When it comes to being at the right place at the right time, nothing beats that old saying, “the best camera is the camera you have with you.” Perhaps the same can be said for sketchbooks—the best sketchbook is the one you have with you when inspiration strikes. Which is why the pocket-sized Field Notes have always been a favorite for designers and engineers. At just over $3 a pop, these no-fuss 48-page memo books are perfect for laying down rough ideas without worrying about wasting precious paper in a leather hardcover book. Plus, they’re the perfect size for throwing in a shoebox to keep a record of all those…

I feel like I’ve stepped out of reality and back in again, then back out. But it’s real folks. Possibly the most anticipated version of Fusion 360 has been launched and it includes an immense amount of new features (and one in particular) you have been waiting a long time for. Fusion 360 Sheet Metal Fusion 360 now has the one Workspace every metal bender around the world will shed a tear of joy over – Sheet Metal. Fusion 360 now has sheet metal. It has a single flange tool that includes the creation of any type of flange including, base flanges, edge flanges, miter flanges and contour flanges. It’s…

Unless you accidentally step on them, you can never go wrong with LEGO. Since 1949, the company has helped creators both young and old bring their ideas to life. With new features like submersible blocks and working motors, making anything from a tiny house to a life-size replica of a car is possible. But one can only do so much within child safety laws. This may be why people like YouTuber “sayaman” constantly look for ways to push LEGO bricks past their plastic limitations. In two of his more recent videos, sayaman attaches a normal LEGO motor to a real car battery. By steadily increasing the motor’s revolutions to that…

People People, the Swedish company behind the Modern Pocket Watch and Wearable IoT for Snickers Workwear, has successfully run a new crowd-funding campaign on Kickstarter for their Small Wireless Transparent Speaker with Flic Button control. The new speaker features a glass case so you can see exactly how the drivers are all wired together to produce sound. This isn’t the first endeavor from People People in transparent speaker design as the company released a larger version back in 2012 featuring a large 6.5-inch subwoofer and a pair of 3-inch full-range drivers. It also came with a larger price tag of $849 as opposed to their latest offering, which cost a…

Entertainment giant Disney has published (pdf) an interesting study on a compliant mechanism system they’ve developed to assist in 3D design, which could be very useful for 3D printing. What is a “compliant object”? They explain: Fueled by progress in technology and computation, however, many fields of engineering have started to embrace deformation and to leverage flexibility for better, more elegant, and ultimately more satisfying designs. Applied to machines, this turn to the flexible leads to compliant mechanisms, i.e., mechanical devices that perform motion not through rigid articulation but by virtue of elastically deforming flexures. Whereas typical 3D CAD systems allow the development of “assemblies”, which are discrete solid parts that move…

Three weeks ago Autodesk posted a preview of Fusion 360 in the Browser. You remember Project Leopard correct? Well, that’s alive and well–not as a separate product from Fusion 360, but as Fusion Team, accessed directly in the browser from your Fusion 360 account. Fusion Team – Access Anywhere Even though we’re completely aware of access anywhere-anytime, Autodesk’s lead case for Fusion 360’s browser ability is the need to access your design data anytime-anywhere. Cue the example music… Let’s say you’re on a long road trip with your family and your boss suddenly asks for some edits on a project that needs to be submitted within the hour. (Forget questioning…