In FAB

Arkitypo. The 3D Printed Alphabet Project (and How it was Made)

1 Min Read

If you’ve often dreamt of iconic typefaces exploding from your chest as you vocalize a Shakespearean sonnet, the idea of printing out an 3-dimensional representation of your monologue may sound attractive. Ravensbourne, the UK-based digital media university, adores typeface and 3D fabrication as much as you do, so it only seemed natural to illustrate the history of typefaces with the 26 letters of the English alphabet. Jon Fidler of Anything3D was the digital artist on the project. He created and fabricated all 26 of the 3D letters for the collaboration project between Ravensbourne and Johnson Banks Design agency. It is called Arkitypo and we asked Jon to fill us in on the details.

Read More
In SMACKDOWN

Friday Smackdown: Alliouro Adventuro

2 Mins Read

Once, when roads were dirt and stick, dust falling from a travelers trip and stories from their lip, a girl. She sat in the meadow watching as they passed, adventure on her mind, a spritely girl of only nine. When passing by on a cloudy day, a tree-like man, with fingers eight to each hand,…

Read More
In FAB

How to Explain 3D Printing to the Uniformed… with Native American Hand Gestures

3 Mins Read

“This post is from guest blogger, JF Brandon. He works with Enrico Dini and the DShape. He likes 3D Printing, Naïve Architecture, Open Source, Mass Customization and Hockey. He lives in Vancouver, Canada.”

3D printing is part of my job. When I tell people this, I usually get the response “Oh, I heard about that stuff on TED/YouTube/The Economist/the EvD podcast… how does a 3D printer-ma-thingie work? I can’t wrap my head around it’s awesomeness.” Yes, sometimes it’s a bit difficult to explain, so to help, we cooked up a useful primer. We here at SolidSmack want to help you become better designers and part of the job is explaining what you do and how you do it. What better way than through Native-American hand gestures.

Read More
In CAD

SolidWorks World 2012 Coverage: SolidWorks 2013 Features (and Top Requests)

4 Mins Read

If you were enjoying a mustard salad sandwich last week while watching our SolidWorks World Coverage and choked, we were not able to help you. As you gasped for air though, you probably saw the new features to come in SolidWorks 2013, which in all likelihood dislodged said sandwich from your windpipe, shooting it into your cat/bosses eye. Your excitement for living and these new features may have been mistaken as a sandwich-spitting victory dance, but we know what really happened. To help you prove it, here’s the wrap-up of the top enhancement requests from SolidWorks users and the new features coming to SolidWorks 2013.

Read More
In NEWS

Adobe Gives Linux the Finger, Makes Sweet Love with Chrome

2 Mins Read

As of the next update, Linux users will have to use Chrome (or other as yet non-existent PPAPI compatible browsers) if they want to use the latest version of Flash. There is also speculation that Adobe is building an outdoor toilette for Linux users, and is planning the construction of “separate but equal” housing projects for them in the coming months.

Read More