London’s Design Museum is a marvel of inspiration for designers, engineers, architects, digital media artists, and pretty much anybody else. The awesome factor can maybe be compared to having a perfectly toasted giant marshmallow with a cup of spiced drinking chocolate on a blustery winter day next to a fireplace. For 22 years the museum…
3D Systems isn’t messing around in 2013. Despite some new products having lackluster performance, they have managed to prove that an arsenal of ‘whipped cream pies in your face’ is the best strategy for developing hype and getting your attention. Somehow amongst promoting their new product releases at CES 2013, they managed to earn the…
At CES 2013, 3D Systems announced the release of Cubify Capture, which allows users to take a video or photo and turn it into an actual 3D-printable model. Over the past 9 months, 3D Systems has been trying to turn Cubify into a powerful cloud-based environment for not just downloading of files (for purchase), but…
Didn’t we just predict that acquisitions would be all the rage in 2013? Here’s a fun one: Autodesk buys German real-time rendering software Pi-VR, and when combined with the 2011 Numenus acquisition and Carl’s 2011 One Graphics System (OGS) initiative, we have a feeling AD is prepping to melt some faces.
Makerbot announced today at CES 2013 the release of their Replicator 2x Experimental 3D Printer, an upgraded version of their successful line of Replicator 2. I’m reading the feeds as the info comes in and it’s looking good. You get the impression Makerbot is trying very hard to hit the Living Room and the Office,…
3D Systems is a positive potent powerplant of press releases. Coming off their acquisition of Geomagic, 3D Systems decided to unleash upon the unsuspecting world their second-generation line-up of Consumer 3D Printers, just in time for CES 2013 (okay, not so unexpected). We asked, what could the ‘X’ in CubeX stand for? Famously, when US…
Can we get a “great balls of 3D poly-mesh gravy!” up in here? 3D Systems has announced the acquisition of Geomagic, makers of a range of scanning, design software and haptic devices. This hit us like a ton of voxel-based bricks, and we’re all excited and terrified of what awaits us when the dust settles.…
As Adobe seeks to plug holes as they increase their move into the Cloud, certain skeptics are weary of what will happen with otherwise free services such as Behance. Where did this acquisition come from and what does it mean for you?
While the politics of uploading and sharing gun components for 3D printing is still a murky topic both in design circles and political circles, MakerBot’s Thingiverse has taken it upon themselves to do their part by dropping guns from their 3D print file sharing site.
In what sounds like a scene out of a Star Trek movie, medical professionals will soon be working in an interface similar to Inventor, Revit, and Maya to design and produce tissue and organs. According to Organovo CEO Keith Murphy, “This could give us the power to recreate human tissues and organs outside of the…
The acquisition of HSMWorks by Autodesk, Inc. created some temporary uncertainty about the future of HSMWorks for SolidWorks. We have been relieved to get many direct and unambiguous commitments from the highest levels at Autodesk on continuing to offer HSMWorks and develop for the SolidWorks Platform. I am glad to report that everyone else I…
Nylon, it’s wonderful stuff. A silky fabric when weaved or a flexible polymer when moulded. Reach out with your hands and chances are you will touch something Nylon (Warning: Solidsmack is not responsible for any injury, due to electric fan or angry, nylon-collered Wombats). Oh, you have a 3D Printer next to your computer? And…
Autodesk has been on an acquisition rampage this year, and most of us assumed that products like T-Splines and HSMWorks would cease to exist as we know them. Well folks, we just got off the phone with Autodesk HQ, and were we told in no uncertain terms that T-Splines for Rhino and SolidWorks are here…
The Objet 1000 is a seriously killer machine if you want ultra-high res large-scale 3D prints. No doubt about it. So why, Lord of mercy, did they want to associate it with an 80’s action cartoon jingle? Studies show that the Objet 1000 jingle reduces life expectancy to exactly 00:01:51. It is believed that no…
Have you waited long enough? In 2009, Mcneel announced Beta for Rhino 5. I’ve lost count how many years ago that is. Low and behold, last week, Mcneel announces the release of Rhino 5 in a 34-word blog post and with it, the reveal of a brand new website. Both have been a long, long,…
Defense Distributed, the infamous 3D Printing Gun Slingers who describe their mission as “…facilitating global access to, and the collaborative production of, information and knowledge related to the 3D printing of arms; and to publish and distribute, at no cost to the public, such information and knowledge in promotion of the public interest….” had an…
Besides the biggest news at this year’s Autodesk University, there was a lot of other great stuff to take in–including the current state of the Maker movement according to those who know best. As a whole, the event offered some exciting news and insights into what the near future holds…for both Autodesk and the designer/engineer/maker…
2D Copy Centres are sooooo 2011. 3D Copy Centres – now that’s something I need. You know that feeling when you drafting a CAD model and you need it in your hand? And it’s 3am? And no one’s given you the new code to the Stratasys because you kept on 3D Printing what your boss…
When you look in the mirror, fresh out of bed, and wonder what you’ll be scanning at 6 am, the face peering back may suddenly turn pale as the brain absorbs the blood and sends thoughts of patching and converting mesh data for days. The horror. Geomagic wants to end that scene and have you…
Yes sir, it’s Euromold again and the big-wig 3D Printing companies have come out in force to strut their stuff and eye the competition. Although we theorize that these are merely rubber-band guns, it’s possible that Objet made a sword (rather, a golf club). They certainly have a machine of a size that is capable…
Today, Autodesk continued the sizzle following their FormIt release at Autodesk University, announcing the “first and primary” application of T-Splines tech in the Autodesk product line, Autodesk Fusion 360. As you may gather, this new product is part of the cloud-based Autodesk 360 product line that includes Simluation, PLM and BIM. Design was the major…
For far too long, Architectural apps have been kept to 2D floorplan stabbing and inventive ways of measuring. You should have known Autodesk would have something to say about that. In the first day of activities at Autodesk University 2012, Autodesk FormIt for iPad was launched. FormIt is a building app sure to make the…
Objet’s Connex 3D Printer creates a ship in a bottle by jetting transparent and black materials within the same print session—I can’t possibly think of a cooler way to put a ship in a bottle.
ShapeShot can scan a human face in 1/2000 of a second. The result is a high-resolution water-tight 3D-print-ready mesh file. A favorite S.L. Jackson quote comes to mind: “When you absolutely positively got to [scan] every m*f* in the room, accept no substitutes.” And that’s what makerbot store NYC is planning to do: scan every…
For those of you who have seen Monty Python star and overall comedy genius John Cleese’s lecture on creativity, you might recall that it is a sort of pre-TED era TED Talk with exceptional points and quotes worth repeating–even decades later. In the case that you’re looking for a little extra creative juice this week,…
As automobile design becomes more prevalent in the mainstream, Disney is moving forward towards recreating an optimistic view of futuristic transportation and how these ideas are fostered. Set to open at Disney World December 6th, the new Test Track attraction gives new meaning to ‘Tomorrowland’ by letting kids (and their parents) design and test the…
Good news for our workshop/bedroom/garage Maker friends in the UK! Kickstarter has officially launched their UK Kickstarter page and with it, reasons to turn those loose ideas into golden opportunities.
As the media bombards us with cringe-worthy images of flooded subways and cranes dangling from skyscrapers from this week’s Hurricane Sandy, the Shapeways Tumblr has been reporting inspiring updates since their site went down due to the power outages. Needless to say…you cannot stop Makers!
While the world may be coming off the latest caffeine buzz surrounding the iPhone 5, something even bigger and more important just happened: Jony Ive is now king of hardware AND software design at Apple. In a press release issued Monday, Apple announced ‘Changes to Increase Collaboration Across Hardware, Software & Services’. Is this finally…
If you’re likely to draw roots of polynomials up and down your forearms, you may have an over-eccentric appreciation for the math. You may also have a dusk-to-dawn fixation on software that can help save you long nights of scrubbing your arms while watching re-runs of Bill Nye solve for X. PTC is taking a…
GrabCAD is just not stopping. They’ve hired two high level product people from SolidWorks and completed another round of funding. This time closing $8.15 Million to bring their total influx of funds north of $13 Million. We caught up with Hardi Meybaum and Jon Stevenson to find out more.
Ever wonder what a 3D Printing store would look like? Mix a little bit of Willy Wonka’s charm with Bre Pettis’ hair and you’ve got yourself a MakerBot store. AND WE WERE THERE. IN NYC! Check out our video as we talk to Bre at the NYC MakerFaire and then hop on over to the…
Bacon. Impossible to eat while working on a touchscreen. It’s an awful, AWFUL problem that needs to be dealt with. Ya know, we’ve toyed with the idea of touchscreen interfaces for interaction with CAD data, but it’s always been a bit of a transitional solution to working in 3D. I don’t know why grabbing loose…
The 3D cloud collab fire keeps burnin’ hotter and today’s news is sure to stoke the flames. Sunglass.io started out as a simple way to share models online and was one of the first to bring in a WebGL-based, plugin-free approach to sharing CAD Data. They had a basic annotation tool at the time and…
Today, the biggest news for CAD/CAM in years happened. Autodesk announced it has acquired HSMWorks. That Autodesk acquired another company isn’t surprising. What is surprising is this–HSMWorks is a CAM Solution for SolidWorks. If you use it, you also know it’s the best integrated CAM solution for SolidWorks. Obviously, Autodesk sees this, loves this, wants…
Last week Luxology and The Foundry announced a merger. The CG/VFX scene was all abuzz and many a product designer head was popping out of cubicle, office windows and coffee shop to see what the craziness was all about. We caught up with Luxology CEO Brad Peebler to get the lowdown on the merger and…
All of us are recovering from what was a whole lot of fun in the Big Apple at World Maker Faire. More detailed posts will be forthcoming as we digest (AKA sleep/render video) on what occured. Suffice to say, success! In the meanwhile, I thought I’d post some pictures and quotes from a gem blogpost…
Rumors were swirling of the launch of a new 3D printer by a relatively unknown, yet pedigree group of MIT grads who call themselves Formlabs. And yesterday, they unveiled the Form 1 3D Printer on Kickstarter. Backed by glowing recommendations of John Hirschtick and Skylar Tibbits, the Form 1 seems to be an ‘it’s all that’…
Last April, I was lucky enough to be contacted by the Discovery Channel (Canada) and have them put the spotlight on the DShape and the Rygo Project. I was unlucky enough to have suffered a bike accident a week before filming, so the bruiser and stitches above my eye make me look significantly gruffer and…
Autodesk is pushing its globulous mass (I mean that in a nice way) into every corner of everything that has anything to do with creating–Engineering, Architecture, Manufacturing, Media and the community-minded machine of fabbers, modders and tweak-freaks. They delivered their 123D software to make it all so much easier, but as Wired reports, the software…
I’ve marked today as the day I’ve seen the largest number of ‘WTF’s ever recorded by man… in the field of product development. Three new policies for product design and hardware projects were set in place by Kickstarter as described in their blog post, Kickstarter is Not a Store. It’s a game changer for those…
Rumors have abounded about whether or not Makerbot is going to release the documentation for their latest machine, as they have with the Replicator and the Thing-o-matic. Open-Source is Bre’s middle name. Tangibot threw a wrench into Makerbot’s narrative to be the biggest hardware company in the Open Source world. Lucky for them, the combination…
Last week Makerbot stuck a timer on their website, filling everyone with suspense about what the heck would happen at 3pm EST today. And lo and behold, Bre Pettis delivered upon us a press conference. Not his best performance – he seemed a bit nervous. But who cares – look what he brought! A new Replicator…
Hey, we haven’t done one of these in a while! What’s going on in Crowdfundland? Brilliant ideas? Or Annoying ones? We probably only notice the brilliant ones, because Kickstarter filters search results to prevent the unsuccessful campaigns from appearing. Hey Google indexes the internet so I only get the most ‘cited’ pages out there. Same…
Rapid Manufacturing of bio-compatible materials is taking off in a big way. If researchers aren’t developing new ways to use a Reprap to create veins or printing prothetics beaks for Bald Eagles, they’re exploring avenues to perfect the art of making organs. Is this a harbinger for things to come? We hope so. Hey Solidworks,…
When new technology reaches its ascendancy, a question is posed. Can it be used to improved the lives of less fortunate? Specifically, those people that live in lesser developed countries? Sure, the latest Shamwow doesn’t apply – but what about more expansive and innovative technologies? Like 3D printing? Well certainly. But you have to find…
And while Australia is going big with 3D Printing, Austria is going the opposite direction. The Vienna University of Technology has developed a method for 3D Printing on a microscopic scale using lasers. If you recall they printed a tiny F1 car, complete with details right down to the steering wheels and hubs. Now they’re…
As the bottom end of 3D Printing is being filled with hundreds of different companies competing for market share, new machines are appearing. Only a month after Airbus announced its intentions of developing massive 3D Printers that can manufacture whole wings and fuselages, researchers at Swinburne University in Melbourne Australia managed to develop one of the…
I have long been wondering who would sink their teeth into the succulent cad-driven tissue of Inforbix. Today, that happened. Autodesk announced earlier this morning that they have “acquired certain assets of Inforbix, LLC.” Inforbix produces product data applications with their main web-based product focus on visualizing your data wherever it is located from anywhere…
After warnings from retired Engineers and seasoned VCs, the World has reached peak hype in 3D Printing. All those Kickstarter campaigns for 3D printers, all those busy CAD artists, all those blog writers who talk endlessly about it (noooo), are going to hit a brick wall. No more cool materials, no more cool designs, no…