Shocking and amazing. Creating something on the iPad, instead of absorbing the limitless digital content, browsing design variations instead of movie options, sending in an order of that design to be printed instead of sending in orders for a large deep-pan pizza. The iRing3D iPad app has done it. It’s all simple and quite basic…

Sometimes making a claw fist and putting it front of your CAD data doesn’t have the data manipulating effect you want it to. Nope, neither does two claw fists or the hiss of a toothless cat. What will scare that data into a finely structured process flow and multi-level bill of material is a little…

As you may know (or not), digital puppet-maker and modo rigging master, Rich Hurrey of Pixar Animation Studios, has recently released new modo 501 Rigging Master Course. After years in the works and a spectacular video production that explains all the possibilities of animating models with modo, it’s definitely a course to pick up. Rich…

First, I totally GANKED (part of) that headline from the Inforbix post on the same topic. That’s how I roll. But let’s hold back the onslaught on data digging for a sec and address something. Inforbix. I understand. It’s hard to say it… without shredding your throat lining by screaming it as loud as you…

I’ll tell you want, consuming large amounts of GPU juice in the morning can lead to mild twitches and people wondering why you’re sucking the back-end of a graphics card in the first place. However, after you’ve got your taste for tech out your system and slipped that card into your computer, barring electrocution from…

Have you ever modeled an aircraft? How about an F-16? Besides being able to suck all manner of things through its massive intake, it’s one of the coolest looking Jet fighters ever designed. Myself? I’ve not modeled one, but have imagined being able to absorb them into my body, whereby using them to fend off…

It’s a sad day when you go to override the mass properties in your model and you lose your Moment of Inertia, your Center of Gravity and your will to live. It doesn’t have to be that way though. You could do what Marc Monaghan did… scream your lungs out your chest, put them back…

Earlier this week we hear Jon Hirschtick is leaving SolidWorks. Ctrl-C. Ctrl-V. Austin O’Malley. From a tipster early yesterday, we learned a new VP of Research and Development is on over at SolidWorks and received confirmation from SolidWorks that Austin O’Malley, VP of R&D who was with SolidWorks for over 16 years, is leaving.

This is a guest post by Daniel Herzberg about his experience over that last few months of going through open-heart surgery and what he found out about a company that is changing the lives of people everywhere. You can follow Daniel on Twitter, view his models on his GrabCAD portfolio and check out his blog…

Autodesk has it out for you. Your software too. And probably your choice of breakfast cereals. Evil. This week they dropped their plans for the future of CAD computing revealing very clearly what software will be delivered over the web and what software service will be accessed through a browser. They’ve slated it as ‘Access…

Oh, how wonderful the feel of a digital explosion across your screen. Am I right? YES. How’s it happen? Exocortex Technologies. They’ve released Momentum 3, a slick multiphysics engine for Autodesk Softimage. While it’s not useful for anything mildly related to the usual cadre of CAD apps we talk about on SolidSmack, it does give…

Who woulda thought that September would arrive, we’d begin prepping our Mason jars for the winter pickling and SolidWorks 2012 would be released to the early adopting hoards of SolidWorks users. Like many thing that come with a change of season, SolidWorks has fermented this release with tools taunted at SolidWorks Worlds of year’s gone…

I tell ya, did someone just squirt a dwg bubble out their eye socket or do we have a new iPad CAD app on the market? THE LATER my friends. You’ve seen the IMSI TurboViewer app of the free variety. Now, they have the Turboviewer PRO version to tempt your 2D/3D tastebuds. It brings in…

You’ll need more than a forklift to get your jaw off the floor once you find out the details of the upcoming Apocalypse. Yes, it involves robots. OBVIOUSLY. Yes, it involves sharp cutting tools. LESS OBVIOUS, but… yeah. And yes, it even involves 3D CAD…and bikes, and… Go NOW!

Have you ever tried to render glorious rays of light with your mind? It can’t be done (unless you have a perfect mix of abysynth and electricity.) In lieu of that you’ll want some easily adjustable, totally customizable HDR images to slap in your renderings. That’s where HDR Light Studio comes in. They’ve developed a…

If you’re a student, educator or sly enough to get an .edu email from your alma mater, it’s your lucky day. Solid Edge has made Solid Edge Student Edition available for free. So, say you’re a parent who has been trying to convince a young mind about Synchronous Technology and the ability to float (somewhat…

Earlier this week, in an amazing cavalcade of suspense, mystery and PR firm mailings, SpaceClaim slapped a little plus sign on their current release. SpaceClaim 2011+. Some say it has the features to reduce a hurricane from a category 3 to a category 2. (We’ll see this weekend if that is actually is true.) A…

If you’re a Mac user and love to toddle around lines and splines in AutoCAD, you’ll be freezing and unfreezing your layers in frantic excitement today. AutoCAD for Mac is back. You’ve likely felt the screen-shifting vibrations from the Autodesk marketing machine over the past two weeks. All to build up for the reveal over…

What’s more fun than a barrel of charred monkey pelts? A barrel of super simple concept car design in SolidWorks. Or in this case, a video of super simple car design in SolidWorks. Tony Suarez created a car modeling video to shock and stun surface modelers a while back. Now, he’s back with surfaces to…

This is a guest post by Bruce Buck, avid photographer, videographer and workstation geek at MySolidBox.com. There’s one constant in product design – the development of new products. Shocking and unexpected I know, but when that development gets down to all the individual component parts of a larger product, the process gets a whole lot…

If you’ve run out of excuses to slop sour cream on your iPad screen with frantic glee while modeling in sweet 3D, that’s all about to change. Today, as a supplement to their free 3D modeling program, 123D. Autodesk has introduce Autodesk 123D Sculpt for the iPad. They’re spreadin’ the 3D bulgin’ love all over…

There are five reasons I just dropped what was doing to check this out *looks down at fist, punches face*. Fortunately, I didn’t have machined titanium rings on each finger or my face would be a bloody, unrecognizable mess. What’s exciting me to punches is a self-initiated competition going on over at GrabCAD. Put on…

Meaty Sweeps. You can gnaw on them all day like a charred piece of sandy camel leather. (Your computer can too.) But what are you to do when you want to send a profile merrily down a path in two directions? at once? in SolidWorks?! Well, can’t be done. BUT, you can use a single…

This is a guest post from missile makin’, Engineer from Arizona, Scott Wertel of Wertel Enterprises. Solid Edge ST4 is one of those releases that I cherish, but is a marketer’s nightmare.  I don’t remember the official number of improvements made in this version, but they focus more on specific customer requests to improve productivity…

What’s big, bright and full of light? The SES2 light kit from 9b Studios. If you recall the first Studio Environment Set (SES1) from render rocker Yazan Malkosh, you’ll know awesome, easy-to-use light presets for modo, Microstation and SolidWorks are the name of the game. This version brings in 50 more HDR images spherically mapped…

There’s nothing like an impromptu SolidWorks test to get the blood pumpin’. Especially for the job candidate or new hire you spring it on. Strikes the fear of insane modeling practices in them, it does. Plus, it will show you if their completely incompetent or if they just need an extra helping of SolidWorks training…

This guest post comes courtesy of Mark Burhop, Social Media aficionado and Director of 3rd party Ecosystems at Siemens PLM. You can find Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn and near any coffee machine with the majority of components developed using Solid Edge. Hide your spouses. Get your kids under the bed. Solid Edge ST4 is out…

Steal the iPad away from the kids for a few minutes and check this out. IMSI Design, makers of DoubleCAD, has put out the first 3D DWG Viewer for the iPad. “3D DWG!?” you scream in your loudest Vietnamese accent. “What is that all about?!” Well, it’s about a few things – one-upping Autodesk, bringing…

Ya like that graphic? CAD on Android, get it? HA!! What are the best Android CAD apps? Did you even know they existed? Well, they do and any Android freak who draws hearts around their name and their open platform device will tell you there are many other apps associated with design and drawing which…

Hark! The long awaited day has arrived. PTC Creo is here. Today, Planet PTC begins, and with it, the onslaught of app slapping updates to all the PTC programs you’ve developed product in over the years. They’ve talked about it a lot since the Creo announcement last October. They’ll talk about a lot more, but…

Do you use CATIA V6? Have you dreamt of seeing it load a large assembly? Are you curious about the future interface of SolidWorks or SolidWorks Live Buildings? Say no more! To some, the CATIA user interface is a mystery, a deep, endless turntable of parts and assemblies to explore and a mix of products…

Well, it’s not every day you come in from towel whipping pigeons, sit down to your computer, swat away a few feathers and find a screen full of fresh SolidWorks video tutorials waiting for you. Today is such a day. Left coast bad-boy Alex Ruiz, who you may know as the SolidWorks Geek, has been…

Everyone needs a little love. Even those that get to sit around all day tinkering with light settings and camera angles. As Rob Rodriguez details in his blog post, PhotoView 360 (PV360) users may have new reasons to model a hand and give a fully rendered high five to each other. Here’s what you’ll want…

Sweeps. That’s what we love. The stringy morsels of 3D modeling that makes a part all the more difficult (and interesting) to create. Sweeping a profile along a path couldn’t be easier in SolidWorks. A profile, a path, bend it to your will with a few guide curves – perfection achieved. But what if you…

It’s dark. The air trembles with the hum of an endless printing cycle. The lights flicker, the printer stops and the toothless document clerk looks up and smiles a bone-chilling smile. But what’s this?! The drawing, thick with the smell of toner is on revision C… but there are Revision B bubbles on the sheets!!!…

Illuminate! It’s what I yell when ever I walk into a dark room, put on a black shirt or hang a litter of albino kittens over the edge of my laptop screen. It’s what you’ll yell as well when you apply these fresh hot HDRI’s to your renderings. The Studio Environment Set 1 from Yazan…

I don’t care how much gravy you put in your glovebox, modeling cars is one of the funnest activities to do. Even better when it’s just for fun and you don’t have someone yelling class-a surface this and curvature that while in the process of a vigorous leg waxing. Tony Suarez from Mirimar, Florida doesn’t…

It’s baking time. And when I say baking, I mean surface modeling. And when I say surface modeling, I mean Lamborghini Gallardo baby! I know your remember the Audi R8 Surfacing Tutorial. Daniel Lavoie, the guy behind the splines on that bit of magic has been taunting us for months about an upcoming Gallardo Tutorial……

Matthew Perez is at it again. You may remember the Camaro tutorial he provided last month. This time he’s going a tad smaller, but blasting just as much sweet surfacing knowledge as before. Matthew’s tutorial is for a JBL Duet Multimedia PC Speaker. He shows, top to bottom, the process of laying out planes, lofting…

Mesmerizing. There’s nothing like seeing the modeling and rendering process from start to finish. Oh, and then there’s showing how it can all be done within the time span of 20 minutes. That’s exactly what Cut & Paste is all about. You, three others, music thumping, crowd watching… Intensity. Adam O’Hern is all about it…

Sculpteo, the 3D print service we featured last week, will announce tomorrow (October 19th) that their print service will be available to U.S. makers, fabbers or any other person that enjoys the feel of layered plastic.

Open your mouth, it’s here. If you’re in charge of implementing SolidWorks or in charge of bribing IT with chili-cheese fries to install it, you now have to consider the ramification of upgrading to the new version… or throwing caution to the wind and just going for it. Either way, if you’re on subscription, you…

Imagine being so CAD savvy, that you emanated CAD wherever you go. Yeah, you would be the life of the party and everyone would say, “That guys wears CAD crap, and looks FABULOUS in it.” They would also cry, because you are way more prepared than they, in the occasion a random, chest-size CAD reference…

You know how it goes. You’re sitting hunched over the keyboard with a coffee in one hand, spinning your model around while singing “Weeeee little bird!” in your highest pitch, when a knife comes flying over the cubicle wall. That… can cause a mess the janitor is not use to cleaning up. Besides taking voice…

You know what’s not cool? Cancer. You know what’s super cool? Thousands of people sporting bald caps in support of those stricken with the disease that doesn’t do much for the energy level, the hairline, or the organs it affects. That’s why SolidSmack is joining in the fight and is asking you to join in…

A mere month ago we asked y’all how to go about slapping color across parts in SolidWorks. Unless you have a program to apply a random color to a part when you put it in an assembly, they all have the same curiously drab color. That’s not the diverse kind of 3D modeling world we…

I appreciate a good zombie monkey. They’re a rarity and usually make for better sport than other types of chronically drooling, undead monkeys. So, if you’re like me, it’s pretty obvious that you may want to create some usable data from a 2D drawing or graphic of a zombie monkey. Maybe you want to create…

Before you pucker your lips up into your nasal cavity at the sight of something called Smart Components, take a breath. You’ll want to know about them if you haven’t used them already. Smart Components automatically put features into parts when you mate them into assemblies. They take a little bit to set up, but…

Let me ask you this. Do you ever have a SolidWorks model that has the same color applied to all the parts? Doesn’t that just frustrate the glitter out of your magenta and chartreuse trousers? I feel your pain, and so does a reader who is looking to add a splash of randomly generated color…

Quick! Switch your screen from the SolidWorks model of your house back to the spreadsheet that updates Mr. Manager coming round the corner on your task status. Yep, you know what I’m talking about. Modeling your house in SolidWorks. Many have done it in their ‘spare time’. Or, maybe you actually work for a architect…