On the first day of SolidWorks World, you can always expect a big announcement. The big one this year is the announcement of SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual (SWMC). Last year they announced it as well, but this time it comes with a release date and pricing. $249/user/mth, available April 2nd. The price is already being discussed…

Hike up your pantlegs and show off that multilingual ‘I collaborate’ tattoo you mistakenly got on your calf last summer, SpaceClaim is providing good reason to get behind the possibilities of collaboration in the CAD space. SpaceClaim piqued our interest with wisps of whiteboarding in October. Now, they’re showing just how Collaboration inside SpaceClaim works,…

Recently, SolidSmack reported on master modder Ben Heck’s ‘hack’ of 3D System’s Cubify Sense Handheld 3D Scanner. A lot of Sense users had stated that the user experience was off the mark when considering that an accurate scan needed a real-time viewing monitor…however the supplied USB cord was either too short or created too much…

The reality of Minority Report-style gestural interfaces has arrived in the consumer market, folks. Intel has just announced that they will be introducing a new lineup of RealSense 3D camera offerings for laptop and tablet designs later this year that will bring “human-like senses to Intel-based devices”. To put it more frankly, the technology (also…

Having only recently acquired the 3D printed sugar company The Sugar Lab a few months ago, 3D Systems is already keeping the momentum moving in expanding 3D printing to chefs, bakers, and anybody looking to create conversational-worthy sugar cubes modeled in Grasshopper to have with tea. Expected to be available in the second half of…

It’s only day one of the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, but this year has already shaped up to be the most exciting year thus far for 3D printing enthusiasts. Among other announcements, MakerBot CEO Bre Pettis has unveiled what will certainly be an exciting addition to their lineup of 3D printers—which have…

If you’ve been looking for a way to keep those SolidWorks muscles strong going into 2014, consider this SolidWorks 101 Course from acclaimed industrial designer Adam O’Hern (AKA ‘the cadjunkie’). Unlike other industrial design tutorial series, Adam keeps the long, awkward pauses out and the intensity full throttle…all in an easy-to-undertand and proven learning formula…

Recently we received an interesting note from SolidSmack reader Rex Brodie about the Cubify Sense handheld scanner that he had recently purchased. According to Rex, the scanner was insanely difficult to use without a portable screen and a 12+ foot long USB cable…and that’s after assuming that your subject matter is ‘ideal’. There have been…

Lately we’ve been seeing quite a few discussions around various SolidSmack social media outlets discussing the best portable digital sketching tools. Sure, most people will gravitate towards an iPad and the Microsoft Surface based on cost and applications for other uses. However, if you consider yourself a professional designer with the need to have full-blown…

Aside from being one of the most livable places in North America, Greenwich, Connecticut has one more aspect going for it these days: their very own MakerBot store. With slightly more breathing room than their NYC flagship store, the Greenwich store resides in a village-like storefront on Greenwich’s main street amongst cozy pubs, ambient coffeehouses,…

Japanese electronics tycoon Sony, Inc recently filed a US Patent Application for a computerized hairpiece, aptly dubbed the “SmartWig”. The wearable technology is set to be outfitted with an array of integrated devices including, but not limited to, a camera, laser-pointer and ultrasound sensors. Additionally, it is anticipated that the hairpiece will be capable of…

Last month we reported on the opening weekend of the new Hatch Live tournament—a sort of Cut+Paste-like competition with the end goal of having a unique, manufacturable design. Well, after a month’s worth of tournament weekends, this past weekend saw the championship round between talented designers Wil Rodriguez-Joglar and Nelson Ayala as they battled out…

There’s been a lot of hype surrounding the (RED) charity auction curated by Jony Ive and Marc Newson—particularly in regards to their one-of-a-kind desk and Leica camera designs. Well, it all goes down tomorrow (Saturday 11/23) at Sotheby’s in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. In preparation for the auction, Sotheby’s held a limited-engagement exhibition to show…

Few industrial designers have branded themselves with flamboyant tastes and pink outfits, yet Karim Rashid has created a solid name for himself as a multi-disciplinary designer who has worked with everybody from Alessi to Coca Cola and Dupont to Dirt Devil. With his creative direction guiding everything from product design to branding and even fine…

For those who have been using Adobe’s Creative Cloud since its recent release, it has been a sort of blessing on multiple levels. With a simple Creative Cloud account, a user can active or deactivate the entire Adobe software suite on up to two computers—and if you want to use Adobe After Effects for a…

With 70% more customer presentations than the previous year, you would be hard-pressed to not find something interesting at Dassault Systèmes’ 2013 North America Customer Forum—a sort of showcase of how users and companies are using Dassault Systèmes’ software for various applications. From the impressive keynote speakers who dove into the future of STEM education…

For centuries the chair has been the quintessential design challenge for creative minds the world over. How can I possibly do something new with this old form?—is a question that many designers have asked themselves over the ages, while trying to infuse their sitting-devices with style that is markedly their own. Fortunately for twenty-first century…

At this point in the history of technology, most of us have become pretty familiar with electronic paper or “e-paper”—it is the wild invention that is responsible for the high-contrast black-and-white screens in our eBook readers. It produces the non-backlit, sharp and focused images that enable us to endure marathon digital reading with visuals that…

Perhaps you’re one of those fine folks who enjoys a leisurely ride around your village in a tweed suit and impeccably-kept vintage bicycle (the real kind, not the re-issues). For most riders, having that much cool-factor is borderline uncomfortable, and I’m sure the tweed suit doesn’t help make the riding comfortable either. For the rest…

Live design competitions have been one of the best ways for new (and existing) designers to showcase their chops and get great exposure without having to pull out their portfolios. Additionally, watching a mouse arrow dive through command menus and toolbars can be one of the best ways of re-imagining a software program or getting…

It has been over six years since the 2007 debut of the Sony XEL-1—considered by most to be the world’s first OLED television, and inarguably the first to become widely-available to consumers. But it has been a long six years for OLED technology, which has continued to evolve and offer futuristic promises, but hardly in…

Lookout. SpaceClaim is doin’ it, doin’ the thing. I think we could have called this one. In fact, I think we did at some point. We knew SpaceClaim was pushing (and pulling) geometry-filled envelopes when they had the first truly multi-touch 3D modeling, 3 YEARS AGO. Granted it wasn’t a production ready feature, but it…

As any regular reader of SolidSmack knows, digital fabrication tools have led a helping hand in ways never before seen for designers, artists, and even regular-Joe hobbyists. Combining the powers of digital modeling or 3D scanning with various devices that output a three-dimensional object still sounds like something out of the future, yet every day…

Today I received a friendly email from my local SolidWorks VAR, ending with a gentle nudge: “****THERE IS NO GRACE PERIOD FOR DECEMBER RENEWALS, ANY DECEMBER RENEWAL RECEIVED AFTER DECEMBER 31ST WILL AUTOMATICALLY INCUR A REINSTALLATION FEE – NO EXCEPTIONS.” Ahhh, the sweet taste of extortion in the morning. SolidWorks 2014 is upon us, friends,…

Recently, we reported that MakerBot was expanding their retail empire to include ‘mini-stores’ within over nearly 20 Microsoft stores stretched across the United States. At the moment, their only standalone brick and mortar is their iconic New York City store where they have resided for just over a year now. Today it was announced that…

With everything from 3D print fail blogs to in-depth tutorials on how to avoid various 3D printing pitfalls, it was only a matter time before we saw a 3D print preview offering. Unsurprisingly, Autodesk Labs has given us our first taste of what to expect with their all-new Project Miller app designed for testing and…

For those who have had the time to get their feet wet in Autodesk’s Cloud-based CAD platform Fusion 360, you might have been missing a few ingredients from your previous workflow in another CAD package…particularly in the rendering department. On Wednesday October 9th, that problem will be solved after the announcement this morning that Luxion…

Have you ever walked the hallways dangling portable 3D mice from your arms like a raging super villain who can expel them from beneath the skin as an effective attack mechanism? I knew you have. This may even less of an occurrence now as the wee, corded 3DConnexion SpaceMouse is shedding its ties to the…

With plans to launch this fall, MatterRemix is entering the browser-based 3D modeling game with a slightly different twist from what we’ve seen with other browser-based modelers: What if users could take existing STL files and give them an Instagram-like photo filter ‘remix’ for creating custom, sharable, 3D printed goods?

It came with little surprise that those having the most fun at the Faire were those that required a (very happy) chaperone. From the crowd surrounding the ‘Make-Your-Own Marshmallow Shooters’ stand to the long line waiting to get into the ‘Learn How to Solder’ tent, you might have mistaken all the kid-centric excitement as a…

It’s no secret: 3D printing and other methods of digital fabrication are more popular than ever before. From access to 3D printers becoming increasingly easier to 3D modeling tools that even 5 year olds can use, the presence of 3D printing at this year’s Maker Faire highlighted just how far 3D printing has come in…

The sweet smell of Asian-Infusion tacos and extruded plastics over the sound of kids screaming “I want to solder next!” or “Hey Dad, look at this 3D printer!” could only mean one thing: you’re at a Maker Faire. Held this past weekend at the NY Hall of Science, the New York Maker Faire drew record…

Perhaps you were enjoying some light budgeting of software expenses over the weekend, following thoughts of monthly pricing with icy swigs of Portland’s best pale ale. Would paying monthly work better? How can we get the software we need for this three month project? Autodesk thinks they have the answer. They’ve been moving toward a…

For the first time ever, the National Endowment of the Arts took an in-depth look at the field of Industrial Design and yesterday released their report Valuing the Art of Industrial Design: A Profile of the Sector and Its Importance to Manufacturing, Technology, and Innovation. The results? Not surprisingly, being an industrial designer is pretty…

As reported by SolidSmack last week, MakerBot has announced that the MakerBot Digitizer 3D scanner is ready for pre-order. In the announcement video released today, MakerBot Founder and CEO Bre Pettis encourages you to “blaze a trail into the future…this is an amazing adventure we get to go on together.” So it is.

The folks over at WhiteClouds Labs certainly know how to strike the iron when the iron is hot. Their recently released video of Elon Musk’s (who is he again?) Hyperloop concept in 3D printed form is quite possibly the most satisfying rendition of any and all concepts posted since the open source initiative went into…

Computer Science Ph.D. students Kai Chang and Jens Windau of tech startup AIO Robotics have just announced that they’ve been developing an ‘All-in-One’ 3D copy machine similar to that of what we have seen with 2D printers. The ‘copier’ from Chang and Windau would essentially let you be able to scan, print, copy, and fax…

When you’re thinking about squeezing those mashed taters between your fingers and your elbow skin starts to flare, it usually means one thing. You have a hankering for some completely unfettered week-night sculpting insanity. Now, you have quite a few options out there, the newest of which is Cubify Sculpt. 3D Systems announced the new…

Hot off the heels of their announcement that they’ll be setting up shop within the cozy confines of Microsoft retail stores across the US, MakerBot has also just announced that they’ll be releasing their coveted 3D scanner next week. According to their announcement via their mailing list, MakerBot has “optimized the whole process to work…

In a not too distant future, you’ll absorb your coffee through the air, control your home thermostat with third eyelash from your left eye and sculpt crazy alien faces in your browser. Actually, that last one is already here. It has been for some time as a open source port of a school project by…

Believe it folks. SolidWorks eDrawings for Android is real, living in a small bungalow at the corner of Google Play and awesome. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I’m not sure I would have believed it. We’ve heard it’s ‘Coming soon’ for the past six months. SolidWorks user Jack Owen was the…

Today, MakerBot quietly announced that they’ll be opening ‘mini-stores’ (similar to the mini-Apple Stores within Best Buy locations) at Microsoft retail stores featuring a full-on ‘MakerBot Experience’. Prior to this announcement, the only way to get the ‘MakerBot Experience’ was to attend a MakerFaire, go to a 3D printing industry event, attend a school or…

Buckle your eyeball harnesses and strap back your jaw, the Gnomon Workshop is coming up this fall and it’s your chance to see 3D artist doing their thing LIVE. There are 10 artists in the mix at the two day event and you’ve likely heard of many of them before. They’re professionals in their field…

When they made the announcement a few months ago, botObjects came under scrutiny from the designer/maker crowd because they had little more than a vector-esque orthographic rendering of what the 3D printer would look like….with no 3D print examples. They followed up a few weeks later with some sample prints, however there was still no…

Both Autodesk and GrabCAD have made some exciting announcements this week with Autodesk’s Fusion 360 launch on Tuesday and GrabCAD’s new Workbench which will allow even more powerful sharing features the CAD community. We had a chance to sit down with GrabCAD CEO Hardi Maybaum and Autodesk’s Director of Mechanical Design Products Prabakar Murugappan. So…

After months of hype and speculation, the first Cloud-based CAD platform is here from Autodesk in the form of Fusion 360. At $25/month per license, a user can purchase their seat in the Cloud for less than a week’s worth of Starbucks lattes. But despite the low cost-of-entry, how does Fusion 360 stand out as…

Reverse that Z-axis and cool the extruders. The print beds of the 3D Printing scene are amalgamating into a massive prosumer platform with two 3D Print manufacturers joining forces. Two weeks ago we reported on the rumored acquisition of MakerBot. Our first guess was Stratasys and although we thought that it was “highly unlikely that…

There’s nothing quite like curling up in a one-of-a-kind leather safari chair, made to look distinctly like the one you remember from your childhood trip through the Serengeti. A pack of lions got that one, but this one… this one is just like it, but even better, because this one is custom made. I bet…

The low hum of 3D printers echoed through the historic warehouse in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park District this morning as MakerBot ‘Productors’ were busy at work building Replicator 2’s and 2X’s. Today, Bre Pettis and NYC city representatives presented the all new MakerBot Factory…a two-story 50,000 sq ft warehouse filled with nothing but…you guessed it…MakerBots up…

Hold on tight to your filament reels and don your Maker goggles. The Wall Street Journal has reported that MakerBot has been in acquisition talks with unnamed suitors, according to their sources. Who could it be? Stratasys could benefit from the acquisition and offer printers similar to their Mojo line for the Indie Maker crowd…