Magnificent I say! There is nothing quite like the look of bread being thrown at small, innocent looking bear-child on a cold, icy morning… that is, until it becomes enraged and starts throwing these links back. Pavel Mikhailenko – Chopper concepts, space ships, and hot 3D car renderings is just a little of what Pavel…

Well, it snuck up on us, but once again it’s the time of year we wish everyone would stop being so selfish and buy us a sweet piece of tech we can become completely absorbed in. A high-end laptop for crankin’ SolidWorks and other 3D goodness would be just fine. Where do you start? At…

So, last week I was bending up strips of sharp sheet metal with nothing but loud screams and occasional spewing of coffee from my nostrils when I got an email from a very cool ID chap asking about flattening an imported conical surface in SolidWorks. I thought, this should be a cinch, opened it up…

I’ve always wanted to let up for a few minutes, take a break from marking all over my face and arms and really get into the nitty-gritty of making my 3D sketch shapes look magnificent. Fortunately, Spencer from IDSketching is here to show us how to do just that. With the following video, he makes…

So, the team over at Develop3D, that pay me athe better part of a pence to write the occasional article, have some much anticipated news… a fresh new look with the best of Develop3D bits and blogs. It’s been 18 months in the making and in all unbiased, totally biased honesty, is the absolute kickin’est…

You see that? He i’nt much for crawlin’ up in tha cracks now. Mostly ’cause he’s lackin’ tha arm n’ leg joints. Strange yes ol’ freind, nay as strange as these links. Vlado – Sweet sketchy style of the future so slick I wish I could live in it. 15 Things Worth Knowing about Coffee…

Lame. You so, do not have enough playful-looking, plastic figurines sitting on your desk or hanging out of your pockets. (This is the part where two small Korean children suddenly appear with giant smiles and laughter.) 훌륭한춥구나때려때려!! Sumajin Flex Champion!! Yes. I agree. “awesome cool slap slap.” Sumajin, maker of iPhone cases and other tech…

I’m telling you, there’s no end to the carnage… or virtual carnage… or inane thoughts I get when I see pretty lights shooting out of a robot. But that just goes to show how naivety will bleed us dry in a fit of flashy brilliance. What is this I speak of? An experiment from Chris…

Well, the last poll showed people overwhelmingly think our robots servants should keep management quarantined. For good reason, no doubt. We all want to frolic in the freedom of designing and rendering awesome bits of plastic and metal in our favorite 3D program. There’s probably a time in your life that you remember 2D being…

Two facts. There’s nothing that will hone your sense more than realizing you could be riddled by shurikens at any moment and… it takes phenomenal ninja skills to reorient geometry in SolidWorks. Ninja skills, or a fair amount of flailing about like a crazed shuriken thrower, which is exactly how I came upon five tips…

Before the end of this post you will be Sugru-ing a ceramic cup to your face or you’ll want to. We missed the big news last week, but better late than taken unaware and slapped with a silicon oven mitt. You may have heard about Sugru a few months back, but last week it happened.…

I’ve seen it before. It goes pop, pop, pop, haaaaaroooooop and then all those tentacles smack your face. Once is bad, but falling for it again makes you these links. Daniel Lovas – Hard to believe, but yes, there’s actually someone out there that creates incredible 3D Sci-Fi Illustrations. The Evolution of Storage – if…

It’s odd.You see a crowd of people gathered around an iPhone and you automatically think… head down, ramming speed… and it all goes fairly well, until you run smack dab into cool tech that may very well help you explain away piles of paper. This week, Autodesk Labs released the Inventor Publisher Tech Preview which…

You know when you’re walking in the park and a pigeon flies straight into your face? Autodesk University is not like that at all. It’s actually rather like a flock of pigeons flying into your face, without the pain… or trauma, which just so happen to be filled with everything you’ve ever wanted to know…

I think it’s about time to leave the table-top to coffee spills and action movie fight scenes. Why? Because who needs to interact with a table-top multi-touch surface when you can interact with any surface… anywhere. Pranav Mistry has his own idea on what it means to fully utilize your environment and all the objects…

The process? It is thus. You close all the doors, the small furry ones stay contained. the humpbacked ones scoop up the furry ones and these links take care of the rest. Alex Ries – You deserve to have your imagination attacked by squid EVA and furry beaked bipod illustration. Loma BlackForceOne – 783 ponies…

I don’t know about you, but the Tauntaun scene in Empires Strikes Back was EPIC. In one captivating scene, it taught us the single best way to survive a blizzard is to have the carcass of a very large, very smelly animal with you. Scott Holden was equally inspired and decided to create his own…

Good news for all of you who inadvertently stick your hands in the front fork of bicycles from time to time. You’re gonna have to go back to sticking them in the chain with this new, totally functional bike design from Olli Erkkila. Olli, graduate of Lahti University Institute of Design in Finland, not only…

I know. It’s dinner conversation that goes right along with slamming your hand in the potatoes of the person right next to you. POTATO HAND SLAM… “So, What in the world is Qi Pan up to these days at the ol’ Cambridge University Engineering Department?” One word for ya. Rowdiness. The boy has spun out…

In one week we’ll be smackin’ ourselves (and you) with some Autodesk University coverage. Why would we do that? Well…for good reason party people. 1) product dev tech 2) Las Vegas 3) ponies 4) they invited us. We’re probably excited. In fact, we’ll probably give some awkward high-fives to people we hardly know. What else…

Why I remember clear as cankers. It was an ancient foe, deserving the worst of our back-hands and bayonets, until it bestowed unto us pajamas, warm and cozy and then these links. Yukari Masuike – Haaayt! Mythical skull tigers? Ice dragon. yes and yes. The 10 weirdest Physic Facts – For instance, it’s a fact…

Out of the list of awesome things you’ve accomplished, including bathing a kitty, chopping celery and catching a pineapple in your mouth, there’s some other things as a human being, and even more, as a design engineer, you should be able to do. If not, you’re doomed. In response to a guest post here on…

Of course it’s a valid question! We just can’t ignore that after mankind’s self-imposed moment of singularity, we’ll all basically be fleshy corpuscles in the eyes of of our sentient, mechanized masters. That is until we realize that robots hate anything made of peanut butter. You know it’ll happen. So, ok, most of you may…

Out of the millions of things in the world to get really, really embarrassingly excited about, storage read/write speeds are UP there. Are ya with me? YEEEEEEAH. Start giving your bandwith brothers high-fives, because Fusion-io knows what you want and the latest ioXtreme SSD is setting the standard, at least for the next week, for…

No, you didn’t get snapped in the eye with a hand towel. SolidWorks is pasting the paper to poles with a year-end promo to scream at your boss about. If you’re in the market for a shiny new seat of SolidWorks, you’re getting an upgrade worth two knee surgeries and some morphine, or $4000. The…

I’m so glad you’re sitting down crushing red tomatoes and generally feeling pretty happy about life. You know why? Because you need to prepare yourself for what you’re about to see. It’s THE first episode. The first episode of whaaaaaaat? MechanicalMashup.tv… that’s what. The star of the show is the Ben Eadie of SolidMentor, SolidJott,…

Now that’s the five kinds of awesome a goat can be thrown at. Not that I’m into throwin’ goats you understand, but the more you throw, the more links like this ya get. Pantural Cars Shelby vs Camaro vs Jeep vs Vaz 2107 vs Helicopter… and only 110 days to render. Thanks Mikeo! 13 tools…

The level of my customization for something that needs the standard ‘ugly’ removed is typically slapping stickers all over with a little spray paint. It just doesn’t get any more ‘ROCKIN’ than that… in my opinion. SolidWorks Labs has got the same idea for the Presentation Studio app we reviewed last year, and guess who…

Don’t you just love tops. I’ve always liked them. They just make you feel like stripping out the carpet, painting yourself red and spinning as many as you can right before the in-laws walk into the room. That, however, has nothing to do with the design and inspiration behind the Herman Miller Select series of…

Look out Photoshop aficionados, the dev team over at 3DVia has been drinking their milk, running laps around the Dassault campus and has just launched the mother of all 3D plugins to ease your graphical design pains. It’s 3DVia for Photoshop. The plugin that allows you to bring 3D models from 3DVia directly into Photoshop…

I’m sorry if you bit off two of your fingers with delight while reading that headline, but believe it. PLM and simple in the same sentence, along with a completely obscure red glove metaphor? How can that be? Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is renowned for it’s complex implementation and lengthy training period. So, what if…

She looked, drawn and dazed at the weary traveler. Nothing had been said once, at any point in all of time, that captured this one moment she felt him gazing back. Hey! Hey!!! Noooooo, not that kind of drama people. CAD Drama. As in, our CAD is dang better than your CAD, or as we…

I know the number one thing you are wondering as you tumble down a rocky cliff on your snowboard is, how the heck am I going to get back up there to do this all over again. Problem solved… at least for Ken Block it is. He, along with Rally America and a handful of…

It started with a buzz and a jitter, then five of them flopped like wet onions onto the launch deck. Then it got scary. They started singing and shooting liquid cheese and these links from their eyes. BearFoot – Robots, ships and wicked cool 3D is just a small part of what Neil Maccormack does.…

Once again 3D is hitting the iPhone with a fearsome tenacity that makes you just plain ignore regular phone users. But this time the 3D goodness isn’t in the iPhone, it’s on it… and it’s on it in a not-over-the-top-at-all, ultra-fashionable way. FreshFiber, with the styling skills of Janne Kyttanen, has launched a fresh line…

It’s been a while since your uncle that glues batteries and LED’s to his face has visited, so you may be getting a little anxious to view blinking lights and oddities that boggle the mind. Lucky you. Today we have a light-emitting creation from the mind of Paul Pounds. It stuffs 133 surface-mounted LEDs into…

I’m judging by that look in your eye and the 50 lb sledge hammer in your hand that you’re aimin’ to beat something into shape. But before you pin me down, let me throw something sizzlin’ your way. How does this sound? Two ways to shape the shapes you love to shape using SolidWorks to…

Well, gone are the days where you just go off willy, nilly and make a samurai costume out of hole-ridden, lead containers for nuclear waste. That’s right, the dems in the US Senate and House are busy correcting your mis-use of material for electronic component design by drafting up legislation that will provide grants via…

I know what you’re thinking. Pretty much anything free these days has something to do with throwing beets. That, or eating them, and who wants to eat beets. So, this is big news. You can get into SolidWorks World 2010 for free and all it requires is the use of your hands and your wit,…

Of course a small, kid-like robot wouldn’t go berserk, run and jump onto your face while screaming “YOUR SOUL, YOUR SOUL” in a cold, electronic voice. That, is RIDICULOUS. Almost as ridiculous as robot cockroaches that survive impacts. Even if it actually wouldn’t attack you, that hasn’t stopped, Tomotaka Takahashi, CEO of Robot Garage from…

I’m tellin’ ya, it harnesses the power of… of every Dirt Pebble Sack Back this side of Yeti-land. What is it? It’s dark and fearsome… goes poik! poik! then throws these links at you. Sketchsite mash mash – How does 474 super slick sketches of cars, mechs and other vehicles sound? How to Make the…

Shalacka Smacka! Guess what? The SolidSmack Facebook Fan Page is finally up and running. That’s HUGE news… considering it only takes a click and 5 minutes to set up. So yes, we should have done this a long time ago to share in the excitement of all that important social interaction. The wait… is over.…

I’m positive. If you could wrap yourself around a Subaru Turbocharged Car Engine and tear down the road, you would, you so would, and so would I. But the difference between you and I, is that I would have six bike flags and a license plate that read WHEELIE. No matter how you cruise, there’s…

Well, well, well, from the looks of the last poll, not too many people care about hardware/software upgrade plans. I agree… BORING. For me, a hardware upgrade consists of bottling pure rage (and my new hot sauce recipe) to throw a computer 200 feet into the air. So, while we’re on the topic of rage,…

You may enjoy running at a tree full speed with your mouth wide open, but when it comes to really embedding a detailed assembly tree structure into your forehead… or your project, you may actually find SolidWorks Treehouse to be a little less painful. Nearly a year ago, we looked at 5 Ways to Use…

Can you just smell the sizzle of fusion happening? I can. The MCAD atmosphere is beginning to get a little bit warmer and a tad amount crispier than last week. Why, you ask? Autodesk slipped their fresh slab of direct modeling tech back into the ovens to broil and today they have released it upon…

So, what happens when I go offline for a couple days to clean the charred remains of spiders out of my displays? A ton of news about displays… 3D displays, multi-touch displays, holographic displays, the future of displays, display gumbo… It’s absolutely uncalled for and also pleasant to see that there’s much development going on…

I tarred the intakes just fine ,when the roto-adjusters went all bibbly-squid and shot bloom juice all over the pistol switch. I think we can get her back up and running, but it’s gonna take some mighty fine links to do it. Taehoon Oh – Little is know of Taehoon they say, except that he…

Goodbye Adobe, Brushes, Layers and anyone else trying to dominate the iPhone Sketch app market. AutoDesk just release the 1.1 update to their Sketchbook Mobile app. I just upgraded and tried it out. If you were not convince from the earlier Sketchbook Mobile Review and Comparison to other apps, this time around you will be.…

So , it’s no surprise the last post was asking about your software/hardware upgrade habits. Windows 7 launches today. What does that mean? Well, besides the likelihood that you’re wondering if you should upgrade, you’re probably also wondering where you can get a 7 layer Burger King Whopper. Well, you can stop wondering, because it’s…