For many of us, math wasn’t exactly our strongest subject back in school; just as you’re beginning to grasp the concept of numbers, along come letters, symbols, and shapes to boggle your mind further. Suffice to say, we were lucky enough to pass the subject; but for the current and future generations, understanding 3D concepts may not be so difficult. Henry Segerman is putting a new spin on the subject with his emphasis on mathematical art. Instead of teaching math the old-fashioned way (i.e. boring old pen and paper), Segerman makes use of 3D printing, websites, and YouTube videos to illustrate how mathematical concepts like geometry and symmetry work. Take…

Long gone are the days when every banner and sign required the specialized touch of a sign writer—yet, even with today’s billboard-sized digital prints created from Photoshop files, the art of good old-fashioned hand lettering is still just as popular as it ever was. And while it does take some practice to cross your t’s and dot your i’s with a cohesive style, the good news is that you don’t need to go back to design school to get a formal typography education. Written by graphic design icon Ivan Castro, The ABC of Custom Lettering: A Practical Guide to Drawing Letters is an authoritative resource for designers, typographers, sign writers,…

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’ll get the groove going with “Lying Has To Stop” from Soft Hair before diving into irresistible tracks from Club Kuru, Ultimate Painting, Inner Wave, TOPS, and others before wrapping up with “Blush” from Mr. Twin…

Contrary to popular belief, there is much more to a bicycle than simply pushing your legs to make the wheels go round. Take for example the bike’s drivetrain, which transfers all your leg power to the drive wheels. While there are a ton of variations, most drivetrains consist of a front wheel, chain, and rear wheel which allow you to change gears depending on the terrain. One of the most significant problems the system faces is friction. When you’re pumping your legs to the point where they feel like jelly, transferring the energy into the wheels takes its toll on the drivetrain. To make matters worse, an inefficient drivetrain can…

Forget their proposed drone delivery system; Amazon just solved one of the biggest problems for engineers, designers, DIY’ers, or anyone handy enough to use a screwdriver: identifying a screw. Don’t you just hate when you find one of those buggers under your sofa or behind the fridge and have no idea where it came from or where it goes? *looks under arm* Or maybe you do know what the screw is for but need more of the same kind. Instead of taking the screw to a hardware store, you can make use of Part Finder – a feature on Amazon’s iOS app which helps you figure out what the part is,…

If you were too busy re-topologizing that scan of your skull last week, you may have missed this announcement from nPower Software/IntegrityWare–they’ve released version 5.0 of their Power Surfacing / Power Surfacing RE for SOLIDWORKS software. It was just a year ago (June 2017)  they released Power Surfacing version 4.0 that brought support for SOLIDWORKS assembly environment and G2 curvature continuous constraints. Those are some GREAT features and Power Surfacing 5.0 builds on those with some slick, new automated mesh conversion and clean-up and some interesting new features to improve surface quality in SOLIDWORKS. The new features include: Automated scanned mesh conversion (see video) Superior accuracy with Shrink Wrap technology Follows curvature and…