Never one to fall behind the times, Acer is updating their previously announced Concept D laptops with NVIDIA’s new Quadro RTX graphics cards. The laptops in question are the Acer Concept D 9 Pro, Concept D 7 Pro, Concept D 5 Pro, Concept D 3 Pro – all of which will be out later this year. Starting with the flagship model, the Concept D 9 Pro will now have a 17.3-inch, 4K-enabled screen with 32 GB of RAM and Nvidia’s Quadro RTX 5000 GPU. Beefy. This laptop was supposed to support an RTX 2080 GPU but with the new graphics card, the Concept D 9 Pro seems much more suited…

I know all y’all SOLIDWORKS users have been loosing sleep over one thing and one thing only since February 2019. Why, in the pit of Elroy’s belly, did Dassault Systemes go and fiddle with the name of the beloved SOLIDWORKS World brand, changing it to 3DEXPERIENCE World? Well, it’s been a few, seven months since SOLIDWORKS World 2019 where CEO of Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS, Gian Paolo Bassi (GP), announced that SOLIDWORKS World 2020 would be called 3DEXPERIENCE World 2020 and here’s a bag. The announcement of the change sent ripples through the SOLIDWORKS community with some excited for the change and others vowing never to return to the conference. It…

It’s time for another round of apps that cover the spectrum of your beloved smart device(s)! The Weekly App Smack is the best of new or updated design and productivity apps (and maybe a couple of fun ones, too) for the busy design or engineering professional. This week we have a list sure to make you more efficient. Do you have an app suggestion that has made your life easier or changed up your workflow? Let us know in the comments below or send it to tips@solidsmack.com. Hit it! Prizmo 5 › Pro Scanner (iOS — Free) Prizmo is the most capable scanner app for iPhone & iPad to create stunning…

Over the past couple of years, China has had a major boom in the bike-sharing industry. By renting bicycles out to the public for a fee, companies earn money from cyclists who use the same docking system. Now this is all well and good if there are a handful of competitors in the market, but as of late China’s bike-sharing industry has expanded to a point where there are too many bikes and not enough people willing to ride them. The result is millions of unused and unwanted bicycles littering public areas, never to be used again. Hoping to make use of these poorly discarded bikes, industrial designer Qiang Huang…

Though many people think of chess as a boring, non-contact sport to watch, there’s nothing boring about a chess set which lights up in the dark. Crafted by YouTube creator CraftStation, he repurposes an old, wooden chess set and uses the pieces as molds for an awesome resin-casted set: After encasing the chess pieces in a couple of hastily put together plexiglass containers, CraftStation pours in a foam mixture to mimic their contours. With the foam solidified, he cuts out the chess pieces and uses the foam as a mold for his new resin chess set. Using a mixture of resin, water, and dye (blue for one side and white…

Get that stretch out of your system with this week’s Spotify-powered SolidSmack Radio Playlist. It’s fashioned up, ready to make you pull your shoulder blades back and knock out another week of meaningful work while you bob your head to the beat. Whether you’re in the shop milling aluminum, sketching the latest product prototypes or modeling up a 3D storm, consider these tracks as a tool for your process. This week on SolidSmack Radio we’re STARTIN’ THE PARTY with “4 MIND”, a little Skrillex remix dish, followed by SebastiAn, A-Trak, Eva808, Aphex Twin, and others before wrapping up with Lemon Jelly, Basement Jaxx, and smooth, new one from ELAX. Ready?…