl of porridge and a cup of the…

What’s more fun that regular old fun? We you put four ‘e’s in front of ‘fun’ and scream it in your highest pitch possible. Then, after you’re done choking on phlegm and throat skin, move your finger to the mouse and click on eeeeFUN.com. You’ll be glad you did, because if you’ve been sitting at…

If you’re a Mac user and love to toddle around lines and splines in AutoCAD, you’ll be freezing and unfreezing your layers in frantic excitement today. AutoCAD for Mac is back. You’ve likely felt the screen-shifting vibrations from the Autodesk marketing machine over the past two weeks. All to build up for the reveal over…

What’s more fun than a barrel of charred monkey pelts? A barrel of super simple concept car design in SolidWorks. Or in this case, a video of super simple car design in SolidWorks. Tony Suarez created a car modeling video to shock and stun surface modelers a while back. Now, he’s back with surfaces to…

Autodesk has had a near endless stream of announcements for the past several weeks… and it isn’t over. Next week, they’re launching… I don’t really care what they launch. I just like this teaser graphic they put out. Reminds me of Mortal Kombat for some reason. Red and Black, Blood and Glory… or something. Maybe…

I tell ya, there’s nothing quite like viewing the inside of well design gadget. Not because it makes me feel like peeling back my own flesh to see if it looks similar, but because it shows exactly how much design and redesign went into it. The HTC Evo 4G is just such a device. It’s…

The dripping had stopped. But what had started it? If I had look off the edge, I might have known, but dry docks don’t fix themselves, so I continued on. The evening grew close and cold, shadowing the strings of them. It wasn’t till I dropped my wrench, when I stood up and saw, saw…

I’m here to tell you what you already know. Underground lairs are FULLY AWESOME!!! On top of their virtually unlimited awsomaucity, they are THE answer to all manner of ,nigh unavoidable, calamity. Huge killer bees all hopped up on GMO corn pollen barreling toward you and yours at cannonball speeds got your boots soggy? UNDERGROUND…

If you’ve run out of excuses to slop sour cream on your iPad screen with frantic glee while modeling in sweet 3D, that’s all about to change. Today, as a supplement to their free 3D modeling program, 123D. Autodesk has introduce Autodesk 123D Sculpt for the iPad. They’re spreadin’ the 3D bulgin’ love all over…

So, you’re toolin’ around the neighborhood in your hatchback, boppin’ your head to the best of Van Halen when suddenly an idea pops in your head. You need to sketch. Now typically, you would grab anything within reach – a receipt, a napkin, a freshly shaven chihuahua. But let’s just say you have a laptop…

Every once in a while, something so cool comes along that it makes you stop whittling that sopping wet piece of MDF and stab the jack knife right in your leg meat. This is one of those things. Today, FurnLab has launched their Open Source CNC project on Kickstarter. Headed up by Jeffrey Matthias, they’re…

Thanks to everyone who entered the SolidSmack Awesome Sauce Design Contest! You can view all the entries on GrabCAD here. ALl the entries are being judged and the results will be announced Friday, September 30th, 2011 here on SolidSmack and at GrabCAD. Thank you once again for joining in the competition! Welcome the first annual…

Strips of color wrapped around the icy posts. The oilies, as they were called, with their dark bodies dripping across the snow, floated slowly past the hole where we hid. And suddenly, one stopped. It peered in and what we saw sent chills through our bodies. For made of what were these oilies, dripping on…

There are five reasons I just dropped what was doing to check this out *looks down at fist, punches face*. Fortunately, I didn’t have machined titanium rings on each finger or my face would be a bloody, unrecognizable mess. What’s exciting me to punches is a self-initiated competition going on over at GrabCAD. Put on…

Straight out of Philadelphia comes Bradley Derry, our newest SolidSmack writer. Welcome Bradley Derry *clap, clap, clap*. Yes, it seems SolidSmack is growing quite the shimmering talent pool of writers these days. Today, it’s my pleasure to introduce to you, Bradley Derry. I recall meeting Brad long ago via Twitter. We had grand ideas of…

In times like these, when you sit teary-eyed staring at the 3D mouse/keyboard/mouse device horror sprawled out before you, the future may seem bleak and filled with long hours of moving your hands about your multi-buttoned workspace. But have hope, the future hold unbound possibility. The time has come to take matters into your own…

Yesterday, Autodesk gained the upper hand in the CAD industry by now being able to say, “Here’s how to bake a helicopter cake and a paper catapult with which to launch it into the air.” Autodesk has acquired DIY project site and passionate user community Instructables in an all out effort to seal their takeover…

I think you know what would happen if you locked an engineer and designer in a room together at the same time with nothing more than a microphone and some bluesy background music. Yeah… they would lock eyes, squeeze their bowels and proceed to have an insightful conversation about design, engineering and other CAD related…

The time has come. Like hot flaming liquid poured straight into a web server, pounded with a hambone made of lightning and set on the table for everyone to partake… the new SolidSmack site is LIVE. It’s about time also, the old site was kinda shiny lookin’ but had the content kickin’ factor of wadded…

The long, indistinguishable features of the razor prawn struck hard against the rancid air. Days had passed. The few of us who were left, attached what we could to our mechanized frames. Arms, actuators, a rigbots broken wheel or the jowltubes of a fallen brother. We had to do anything possible, anything to get to…

If there’s one thing I like, it’s when someone takes all the software I would need to make a video of a dinosaur blowing fire-breathing snail babies out its nostril, and compiles it onto one DVD. Totally makes the job that much easier. ArtistX is exactly that tool. A complete OS kernel? no problem. 2500…

What’s better than a 3D model with a bunch of curvy bits? A 3D model that replaces the curvy bits with more knobs, pipes, cutters, angles, conduit, boosters and extrusions than is reasonable or even imaginable. If you’re high fiving your face in agreement, you’ll want to remove the hydraulic actuators from your jowls and…

You go out with your friend for a night on the town. You bring a camera. The next morning you find photos of yourself laying across benches, manipulating your joints through the mirrored glass of bank buildings and twisting cardboard boxes around what you think might be your friend being attacked by feral cats. You’ve…

A lot of people tell me there are “better things” to do with compact electric scooter fenders than strap them to my body and run through a crowd of cake-vomiting children at a birthday party wall of fire and punches. One of those activities which is said to be better, is tossing the existing fenders…

The field vibrated. When the trees erupt from the soil… that will be my chance, he thought. Once was all it took. The ground split with a thousand mangled roots tumbling across each other. He leapt, unsheathed his swords and in a single, fluid motion cut the rootball off of these links. Karen Jacobs -…

Meaty Sweeps. You can gnaw on them all day like a charred piece of sandy camel leather. (Your computer can too.) But what are you to do when you want to send a profile merrily down a path in two directions? at once? in SolidWorks?! Well, can’t be done. BUT, you can use a single…

Look an eclipse! Wait don’t look! Wait look. It’s not an eclipse. It’s a personality core. space, space, SPACE! These Portal 2 Personality cores created by Chris Myles are all the goodness of Portal 2 wrapped up in fully functional replicas of the characters that hamper and help you throughout your adventure in the Aperture…

We just can’t resist the extremely riveting acquisition news of late. First 3D Systems acquires Alibre. Now, the announcement of Autodesk acquiring flash-based, online photo editor Pixlr. They offer photo editing tools Pixlr Editor and Pixlr Express, screengrabbing tool Pixlr Grabber, a slick “post process” darkroom Pixlr-o-matic and one-click photo sharing with imm.io. I think you’d agree that it lines…

3D Systems is on a grappling spree of sorts, eating up 3D print related companies and leaving a new, quite cuby, 3-dimensional logo in their wake. Then, they started in on software companies, scooping up translation and conversion software developer Sycode. The latest, announced earlier this morning, is the news that 3D Systems has acquired…

We have a special treat for you today. With SolidSmack growing like rustic mountain pines, we’re bringing on more writers. The first of the new SolidSmack crew is none other that Colorado native, Jeffrey Matthias. Jeffrey brings his experience in furniture design, fabrication and gadgetry of various sorts to the fold. He prods, pokes and…

Does the idea of a 6 foot long, 16 inch wide robotic worm crawling beneath your epidermis frighten you? Not to worry because Dr. Jordan Boyle, post doctoral fellow at the University of Leeds, is working on making it smaller. His focus is also on creating a robot that can manage it’s way through small…