It’s not as if robotic cats are out to keep you from gaining knowledge about certain SolidWorks drawing features, but with their hollow gaze and reduced allergens they certainly would have that power in the right cubicle space. While they’re indeed much more adorable than a stodgy, ol’ FeatureManager in SolidWorks, they won’t provide you…

Yes, It’s that day, and you need some 3D geometric inspiration. Look no further. We’ll take that 3D geometry hunger and add the sci-fi appeal and architectural construct of a single Brooklyn-based artist. The intricate sculptures of John Powers captures a form that absolutely glorifies all the ideas of the mathematical properties of space. It…

Squeezin’ into that browser just isn’t as easy as it use to be. You’ve got 3D search capabilities busting out all over. It’s even spilling onto your desktop to make your media searching and organizing a multi-dimensional trip to Zoom-ville. ‘3D searching’ – It’s here and it’s getting more intense. From web pages to images…

Steep ledge, isn’t it? and a bit sharp too. I’d avoid the dark hollows up ahead though. You never know when a wily link will pop out and grab ya. LOOKOUT. There’s some now! TronixGFX – With a name like ‘Tronix’ it can only be good. Feast your oculars on some phenom 3D graphics Hunter…

You may like to argue about whether or not 3D Printers will go mainstream, but one thing is for sure, you can get started pretty easy, pretty soon and do it on the cheap. Prepare your fingers for nicks, scraps and beautiful droplets of layered ABS plastic. Next week, Makerbot will start shipping their Cupcake…

What could be more exciting than a thermos filled with your favorite soup flying across the room and hitting you in the neck? A heated, self-illuminating thermos filled with your favorite soup, that’s what. Nicolas Bernal, from Montreal, Quebec, has been busy finding ways to keep his mama’s best recipes warm on a long hike…

Look out unemployed and soon-to-be-unemployed engineers and designers… SolidWorks has gone and done the nearly unimaginable… free software. For a limited time, they are offering a free trial download of SolidWorks 2009 to stimulate the corpuscles out of your ever-loving, unemployeed facial pores. And although your excitement may instantly look like a bad case of…

That’s gotta feel like being attached by wild raccoons with stale pizza crusts. Retreat! Retreat!! take shelter beneath these links fair maiden. Sibocks 3D Abstract Gallery – Inspiring and also representing the way I fee about right now. Hold the noise down. 50 Free lessons in Graphic Design Theory – ah, you can never have…

Grab the nearest cardboard box and have a seat, we’re gonna take a look at a chair aimed at making you 17.8% more productive and your dwindling butt muscles more comfortable through those long hours of your busy computer-busting life. Designing and Engineering, browsing and writing tend to take toll on our bipedal bodies. You’ve…

Allright gang. (Yes, I just called you gang) I didn’t get a chance to post this incredible look into the future of 3D CAD and Social Media madness yesterday, so here a treat for ya today. It’s all come together and Blake Courter from SpaceClaim has done it single-handed with a single add-in to the…

Stop your clikcin’ and a’drawin’ there for a few seconds. There’s a way to make your SolidWorks drawing experience much more enjoyable and your Bill of Material manipulation a whole lot easier. SOlidWorks BOM’s have gotten a lot of nice functionality, but somehow, there’s bits and pieces of working with them that 1) take getting…

“Ha! Did you see his face when he found out it wasn’t actually a donut!” Yes, it’s the day where we lay aside all of our inhibitions and totally fool the daylights out of people we care about. My thoughts? As long as your April Fool’s Day prank uses an aardvark and makes someone cry…

Yes, it’s true. We here at SolidSmack lover your comments. In fact we love them so much, in addition to providing reasonably sized delectables to tiny dogs, we keep the Disqus comment system updated… and apologize to people whose comments have been sitting in the Spam folder for three week. yeah, sorry about that. If…

If you’re a fan of meatballs and Nvidia Graphics Cards or “GPU’s” you’re gonna throw noodles in the air and set the table for the new Quadro FX family that has just come into town. Nvidia has release their 10th generation cards and the “Strongest Professional Graphics Lineup in History” is the byline every GPU…

Yes, you’re sitting waiting for a drawing to load again. You look out the pretend window you’ve drawn on the wall with a dull sharpie and sigh as you long to eat at that taco place your grandpa took you to years ago. *Sigh* May as well get some coffee, it’ll only be a few…

Oh! That’s a feisty one. It’s as if my sense of choosing a properly ripened melon has gone numb from shock, horror and these indescribably cool links. Philip Straub – The amazingly colorful and future imagination of this multi-talented artist. Barcelona 1908 – Yes, your penchant for grainy video of old cityscapes will soon be…

Strap an unnecessary amount of shiny metal objects to your clothing and take a swig of intensity. We’re about to step inside the realm of very vague advice… and then totally slam it with the most practical information your fingers have ever bleed scrapping to get a hold of. Out of all the practices in…

Look, I know you’ve seen your share of provocative ‘visual essays’ that just make your wits reel with multi-dimensional perceptions of life and the universe, but this one is really cool looking, and it smells of PhotoWorks rendering. This lil’ experiment in visual prose is from Darren Ng. You may remember his impressive apartment refurb…

If you’ve taken a look outside your cubicle lately you’ve probably noticed that the sky has not only fallen for many engineers, but has also nearly imploded due to the increasing supply of talent. What to do. It’s really easy to get down about this even if you still have a job, but it’s also…

Ok, you’re in a room of SolidWorks experts and starting to sweat. You feel like bustin’ out you modely moves, but wonder if they’re good enough. You start to twitch a little and get into the groove, but only the cat gnawing it’s paw in the corner seems to notice you shakin’ like André 3000.…

A very kind reader and master of SolidWorks surfacing technology sent me a really fun link that plays on the idea of ‘unboxing the box’ – as in, removing the notion that surrounds cars of being boxy and inefficient. It’s from Audi and produced by 1st Ave Machine. They make shaping cardboard look way easy,…

I’m feeling sick today. Kind of like my head weighs five times the rest of my body. I should probably be in bed right? I also need to get a bunch of stuff done… check drawings, release drawings, write posts, paint the trim, trim the hedges…. BRING IT ON. That’s right, I don’t like it…

Put off wondering how cool you could be for a few minutes and check out some spakin’ new multitouch interface, 70 inches of multi-touch in that ever so seductive, yet utilitarian, table-top style we’ve just adore. It’s called Struktable created by none other than… Strukt, convenient, that little play on words, in’t it? However, they’re…

I found it siftin’ through those leaves over there. Fearsome, don’t ya think? But also really cute and had these links attached to it’s hind quarters. Alex Dragulescu – Seriously cool visualizations of information. Almost like throwing up very rigid, sometimes curly, objects. 5 Things to Build Your Personal Brand – Build what? Build you…

Bruce Buck was nice enough to send a link about Salem Design and Manufacturing – a company using SolidWorks to create custom machinery that uses automation components from Misumi, the people responsible for the photo above. The image is for their Empowering Young Engineers (EYE) program to support Robot competitions with their automation components. So,…

OOOOOhhhhh, it is ON. SolidSmack has been challenged… and when I say challenged, I mean we are pickin’ fights with anything or anyone. Mr. Joseph ‘Mass Customization’ Flaherty over at Replicator Blog recently wrote about Why 3D Printers Won’t Go Mainstream. That’s just yelling to have an opposing view thrown at it. So that’s what…

Set the sticks and mud aside. Playing with objects in our physical world is nothing against the impending sensorific-digitized-virtual-realitastic onslaught of completely augmented playtime for you and the kiddos. You may be seeing Frantz Lasorne very cool concept for a ‘blaster bot’ style kids game floating around. It uses nothing but the pure goodness of…

Guess what. You’re most likely moving a little mouse cursor around, selecting this link or that link (clicking anything to escape this post?), perhaps not realizing that soon, instead of a mouse cursor you’ll be using your digits or some other multi-point device. We’ll get into that tech in future posts. For now, we’ll take…

Oh man are we about to blow the door of your creative gourde WIDE OPEN. You might just call a meeting to discuss new ways to design those pump housings you model all day. Be warned. I’ve been wanting to find some simple design to showcase. Simple design that can inspire designers and engineers alike…

News travels fast up har in the hills and mountains o’ CAD country… stimulatin’ news… news on the magnitude of HUGE and TIMELY. This is just such news. SolidWorks announced at SolidWorks World 2009 the enormous plans of helping every ailing engineer that has meet the cold hand of unemployment. The SolidWorks Engineering Stimulus Package…

I agree. It’s usually smaller mammals that shoot bolts of electricity from their eyeholes, but those stale fruit balls and these links have changed everything. Adam Tredowski – Adam has the whole 3D, art and sci-fi thing down with his surrealistic perspective on structures. wow. Evolution of Spy Gadgets – You’re sneaky. really sneaky. I…

You better have one of those fancy skin-tight ski suits with… ya know, skulls and shiny shapes on it, cause your skin is gonna peel right off your bones with this new ski concept. Charles Pyott had the idea of doubling the edge surface on a ski to help skiers maintain speed through turns and…

Well, mostly fresh and mostly hot. It’s been a few weeks since SolidWorks World, but that won’t stop you from being able to view, in full virtual glory, all the events caught on video, photo and double-sided sticky tape. The SolidWorks World 2009 Proceedings site has it all. You’ll be able to see some of…

What exactly do you get when you stick two highly talented SolidWorks users, a middle-age product manager and thick sarcasm into a small trailer? Only the most jaw-tightening 3D CAD video series hilarity to ever be broadcast across the vast reaches of limited wi-fi access. These videos wreak of everything your design universe is composed…

If you’ve upgraded to SolidWorks 2009 SP2.1, you might notice a message for an obscure feature that helps you make lil’ bumps on faces. The Shape feature. Turns out, this particular feature will not be available in SolidWorks 2010. Yep, so now, you and that one guy in South Dakota who use it to make…

Here’s your chance to give those photos a little more depth and a more monochromatic feel. Today, Shapeways launches PhotoShaper that turns your photo into a 3D printed plastic masterpiece. I’m guessing you probably don’t get many photos printed nowadays with the whole digital camera craze going on now, but if you are thinking about…

You’ve got five days I reckon. After that, you can’t tell what the unintended results of too much lather will do to affect migration of wild yaks. I’d put down some crumbs and use these links. Josh Keyes – You won’t see surreal cutaway art like this in the textbooks. Great detail and a touch…

BIG hat tip to Kevin Quigley for commenting on the Future Design and Engineering post yesterday and mentioning another video that takes a stab ( much better stab) and future design possibilities. FilmMaker Bruce Branit brings reality to life in a big way. No touchscreens, no paper, and no limit to what can be done.…

Ahhh, it’s that time where we sit with a pretend cup of hallucinogenic material and ponder the inescapable existence of highly advanced technology creeping it’s way into our future (as well as the need to still clean it all.) A little over a week ago Microsoft presented, in fine video form, it’s vision of what…

Are you ready to watch some SolidWorks marketing videos? No? How about some SolidWorks video that show stuff blowin’ up? Yeah, that’s what I’m talkin’ about. Melon and clock parts all over yer face. I think you’ll enjoy the newest rampage of proof as to why you should use SolidWorks. Oh, the plans to hand…

You know what you need sitting on your desk next to your copy of SolidWorks? A small animal deterrent? No, no, and definitely not an automatic, multi-flavor, ice cream maker. You’ll need a mirror. A large mirror to see the snazzy new shirt you’ll be wearing after visiting the new 3DVIA Virtools site. Not sure…

If you overslept or forgot to feed your hairless cat the past couple weeks, you may have missed the newest SolidWorks Service Pack (SP) that not only fix’z a bit o’ broke stuff, but also give you a handy new feature. In fact it was #4 Enhancement Request from users this year. Charles Culp discovered…

So how many of you tore yourself out of a paper bag this morning ready to play with 3D online? hmm, nobody? Well, some of you may have a bit of an mild obsession itch about getting away from program installations and tedious upgrades to create and manage 3D online. Wild Pockets is on the…

As if those potatoes will peel themselves. Ok, so apparently they do, but it’s got to be the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen, besides that disco family of Sumatran rabbits and these links. Wayne Barlow – Yes, speaking of creepy. Wayne wins for his creature art. A fleshy sac on the back of a 3-legged…

I was showing some people on Twitter how RealView helped to cure confusion and ignorance with manufacturing. It just so happens that Twitter, also helps to cure confusion and ignorance. My ignorance. I complained about tangent edges showing in shaded mode. I really needed to have them off, but thought, Oh well, nothing I can…

Once again you’re trapped in a firefight between hundreds of mechanized sentient beings, with no route of escape that wouldn’t leave you riddled with the dawning of human extinction. That is, until you see a little beast of a vehicle creep into view from around a corner. Your first thoughts are DOOM, but you soon…

After SolidWorks World a couple weeks ago, there was such an influx of CAD peeps to Twitter that it has forced me to take actions and update the CAD Twitter List. (It needed an update anyway) Less than a year ago, the list started with an interesting set of 40 people exploring the possibilities of…

No more slamming your face against the hard surface of your monitor in hopes of gaining the pity of your coworkers. The soft foam that sends you off to dreams of work the next day is potentially a future interface to create 3D models on. DIS.PLAY allows you to manipulate projects objects via touch-sensitive force…

After really thinking about this post, getting some feedback and losing a slap fight with an angry camel trader, I’ve decided to totally revamp the former SolidWorks Success post and put them in all together. It lacks the detail I originally determined I wanted to put into the points, but the angst about not having…

Two things prompted this post 2 weeks after the total obliterating coverage of SolidWorks World 2009. 1) Some people emailing me not knowing how to get there 2) the need to write another post. Recently, Jeff Ray highlighted some things at SolidWorks World 2009. Out of all the incredible stuff that happened the best one…