The piles were many, yet it stood atop, triumphant. When the sounds started again, we were not quite ready, but we could tell it was. Leaping from mound to mound toward us, it landed with its masked face pointed away, a beam of light shining out of the tiny visor, suddenly turning, holding in its…

4 AM and the mouse nest stirred. Frost lit the channels, the straw, by the moon. And stolen away in the warmth, a light gray, eyes set ablaze, by the flames that were set, in the morn on the quest, for this raw band of links. Vitali Timkin – The concept artist from Minsk can crank…

Measuring CUBES?! Yes. Measuring cubes because, really, who has times for measuring CUPS. This just beat out the carabiner and desk organizer for best 3D printed tool of 2017 (and lines up with our goal to stop printing crap). You know that drawer somewhere in the kitchen that needs dumped out every time you need a…

Threads were drawn across their arms, five arrows each, held by their teeth. Ten times they let fly. Ten times the ship shielded our descent. Dust blown, then settled, they were gone, and left in their wake, the skin of these links. James Gilleard – Love the mix of stylistic vector illustration with bits of edgy,…

For as long we’ve been finger jabbing commands into a computer, there’s one thing that’s always been an afterthought – appropriate times to high-five coworkers. But followed closely by that is how to recover lost data. That is until it happens and your co-workers are like, ‘Where did you put that file?’ and you’re like, ‘What…

A big first in 3D CAD today. Shapr3D, together with Siemens PLM Software and Tech Soft 3D, has brought the full power of Parasolid 3D modeling to iOS, in the latest release of the Shapr3D iPad Pro app. (See announcement here.) Siemens’ Parasolid is the most common 3D modeling kernel and Tech Soft 3D’s HOOPS…

Onshape has some clever cooks sitting around their mobile CAD kitchen, pouring the gravy on pretty thick from the beginning. Earlier this week, I posted on SmackTalk about a new Onshape patent that popped up. The Touchscreen Precise Pointing Gesture patent. This is (I beleive) their 7th patent, after their last was published in Auguest of…

What’s that? You have enough snow globes? Wrong answer. You can NEVER have enough snow globes… to set up for target practice so you can work in the Sig Sauer Elite AR-15 with Noveske Flash Suppressor you got on Black Friday. People need hobbies. You could spend hours shopping, spending hard-earned money on snow globes,…

Rolling side to side, on toward the rough hewn slide, and we, barely touching foot to ground, jumping across their heads, fled, and as we did the large one turned, with the others flanking round, to jump and eat, and trigger the uplink from their ship to these fine links. sslololss – He’s an illustrator…

First mask I ever made was a paper plate with a piece of yarn to strap it to my head. Never mind that it was done last night – I just upgraded and am currently wearing a paper bag with eye holes burned out with a lighter someone threw at me last week. Anyway, it…

Despite the onslaught of VR 3D modeling apps, there aren’t a lot of ways to use a tablet and a spoon-like device to make the process more awkward. Fortunately, Kickstarter has brought us one. The Yeehaw Wand might look like any ol’ spoon of colorful mosaic tiles, but it’s actually an electronic sculpting paddle that…

Ugh, not again. You’re digging through the cupboard looking for that triangular mesh fabric to make a mechanoid death eater mask for your chihuahua and you can’t find a sheet of it to save your life. Put that little yappin’ dog in a bag of cheese puffs for a few minutes and check this out.…

Don’t let Cupix fool you. On the surface, it may look like any other 3D virtual tour content you’ve seen on real estate sites or hotel kiosks but Cupix is actually a complete web-based platform to map 360 photos to generate full 3D immersive environments. Their approach is simple. Using an affordable 360 camera (like…

The piles of wooden legs, metal arms and felt bacon strips was an odd combination to line the corridor. We hadn’t been on board for long, and nearly 45 minutes before they docked, but we knew what they would be seeking. Arm and leg repairs, of course, but they knew the most nutrients would be…

When the bowls dropped, we jumped out of the barrels. In the rambunction we didn’t notice the machines had moved in. Hundreds of them, thin and towering, light and quiet, only noticed when their combined silhouettes blotted out the sun revealing these links. Juan Pablo Roldan – Massive scenes, ships, mechs and more. Beautiful lighting…

AstroPrint is on a roll. They’re announcing the release of another app today that does two things for 3D printing. Toy Maker is a free app that 1) introduces kids to the world of 3D printing and 2) introduces developers to the capabilities of AstroPrint’s Cloud platform. Toy Maker On the surface, the Toy Maker app is…

It’s a week past the Holloweens, but there’s never a wrong time to make a cool helmet. Aside from protecting you from your dog licking your face to wake you up, random ear-punches by co-workers and people being intimidated by your smashing good looks, helmets are just loads of fun to make. You may remember…

How can something be ancient? And 3D printed? Because we’re IN THE FUTURE. It’s like the answer to why it smells like beer and cigarettes in here. Because WE HAVE CATS. (Name the reference!) But really, it’s not like you’re going to walk downtown and find an ancient skull artifact unburying itself from the sidewalk.…

If you were not paying attention to AstroPrint, the startup that changed the pains of makin’ with their 3D printing software and wireless capability, then you’ll want to take notice of what they’ve been up to lately. AstroPrint has had a string of product launches this month. AstroPrint Mobile First, they announced the public unveiling of AstroPrint Mobile, their…

Ya know, while there are various ways to collaborate online around a 3D CAD project with other like-minded designers and engineers, you don’t hear about it too often. We’ve yet to get to the real-time, live-edit environment, à la Google Docs, but we’re close. You may have built a few 3D models in Onshape but,…

A tall lanky fellow slid down the old gutter, water shedding below where his feet landed. Small bottles hung at his side where a coat of velvet jade hid most of his legs. A wind-broke, wide-brimmed hat recorded the marks and bore his intent to devour these links. Jan Buragay – If you missed Jan’s…

I’m a bit giddy. It would seem the spirit of open source is alive and well at MakerBot… Well, as much as it can be for a corporate-owned, publically-traded entity beholden to shareholder demands and selling product shrouded in IP protection. Be that as it may, for the first time in a long time, we’re…

Forehead slap. This Onshape update has so many great additions. Really, it’s impossible to pick a top 3 – All 10 could be in the Top 3. But that’s also impossible, so I squeezed my eyes as tight as they could go, until tears popped out onto three new features – those are the top…

Ladies and gentlemen, get your sample packs out, sit the kids down, and get ready to nub punch those chubby buttons into the wee hours of the morning. If you love making your own music, are mesmerized by the mixing of sound or have ever wanted to make your own MIDI controller, our Model of…

Sponsored by Your days are spent looking into each other’s eyes, sometimes you even meet up over lunch, and if you push the right buttons, mmm-hmmm — hot, steamy 3D geometry, baby. You hear that? It’s the sound of love, CAD LOVE… or the sound of your software crashing for the fifth time today. Toss…

Even though Google’s Pixel 2 release is a wee 364 days from its predecessor (it’s rumored to hit shelves this October 19), the company has done its best to include as many add-ons as it can with its new phone. Of all the new upgrades and features, the instant language translation has caught our imaginations the…

There were elbows. Not just elbows, but the thick skin of elbows, poking up through the surface of the ground. Now, there’s one thing a bean sprite doesn’t like, and that’s when you step, scrap or trip upon the elbows of the sycamores they’re sworn to protect. Every vibration, every damage, it felt through these…

I know what you’re thinking. Those fist-size storage capsules would be painful to swallow. But don’t worry, while they’re too big to dose yourself with a month’s worth of Omega-3 and too small to put on a squirrel mask and crawl inside of, these storage capsule containers are PERFECT for storing all sorts of random…

So, I said, Onshape, why don’t you push out some new features in 15 DAYS instead of 21 days. And they were all like, ‘You didn’t really ask us that, but since you pretended to, BAM-A-LAM!! FIST OF ONSHAPE!! ACTIVATE!!’ And then there was a little wine and cheese party, with those guys that do…

The leaves we raked through the mist had left the eaters confused at first. We pushed the piles close as we could without them seeing, but you could tell they were trying to smell what was helping them feed. Why assist such creatures? Though blind, their quills were the only things that could protect us from…

There’s a new online 3D CAD player in town and they’ve been gaining steam over the past year since announcing beta and opening up registration. SelfCAD describe themselves as an online browser-based 3D model, sculpt, print platform with a mission to “make 3D designing and printing accessible to everyone, including professional designers, as well as…

I know. I KNOW. You’ve got your desktop segmented alphabetically using a number substitution cypher based on an obsession with cigars made between the years of 1928 and A.I.G.F. You don’t need any more organization. Oh, but YOU DO, because when you see this desktop organizer, you’ll toss your codekey for stacks of 3D printed…

Presented by I’ve been going over What’s New in Fusion 360 and realized there are few things I need to know more about. Working on a model recently, seeing what people have created using Fusion 360 and a backlog of Instructables projects, pushed me to explore a more efficient ways to fill my braincase with…

The bottles opened on their own. Not like you might think. The caps peeled themselves off slowly, cracking and grinding, the bottle content overflowing. Then the veins. Oh, the veins. Barely visible through the glass at first, but pressing, spreading up and out, forming the flapping tentacles of these links. Elijah McNeal – Oh, how…

Recently, we talked about MX3D getting all giant metal 3d printing robot on us and printing the 3D structures of the future. If you’re familiar with the company, you know they’ve been busy the last few years on a mission to build the first functional 3D printed bridge across the Oudezijds Achterburgwal canal in the De Wallen…

Wel, well, well. Onshape features this year to date? A buck 0′ two. That’s right, Onshape has passed the 100 mark with a small nod and rumors of cookie dough ice cream for all Onshape employees over the next month on everyday that ends in ‘Y’. It’s a modest update, a modest update of MASSIVE…

When you’ve got five kinds of soup stored away in your desk drawer for safe keeping, along with that box of emergency chocolate chips, only the most advanced form of security will do. Facial recognition and eye scan technology wasn’t around in 2000 BCE, but they did have a type of pin lock that isn’t…

The cones of bear fur lined the cavern ledges. Though they seemed uniform and color sorted, it was quickly apparent why we had heard the noises and rumbles from this place. One by one, we saw, hidden at first but there in the fur, the glowing eyes of these links. Nik Henderson – Fabulous! Loads of…

Well, props to the mom’s of 1,000,000+ designers and engineers who, for reasons unbeknownst to them, gave a collective high-five from the sheer excitement of their sons and daughters learning SOLIDWORKS 2018 was indeed released and now available. SOLIDWORKS 2018 If you had to sum up SOLIDWORKS 2018 in one sentence, you would say, ‘SOLIDWORKS…

Jets raced through the sky, skimming the embered edge of the fire kraken’s atmosphere. Most wouldn’t make it to the cloud tower port, but if they did, the beast would fall. For there it was discover and known this day what icy hell would be wrought once aligned were these links. Tomislav Jagnjic – delightful, oddly…

It may be a few weeks since you’ve had that dream of attaching articulating arms of grapplers, lights and small laser cannons to your upper torso, but that doesn’t mean you can’t start today. “The hardest part is starting your transformation into a cyborg. Scalpel!” is what my old business partner use to say. That’s…

A sound came from the crevice. And also a smell. It wasn’t unlike a musty dried grass. But wasn’t like it either. Could all of them have made it to the shed? Too small. Too many. But we hadn’t factored in how they could shapeshift into these links. Laurent Palmier – Ships, ships and more ships.…

As 3D professionals, we require a certain level of ambiance in our office space. It shouldn’t surprise anyone when they step inside an engineer’s cubicle and it suddenly feels like a 1920’s lounge complete with stage, singer and the smell of old reference books and even older whiskey. Lamps are an important part of this.…

Five times we heard the rapping at the gate–a tinny echo, guttural and shrill. We were not sure if it was their claws scraping the steel bars, the sound from their jawless face or both. But when we heard them break through, we decided unequivocally it was time fire these links. Brian Sum – New work from…

I’m pretty sure if we ran a survey right now, all the answers would be BIONIC HAND. Even if the question asks whether your favorite color is red or gravy, the answer would be BIONIC HAND. That’s because bionic hand is not only the coolest color, it’s also the coolest body upgrade… ya know, outside a…

Chitty, chitty, chat. Chitty chitty chat chat. You want to get chatty in Onshape? Well, the update they rolled out this week makes 92.8% of 3D CAD software chat dreams come true. Maybe you’re are not so chatty, but I guarantee you’ll want to use that chat to tell your co-workers about the new sheet metal angle flange reference. Yeah,…

The tired, worn hinges held the remaining chunks of a massive, metal door shredded. It’s where the tapping started, echoing down the corridor to an area that sounded much bigger, much bigger indeed. Of course, we knew they were big and with this one able to tear through 20 inches of steel, it had to…

We LOVE collecting things–Odd design tools, pencil shavings, quesadilla drippings, and software, especially software. We’ve long wondered which 3D CAD software developer was going to pull an Adobe CC and launch an all-in-one of their entire software line. Autodesk has come pretty close and is making their Product Design Collection even more attractive announcing the addition of…

Nuts and Bolts. They seemed to fall like a thin rain. We could hardly tell what they were at first but, sure enough, the puddles of oil magnified the miniature hardware. But every third or fourth one was something different. Something different indeed. And the there were more, until nothing but their gears were grinding…

I feel like I’ve stepped out of reality and back in again, then back out. But it’s real folks. Possibly the most anticipated version of Fusion 360 has been launched and it includes an immense amount of new features (and one in particular) you have been waiting a long time for. Fusion 360 Sheet Metal…