If you’ve birthed a wee one, or have been involved in the process of choosing an appropriate container to cart them around in, you might be familiar with Phil & Ted’s. They make the buggies that make your head turn when you’re trudging down the running path like an angry marsupial mama with three children…

Very, very slick of the robot sympathizers over the past few decades. Distract the humans with fear of robot attacks, while they slowly integrate them into the working class and family life. Yep, you’ll be surprised when you come home and your baby has been replaced by a multi-appendage, potato-peeling chubbling that ‘sleeps’ through the…

In the wide, wide, wide world of 3D training videos, there’s a lack of unfamiliar voices speaking dubbed over video of a guy picking around in your favorite CAD program. Not to worry. A small band of tech support pros on the West coast is putting that to an end. GoEngineer is a SolidWorks reseller…

We wrapped the entrance in meat and fear, but that didn’t stop them, no. We heard the foot-steps… tiny… peculiar… footsteps, and when we turned, our minds we’re frozen by… these links. Bradley W Schenck – The retro-future illustration of Mr. Schenck is a little bit Mucha, a little bit robot and a whole lot…

Well, Dassault Systems may be arrogant, but they’ve certainly got the cash. Yesterday, they completed the acquisition of enterprise search company Exalead for a cool €135 million (US $162 million). You probably haven’t heard of them, but Exalead has been called the ‘French Google’ and are best know for their CloudView platform which can be…

Remember the Audi R8 SolidWorks Car tutorial and remember the video that preceded it showing the entire modeling process in 5 minutes? Well, we’re about to taunt your senses again, frustrate you into a panic and build the anticipation for yet another amazing tutorial. Dan Lavoie is at it again. This time… with a Lamborghini…

I love the product development industry drama. It’s so RAW beneath it’s cordial, feature-rich exterior. Hard to imagine what would happen if you put all the execs together in a room full of garlic water balloons and large sticks… but not really. In a user conference room away from each other, it’s a little tamer.…

Crack out the Faraday suits and rev up those Tesla Coils, PTC is stirring the air with talks about their endeavor to define and possibly redefine (thunderous clap and loud echoing voice) THE FUTURE of MECHANICAL CAD!! CAD CAD!! We’re out at PTC/USER 2010 in Orlando, Florida and we’ve found out as much as possible…

I tossed it in a bowl of cantankerous snails, but once you start pumpin’ those hydraulics, wooo boy! whatch out! There’s about nine other slime poppers that shoot out my pores and go straight after these links. Willy Verginer – Just wow. Willy creates sculptures out of wood. They are incredibly life-like with the perfect…

This is a guest article by Michael Lord. Michael is a Design Engineer at Trakka Pty Limited in Sydney, Australia where they use SolidWorks to design Campervans and Motorhomes. I first talked with Michael on Twitter and asked if he would write up his experience using PhotoView360. The iPad Rendering Challenge is finished and won…

So, you just bought a 30″ LCD screen to replace a 24″ LCD screen to replace a 17″ CRT monitor that replaced a slice of bread you stabbed toothpicks at to prove you knew the future of touch screen technology 10 years ago. You were right, and now there’s a slew of options becoming available…

You may still be waiting for Rhino for Mac to be available on the Mac to be officially released (Deelip), but that shouldn’t keep you from the joys of viewing and sharing your Rhino models on another Apple device now should it? You, gentle Rhino modeler, are in luck. The iRhino 3D app popped up…

You know you’re cool when you pull up in a truck blasting Atreyu’s Bleeding Mascara and wearing your freaking rad bike helmet. Yeah, people know it… YOU… ARE SERIOUS. Serious. Like the “Kiss of Death” or like Troy Lee Designs when it it comes to designing helmets that look impressive whether you’re flying through the…

You know that annoying guy who’s blocking the soda machine because he’s looking down at his iPhone? He might not be texting or leveling up on a game, he might just be designing an extremely life-changing product to serve you up a cold beverage without leaving your seat… and he might be using an app…

The stacks of statistical anomalies and stale bread substitutes towered ominously over the lush shrubberies of Canton Loopiecero. No one fathomed that weaved amidst the coiled succulents, lay the power of the fortress… these links. Rone Marshall – Abstraction and light are two of Rone’s specialties… he tosses them straight into your hippocampus. Iron Baby…

Well, I don’t know about you, but it’s been a tense couple of weeks watching the entries come in for the iPad model rendering challenge. The wait is over… Or is it? YES, it is! All together we had 28 submissions and over 50 renderings from people using a variety of top-notch rendering tools -…

Well now, some crazy weekend news to make the Mac users in the house choke on their brunch. Autodesk is indeed working on a AutoCAD version for the Mac. Not virtualized, not via Parallels, but native on the Mac. Screenshots have been posted. Most assuredly without the go ahead from mother Autodesk. No matter, because…

Holster your gab canon for a moment and raise your goggles. You’ll want to clear some room off the old battle barge for a custom cohort of the artistic variety. It’s 4 inches of resin robot goodness and the first Rampart rendition from the London-based lab of Cris Rose. We’ve featured the custom creations of…

Oh, believe me, it won’t make bones shoot out your eyes… or eyes shoot out your eyes, although that would be downright impressive. What it will do is create a wave of screaming sack monkeys you can use for canning, Frisbee or viewing these links. Daryl Mandryk – Character concept and digital painting masterpieces filled…

One look at this and you’ll want to grab a vat of melted butter. What happens when design goes head on with engineering? Something beautiful and crustacean-like. The collaboration between the two disciplines can yield some pretty amazing products and at ICFF, one of the largest contemporary furniture shows in North America. This year, there…

If you could, you know you would turn your car, your cubicle and every room in your house into a discotheque that would make Tony Manero and your friends do a flying disco split simultaneously. If you need a good example of what it could be like, take a look at the ‘sensory box’ developed…

You’re a hardcore SolidWorks model whipper, but maybe you haven’t flipped the program over to see what kinds of features lurk on the bristly backside of the history-based beast. What features are these? Direct Editing features. Do not FEAR! These are some that have been there in one form or another for some time, but…

I’m not sure if you’ve experienced the joys of working as a fry cook in a back alley noodle house, but if you have, you’ll greatly appreciate the artistry it takes to design those chicken tender lovin’ mesh buckets. There’s a lot that goes into shaping that sheet metal and jabbing electronics in like a…

Before you reach in that bucket and grab a week-old shard of melted plastic to gnaw on for a little iPad case-makin’ inspiration, look at what the necessity for flatness and reduced material usage has resulted in. Like many of you, Jeff Bare, of jbare designs, knew he would be getting an iPad the first…

Feel like fiddling with a few polygons on a Friday? You’ll be feeling the joys of pushing pixels around the screen creating monsters, aliens, architectural masterpieces and more with the news this week from the West Coast. Pixologic, makers of Zbrush, have launched a fresh update to their Zbrush modeling resource, ZClassroom. With it comes…

You gotta learn to shoot tar out the back of the rig, not the front! You’ll get the spool drive clogged and they ALWAYS attack from the rear! Now finish mounting these links! Frank Frazetta – Good ol’ Franks dies this week, but his insane fantasy art will live on… probably. Imperial Walker Bunkbed -…

Do you see those three words? Cloud, Mac, and Sketch? The triumvirate of contemporary CAD computing, those are by golly, and if you’re CAD slappin’ 3D code pro or have a little marketing and management panache, SolidWorks is hiring. What’s more interesting, and also no big surprise, is what job titles these lie under. There’s…

Out of all the things I’ve wanted to line my desk, hallway, car dash and gold-plated cage of wild hogs with, brightly colored 3D printed pigs is 4th on the list. Shapeways has now made that easier. Just today, Shapeways launches Color it! making it possible for you or your little ones to color a…

Oh yeah, you know you’ve gone too far when you’ve got little Johnny sprayin’ cheese spread out his nose to form building for your moon-based train station display. Those hospital trips are about to drop significantly and your family can rest their weary nostrils. Fab@home Model 2 is here. Fab@Home is a project started by…

You might have a dad that builds you cool camera accessories, but what if you have one that attached rockets to anything that moves? Even better. Ron Patrick is Mechanical Engineer that has no problem with jamming jets into tiny vehicles, so that’s what he did. One modified turboshaft engine, one VW Bug, one sweet…

Little did you know it, but that engineering degree you spent 100k and 5+ years completing, fueled by cafeteria food, long nights and the occasional nervous breakdown… may actually be making you less useful, or at the very least need some flare. In an article at Techcrunch, Vivek Wadhwa goes up against some thoughts from…

So, we haven’t even seen tech from Iron Man 1 developed yet, but who cares! We’ll take any blind stab at future tech Hollywood throws at us and say… HECK YEAH. Iron Man 2 starts today and it’s gotta have gadget galore at least as cool as the first one and UI’s way better than…

A blanket made of moles for pete’s sake! There’s just no need, it’s uncomfortable and the moles aren’t even alive… oh wait, that one is… that one might be… wait! They are! They are alive and they’re eating these links!! MegaMunden – Mega!!! Mega what? Mega cool tattoo illustration, rockin’ skullage and a mix of…

If your nerves, family or free-time have been affected by the frenzy of the shiny new iPad from Apple, you’re not alone. In less than a month Apple sold over 1 million of the 10″ touch-screen tablets. However, only a small percent of those people are obsessed with getting a 3D model of the iPad…

The design process is something we absolutely CRAVE here at SolidSmack. You can throw up pretty pictures all day, but going behind the scenes and getting an idea of the work and thought that goes into a design… simply wonderful. This is a perfect example. Jonathan Bergqvist wanted to have a shoulder mount for his…

I don’t know if I’d really call it ‘the Biggest’ 3D print. I’d be more likely to call it the BIGGESTEST Freeform Architecture 3D Print ever excreted by the pucker of a print head. You remember Enrico Dini, right? The fine Italian gent with a passion for print? He’s working on his next project, a…

You see that image to the left with the weird purple guy shooting green out his hand? That’s actually your brain being whipped repeatedly with the enjoyable sound of SolidWorks video training, but not just any video training, oh no. This is Inspirtech SolidWorks 2010 tutorials, on your computer, in SolidWorks and if full-effect with…

You know we can’t pass up a reference to embedding things into skulls, especially 3D. You could stab your eyes or computer screen with 3D data, but what it really takes to get 3D on the web is getting into that heinous web code. Deelip Menezes-obertron 9 touches on that with a couple posts on…

I know, I know, I know, I know, I know… you’ve all got this down pat. 2D to 3D… 3D in 2D… no problem. But what about with video? and beyond that, within the environment of a 3D modeling program? This is a look at a very well made ad from Samsung UK for their…

So we wrapped it with tarps and a fair amount of steel cord. But, what we saw next peeled three sleepless nights off our eyes. The plastic tore, the cables snapped and these links started singing. Jose Flores – Really, oil painting don’t get enough play. Jose mixes surreal and cool with just about anything…

“Finally!” you think, “A cheap 3D printer I don’t have to build myself.” Yes, you’re probably already doing the calculations in your head. For a mere $3.5 million US dollars you can buy 1,000 of these suckers and build a tower of 3D printing power the likes no one hAS EVER SEEN!! muwwahhHAHA!! All you…

At the center of all that is possible within a SolidWorks assembly model sits the standard bearer of complicated surface geometry villainy… a component that won’t let the darn thing load. Who knows what it is – CPU, OS, RAM, imported parts, geometry bunions or maybe a new user that patterned his name on every…

You’re gonna kick yourself after you see this and think about the grove of bamboo and blood-thirsty, wild panda you just cleared out of your backyard. You so could have fashioned it into an iPhone case. Not to worry, Ken Tomita and his wily gang of sustainable-minded makers have you covered. It’s Grove, an Oregon-based…

If you felt a rumble in the aether that ended up with a guy suddenly appearing in your face poking your eyeballs with a tablet computer, you’re probably not dreaming and you’re probably not holding back a good solid punch to his gut. Neither is Timothy Barnard of Fresh Design Base, a Manchester, UK web…

We found out way, way too late… by  the time the splinters worked their way out, there were five more digging out of the ground, two at the door and seven disguised as… yes, as these links. Alexander Preuss – You may think, oh some little art, but then you view his work and your…

So, the post about SolidWorks enforcing their long-standing policy of only granting service packs to the entitled on Subscription Service got some mild interest, boosted antacid sales and Devon’s Blog even interviewed the VP of Customer Services at SolidWorks, Rich Welch, about the matter. I could pick apart the interview notes Devon took, but I’d…

I tell you now, it made my stomach churn. When we reversed the polarity, it’s face jiggled, and poof, a pile of suds. Then, we reversed it again and ya know what? Cheese… covered in these links. Goro Fujita – The gallery of one of the best character animators ever. Plants, animals, robots… he does…

You just know, when you see babies… in pods, nothing good can come of it. It either means baby alien mama’s are gonna hatch and eat your face or that someone had no idea what they were thinking for a design. This one happens to be the later. Designed by Caterina Tiazzoldi, this structure of…

Yes, it only takes a spark… a studio, a computer, a small production crew, some large machinery, and probably a keg of the strongest ale… to get a interactive web series going… and SolidWorks has done just that. This week SolidWorks launched the new interactive web series called Let’s Go Design. It’s full of design,…

So, you’re sitting in a design review with a concept model of the product and the topic quickly changes to schedule. “You can just use that model for the engineering, right,” your boss asks confidently in front of the customer. Now, before your sweat glands burst and your eyes glaze over, rewind a few days.…