The folks at Paperwallet sure like keeping their wallets simple. Made from Tyvek (the material you find in a lot of packaging envelopes), these money holders are as thin as an anorexic paper yak, yet are able to hold a fat stack of bills and cards. Not only that, but they give upcoming artists a chance to showcase their works right on the wallets. The Micro Wallet takes these concepts and makes them even thinner than Paperwallet’s Slim Wallet. While the former wallet measured 0.12″ (3 mm) in thickness, the new wallet measures a mere 0.012″ (0.3 mm) – roughly the thickness of one of the credit cards it holds.…

SolidWorks unveiled two new certification exams at SolidWorks World 2018, which celebrated 20 years since their certification program began back in 1998. At the 16-year mark, the program only certified 100,000 users, but since the demand for programmers, engineers, and CAD professionals has risen over the last few years, that number has doubled to over 270,000 and continues to increase at roughly one certification every 10 minutes. On day three of the conference, Senior Manager Michael Puckett announced the addition of Mold Making and Additive Manufacturing Associate to their certification program. According to a recent press release, both will be supported by learning modules in my.solidworks.com section of the company’s…

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 we’ll get the groove going with “Skip Tracing” from Mild High Club before diving into sweet melodies from Dada Plan, M. Ward, Amanaz, Monarchs, and others before wrapping up with “An Echo In” from The Sea and The Cake.…

Named by Business Week as one of “the world’s most influential designers,” Don Norman has spent a lifetime dedicated to better understanding how humans interact with the manufactured world around them. Suffice to say; he’s seen the gamut of good and bad design. Which is why his book, Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things, belongs on the shelf of every designer and engineer. Norman, who also wrote The Design of Everyday Things, deep dives into why we as humans think about our manufactured “stuff” the way we do—and why we as designers or engineers should hold ourselves accountable for making our products attractive, pleasurable, and ultimately, a…

Mondays might not be your favorite day of the week, but the good news is that we’re all in this together ladies and gentlemen. As purveyors of prime Grade A web content, the SolidSmack crew has done some of the heavy-lifting to make sure you get your Mondays started on the right track. Welcome to The Monday List. Every Monday, we link you up with some of the most insightful, informative, and socially-relevant stories to keep tabbed, bookmarked, reading listed, pocketed, or what have you to get your week started on the right foot. Be sure to check in each week for a new crop of freshly sprouted words curated straight…

Whether it be music, movies, documents, or photos of your cat – everyone has something precious they keep as digital data. But let’s be real – that’s a lot of data you have to keep stored. Those photos of your cat alone might not even fit the 1TB hard drive you keep. Keeping backups of your data is usually a smart thing, but not when you have to lug multiple hard drives around like its 2006. GOSPACE wants to be the only storage drive you have to keep for all your data needs. Among other things, it serves as a storage drive as well as a portable cloud which uploads…