While it’s natural to want to have every advanced woodworking tool under the sun available at your disposal – we’re looking at you, Frank Howarth – there is also something to be said about the simplicity of working with the least amount of tools possible, or even having a workshop to work out of at all. For Oregon-based industrial designer and self-sufficiency practitioner Tom Bonamici, manufacturing products out of wood with the bare necessities isn’t just about working with simple tools for the sake of simplicity – it’s a meditative way of life. Bonamici, along with fellow designer Derek Lasher and filmmaker Adam Newport-Berra, recently spent a day in upstate New York…

If you’ve ever stood in the shower wondering if you could be sued because you made a certain 3D model of a certain brand of car, wonder no more. Precedent has been set. BMW Group, which includes Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, BMW of North America, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, and and Rolls-Royce Motor Cars NA have filed suit against Turbosquid, 3D model marketplace for professionals who need high quality 3D assets. The suit was filed on May 3, 2016 with a requirement for Turbosquid to file with the Court within 30 days. A trial by jury is called for with no date pending. The suit does not say if BMW Group…

It’s not uncommon to feel like you’re being pulled down by constraints when you work in the field of product design. After all, everything from strict deadlines and challenging client presentations to manufacturing limitations and material costs are an everyday reality. Why not cut your creativity a little extra loose during the downtime? Heck, why not paint yourself a bunch of “happy little trees”? Known for convincingly replicating the real-life experience of using oil paints, pastels, charcoal, watercolors, and other artistic media, the Corel Painter 2016 digital art studio uses Natural-Media to perfectly emulate real life and richly imaginative art materials. With the combination of realistic brushstrokes, splatters and even…

I haven’t heard much from 3DPrinterOS for a while, but now the reason for this is clear: they’ve been working on powerful integrations. 3DPrinterOS is a cloud-based system for integration with common 3D printers, which tend to be rather dumb. 3DPrinterOS makes them a lot smarter by hooking them up to a cloud network where all kinds of 3D magic can occur. You can manage print jobs from the cloud, and even store them. You can send prints to different nodes in the 3DPrinterOS network, providing authorization permits. Evidently 3DPrinterOS spent time examining the workflow typically done by engineers and designers within the enterprise market. They found considerable delays and…

Time for another round of apps that cover the spectrum of your beloved mobile device, be it iPhone, Android or Windows! 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 and 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 into tips@www.solidsmack.com. Hit it! YNAB “Never heard of YNAB? It stands for You Need A Budget (we all do!).…

We’ve covered a lot of Kenneth Smythe’s chair designs over the years. I’m always excited to see his emails with a new one, guessing it will be similar to previous chairs and completely surprised when I view it. The latest design is visual extrapolation of an emotionally and psychologically charged elitist pathology (ya got that?), with similarities to his previous design, TIME’S MOMENTUM. In fact, you’ll see strict similarities across all of his chair design whether they’re made of wood, titanium, PVC or composite resin. His homage to antecedents is not to other designers, but to Fibonacci and Descartes, whose thinking has had an immense influence on his designs. PRECIPITANT…