Well, heavens ta Betsy! There are software and hardware updates exploding from every pore of the hairless cat of technology and you’ve just now realized your software and hardware are about 5 years old. Time does fly. However, I’m bettin’ a bag of chips that several of you out there, or your savvy IT groups,…

A horn, a tentacle. Who knows what you may need to model these days. Why just the other day I had to model the pinnacle of perfection, and let me tell you, it had the sharpest point within a five and a half mile radius. Whatever it is, if it needs to come to a…

I know, you see it there… on the screen, but then you look on the table… and it’s not there, IT’S NOT THERE. Ya know why, huh? huh? Because it’s Augmented Reality (AR), and your neural pathways are about to be re-myelinated with 3D augmented goodness. ISMAR 2009 (International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality)…

Get your silicon mitts on boys and girls, SolidWorks 2010 has been precooked, sizzled, put out for garnish and is now… available… for… DOWNLOAD. Of course, this is taking everyone by surprise. A new version? of SolidWorks? Mid-October-ish? UNHEARD OF. Lucky for you, a bunch of bloggers got a one-week jump on the press and…

Your weekends as a Thief, Cleric or Paladin are about to get really cool and immersive and I’m not talking about the late night meeting with the board of trustees. Using Microsoft Surface, Carnegie Melon’s Entertainment Technology Center has descended into the realms of touchscreen gaming with the development of SurfaceScape. The game, if you…

Yes, it’s all fun and games until… someone jabs an elfin creature in the eye, gets a gnarly infection and start projectile vomiting all over the place. Fortunately, it’s a virtual elfin creatures we’re talking about. The people behind it… 3DVia. Last week at the Dassault Customer Conference, I found out some top secret (totally-not-top-secret)…

Foot stomps and smocks! Crazy smocks, as a matter of fact. You want one? I want one. Preferably equipped with pony smiles, blinking lights, and these links. Theodoru Badiu – Everything from Paper head boy to Tentacle Monsters and one-legged spheroid birds. Teodoru has 3D characters down. Making of “The Tattooed Skull” – Hey, it’s…

Transforming aircraft and vehicles? NO, surely, you must be kidding. That’s a phenomenal concept. You should run with it and make a movie or animated children’s series. So, I came across one transformer done up in SolidWorks. It’s pretty much downhill from there and turns into pink bunnies and orange Nissans. But the best thing?…

If there’s anything that cramps your daring sense of style, and your flaring lower back muscles it’s an inadequate office chair with absolutely hideous lines and a crushing lack of support. To counter those effects, Herman Miller has launched another stylish chair. The Setu. If you recall the Embody chair, you’ll know a lot went…

SPLINES! You say that too loud in a room full of structural engineers and you’ll either have 5 different types of guns pointed at you and a stapler in your forehead or… just… some very strange looks. Nonetheless, you love Splines, or at the very least have a mild curiosity about them. A curiosity that…

I know you’ve been tearing your eyelids in restless horror just wondering to your wits end about the oddly, inconsistent capitalization and branding of the Dassault product line. NO MORE, I SAY! Last week, at the Dassault Customer Conference, I forgot to ask about it, had a nightmare, wrecked in a downhill boxcar derby and…

I abhor oversize images of cuddly cats as much as the next person, so having them on a 155″ OLED display doesn’t do much for me. However, having the option of taking that 155″ display and turning it into a 155,000 bajillion inch OLED display of a cuddly cat is a whole different story. Last…

Salut! There’s no running directly into walls here! It has to be done with a purpose, with… finesse. Now, hunker that head, raise those eyebrow, prepare yourself for battle position! … and these links. Neil Blevins – I Blevins you. I blevins you with CG environments that will tear a hole through your imagination. Lessons…

Strap on your chaps, slide on your shades, and assume the motorcycle rider position as your co-workers push you around the office. All custom bike heeeeeck is about to break loose. Wild West Motors, outfitter of wicked custom motorcycles, based in San Diego, California, has decided to replace SolidWorks with AutoDesk Inventor. Why? They just…

Do you remember the Audi R8 Surfacing video? The preview of how to model it in SolidWorks? If the fact that it wasn’t actually available then was enough to taunt you into joy-filled rage, you can wipe those frustrated tears. It’s here. Daniel Lavoie has put the entire process together. 14 hours and 20 minutes…

You could put one finger on a 3D mouse, stick another finger down your throat and blast a pile of 3D geometry onto any screen of any time-saving product development program with ease. However, it’s still just a pile, perhaps a well thought out pile, but still, a pile… on a screen. It’s a conversation…

It’s a well-know fact that parasitic aliens love highly optimized part files in SolidWorks. It makes their job of attacking your nerve bundles to gain control over your salivary glands much, much easier. And like parasitic aliens, configurations give you control over the parts that show up in your lovely ‘nerve bundles’ of SolidWorks Assemblies.…

Just look at those happy digits going at it with pure multi-touch tappin’ delight. Cool desktop UI’s are great fun to play with, but with Windows 7 launching October 22nd and many already using it, multi-touch and UI’s are about to converge. Bumptop is on it. Version 1.2, you can download right now, has all…

Honest, good sir, I was just meandering down the path, just meself ya see. When up popped this scaly, old fellow with a bag, a bag full of reconstituted onions and links from the smell of it. Tuomas Korpi – Someone once told me, composition is really important. I think you’ll agree, Tuomas has it…

I know what you’re thinking. Last night, you had enough Vuuch with that Spaghetti to kill a small Rhino, but that’s not the point. The question on your mind should be, was it the Beta version of Vuuch or the new V1 version of Vuuch? yeah? Today, Vuuch V1 is launching to slay the wicked wiles…

You remember, as a child, when you would take your little brother’s head, cover it with mud and hope he would lay still long enough for it to dry so you could crack it open and see if he was an alien? Well, nice try, but your childish antics have got nothin’ on what a…

USSubs, like SolidSmack, is 100% 2D free. They may actually be a little more 2D free. What exactly do they engineer? I’m glad to pretend you asked. They engineer Personal Luxury Submarines. I imagine their sales pitch needing more than just those three words. Personal luxury subs, you say? I’ll take five, I say. They…

Ya see those people in the image to the left. That’s not a stock photo friends. nu-uh. That’s Dassault Systèmes product users being highly productive, and highly excited about being highly productive. There’s a special place for these people and it’s not where you’re thinking. It’s Orlando, Florida. In one week from yesterday, Dassault Systèmes…

3D slicin’ spiders are cool and all, but how would you like to harness the power of VACUUMS… and LASERS? Well, guess what, some fancy group called ‘NASA’ has done just that. The claim is they can melt certain heat-sensitive metals layer-by-layer into parts, with advantages of decreasing waste and forming it around electronics or…

So, a spider was crawling across the roof of my car yesterday. Fast and very poisonous looking. Considering what you’re about to see, I’m fortunate it didn’t hop across the hood, onto my face and start drilling another face into my head bone. This video has been around a while, but I’d never seen it,…

What kind of insanity could this be? People using a 2D drawin’ tool to get some curvy art into SolidWorks? It’s heresy, I say! Well, we may wish to banish them to the nether regions, but for some, working the Adobe Illustrator machine is a daily task. And, every once in a while, they need…

I know you love a good sing-a-long. Who doesn’t in this day and age. You can make any economic condition seem less dreary with a little smile, a song and perhaps some heavy sedation. The fa-la-la duo They Might Be Gaints has some sing-alongs that rival any after-school special. Their latest is called Here Comes…

I’m serious as printed Nutella when I say this. You’re about to get silly thoughts in your head. Silly thoughts about fabbing up this type of trinket or that type of trinket, in a really different way than ever before. CloudFab is set to provide you with more options for your sly design fabrication needs.…

Aaaccck! Yeah, forget the fact that the bug you just swallowed was, oh, say the size of your palm. It also happens to have the newest in remote radio control gadgetry, and probably the diseases of a hundred generations, strapped to it’s muscly exoskeleton. As if we didn’t have enough to make us cringe with…

Oh yes, 3D product development on a Mac. ‘Tis a glorious thing isn’t it? Although maybe not completely glorious, but sure, glorious enough to get a mob of Mac users riled up with spasmodic glee. Autodesk just cracked open the Mac ‘Pandora’ box to provide More Options for Mac Users. AutoCAD, Inventor, 3ds Max and…

It’s so not cool when someone looses a finger or five or when a movie like Body of Lies shows one way it could happen. Fortunately, there are companies working on impressive new ways to give those fingers back. Discover Magazine has an article on Sucking the Real World into your computer via 3D Scanning.…

Now that’s a mess to be impressed with. Just look at the style, the fluid lines. And you’re saying it only took 5 yaks, 20 amps and these links? Very impressive. Andree Wallin – He is a feasting piranha that creates amazingly composed scenes of city and machine. Jump on in. Did You Know? -…

Technology is changing and growing faster than your mangy hair. And like the hair, it’s time to think about a little trim and a wee bit o’ style. Not so long ago, many ‘CAD technicians’ used a tablet menu to pick and click their way to 2-dimensional, layer switchin’ bliss. We’ve seen a transition, moving…

We just know how you love to climb into a steel barrel or tractor tire and roll yourself down a steep, rocky crevasse. Ahhhh, the small joys and severe skull fractures of life. There are actually better ways to navigate the rough and tumble terrain you adore. One of those would be a very large…

If you could shake yourself into a dazzling display of idea-producing power, you would still have just that, an idea. Some get lucky and have a prototype, but mostly we just sit on our ideas. C. Sven Johnson is going one step further with the 100K Stray Toasthed Pull Toy project. He has taken an…

So, I’m minding my own business, trying to increase my high score on Scramble 2 when all of a sudden I feel a tremor in the 3D mobile app force. Nope, it wasn’t the tomatillo enchiladas. There had been, as a matter of fact, a new iPhone app approved. The 3DVia Mobile iPhone app. It’s…

The least exciting part about modeling objects in 3D is, without a doubt, the back-end administration stuff. Glorious procedures like making sure users aren’t changing selection colors, adding jacked-up macros or forgetting to back-up their work. There’s nothing quite like shoving Giggabitties of SolidWorks 3D models onto your local hard drive. It makes that hard…

Hold onto your highly polished, aluminum chassis car buffs. One of the most incredible stories of car design and engineering has just rolled onto your screen. Think of this. What if you were building a roaster, a custom roadster for the CEO of Oracle, Larry Ellison. What if money was no option. What if you…

Yesterday, AutoDesk goes and launches the Sketchbook Mobile iPhone App. Today? Cloud city, baby. AutoDesk has cranked up the bandwidth on the West Coast to allow the ability to run trial version of certain AutoDesk software via their servers. The only problem? You have to be within a specific geographical area. Looks to be within…

Well now! Lasers don’t burn bacon like that my good man! Unless you got laser shootin’ out of every pore of your body dangit! I suspects it’s got something to do with you and these links! Now get down! Thomas Pringle – This is just the type of rugged sci-fi art, with a dash of…

Today, from the great wild yonder of the iTunes App store comes the design tool of the century, or at least the next few days. Whatever you call it, if you have an iPhone and like to sketch, you’ll love it. AutoDesk has released a mobile version of its SketchBook Pro product upon the masses.…

Five minutes from now, you will know two ways to recess a surface in SolidWorks. They won’t necessarily crush your skull, but they may expand it slightly by enriching your mind with the power of sketch, surface and split face features. It seems like there should be one feature to recess a surface in SolidWorks.…

How many times do you see a product design and think, “How could this possibly be manufactured at a reasonable cost?” The ‘YellowClip’ Clothesline Clip designed by Paul Sandip is just one of those designs that brings up such questions. It’s curvy, it doesn’t rust, it’s available in a variety of colors and it looks…

If you sneak in the back-door of just about any company you will find they have their own unique way of developing products. And why not, they’ve had engineering practices created over decades that would make most people slip into a paper-induced coma. Chrysler has their own special mix as well. It’s a fancy phrase…

It’s that intense chill of power you feel when you run screaming through a gypsum-board wall right before you throw-up and pass out from a mild concussion. If only you had implements of destruction better suited to your surly demeanor. Christian Ristow has just what you’re looking for. A three-fingered claw. Made out of Aluminum.…

Suddenly you hear a *pop* and all the anticipation of creating imaginative 3D models you’ve stored up over the weekend leaks onto your timesheet.There’s no stuffing that gooey mess back in, but there are a few fresh bits of 3D perfection you’ll want to view to get you momentum back. They stretch from graphical to…

You may be at a boil trying to run SolidWorks on a Mac or just looking for a way to model some product ideas on a new install of Linux. Maybe you didn’t even know there are CAD applications available for Linux. Jack Wallen of GHacks put together a post on CAD Programs for Linux…

I should say, at first, I tried standing up the better half of two days. It was only when I lost feeling in my neck and the bats started nibbling my eyelids that I turned to these links. Magical Hyperspace Narwhal – I don’t care if it’s abstract. It’s 3D and wallpaper size so it’s…

It’s not much of a surprise, ya think? The poll last week asking “If You Could Design Anything With 3D, What Would It Be?” did in fact show that approximately 30% would love to hunker down for a nice evening of modeling vehicles in 3D. And by pure coincidence the very next post was a…

How many types of CAD modeling can you stack atop your chest before collapsing a lung? Most draw the line at two, solids and surfacing, and even then, aortas start rupturing. Little do people know there’s a third that can be applied to give you, YES, TRIBRID MODELING. Delcam has had Tribrid modeling capabilities in…