Maybe you don’t need to spend an arm and a leg on CAD/CAM tools
My friend Rachael Dalton-Taggart, Director of Marketing Communications at Geomagic Solutions (which is now part of 3D Systems), often has interesting perspectives on the engineering software market. Every once in a while, she’ll start an email thread on some intriguing or irritating issue, and include a bunch of industry editors/anaysts/consultants in the distribution list... Read More
3D Master
3D MCAD is not “done.” Not by any means. Well over 40 years after the introduction of commercial 3D MCAD products, and 25 years after the introduction of feature-based solid modeling MCAD, many MCAD programs aren’t totally 3D. They’re 2D/3D. What I mean by this is that their 3D capabilities are inadequate to represent real world products fully in 3D. They... Read More
Alibre becomes Geomagic Design
Almost 2 years ago—in July, 2011—3D Systems acquired Alibre, a developer of budget 3D parametric MCAD software. It was just one of a large number of acquisitions that 3D Systems made over the last several years, and, for awhile, it appeared that Alibre was getting lost in the shuffle. Alibre has now found a new home, and a new name. It has been folded into the 3D Systems Geomagic... Read More
CAD in the pursuit of art: Shane McKenna
As an engineer, I often think about CAD as a tool for the engineering and design of technological products. But, every once in a while, I’m reminded that CAD can can be used in ways its makers never anticipated. Shane McKenna is an engineer, designer, craftsman, and artist. I recently talked to Shane about how he uses CAD/CAM in his work, and he, as an aside, shared some of... Read More
How would you design an electric motorcycle?
I often find myself looking at manufactured products, and wondering “how would you go about designing something like that?” For some things, the sheer scale of the problem is so large that it’s hard to wrap your head around it. But, there are many things that are more human scale, in complexity and difficulty. A good example is an electric motorcycle. Some time... Read More
Rock and Roll industrial design
I’m always interested in how people use CAD software to do interesting projects. Nout Van Heumen is an industrial designer and engineer whose day job, so to speak, is in the packaging and insulation business. But Hout has developed a name for himself by taking on some really interesting freelance jobs. One of his projects that I particularly like is the Aristedes OIO guitar.... Read More
SolidWorks 2014: No obvious surprises
Bernard Charles, explaining where SolidWorks fits in. There was a time, years back, when SolidWorks users complained because the annual updates of the software included so many major new capabilities that it was hard to keep up. SolidWorks is a mature product now, and the pace of adding major new capabilities has slowed down quite a bit. Now the big emphases with new SolidWorks... Read More
Autodesk Fusion 360: The future of CAD, Pt. 2
Imagine, for a moment, that you worked at a major CAD developer, with massive technical resources, and more than a billion dollars in the bank. Next, imagine that you were given the task to develop a next-generation 3D mechanical CAD product. No need to generate short-term revenues. No requirement to build on the existing generation of products. Just a big toolbox full of component... Read More
Autodesk Fusion 360: The future of CAD, pt. 1
This week, at Autodesk University 2012, Autodesk unveiled Fusion 360, a new cloud-based mechanical CAD solution. What they didn’t do, however, was tell everyone the real significance of Fusion 360. They actually intentionally underplayed it. Here is the real story: Fusion 360 is a major generational change in CAD. It represents Autodesk’s best thinking on what the future... Read More
The deep secret of SolidWorks 2013
It’s been a few weeks since I was at the SolidWorks 2013 media event in Waltham, MA. There have since been several articles written about SolidWorks 2013, by Roopinder Tara, Brian McElyea, Anna Wood, Ricky Jordan, Matt Lombard, Randall Newton, and probably many more. I already gave a preview of my observations about SolidWorks 2013, in the article Gian Paolo Bassi on SolidWorks... Read More
