Just after Sandboxr was scheduled to launch their own creature creator app February 1st, Autodesk has sprouted another tentacle from its 123D app portfolio and introduced Autodesk 123D Creature. Yes, you can model your own creature in the discomfort of an office chair during a meeting, but guess what? You can also send it off to be printed.
If there’s one thing I should have obsessivly started making and collecting when I was younger, it should have been small, wooden cars. Perhaps it’s not too late to begin *grabs log and chisel*, but in the meantime there are people like Matteo Ragni who thought it might be a good idea to gather 100 designer friends together and create 100 wooden, toy cars. It was a good idea. The lot of them provide their own artistic blend of fun and function in an exhibition called “100% TobeUs: 100 designers for 100 new toy cars” and leave you wondering what other possibilities there are.
One of the more exciting announcements to come out of SolidWorks World 2013 this year was the addition of an augmented reality-based update to SolidWorks’ popular eDrawings iOS app. What has been a go-to solution for many designers looking to present their models easily to clients and other designers in an easy-to-carry solution has now been recently updated to show full assemblies and parts at full scale on the table directly in front of you. We had the chance to sit down with SolidWorks’ Director of Product Innovation Rick Chin to hear more about what inspired him in developing the AR-feature, what it means for SolidWorks users, and how it may just be the future of CAD modeling and presentation.
148 brains have been drained of their futuristic spacecraft-inventing potential over the last month. Who is to blame? Makerbot and GrabCAD. The Makerbot Replicator 2 Design Challenge just finished up at GrabCAD and the winners have been selected. The challenge was to create a 2040 vehicle design. Most of the entries are fabulous designs and the top six are, may I say, JUST DANDY. Especially first place winning entry, ALPHA by GrabCADr Omega, a “futuristic aerodynamic flying spacecraft [that] combines gorgeous curves with hot rod triple exhaust and spoilers.” And, it’s ready for printing. What’s not to like about that?