DEVELOP3D - Technology for the product lifecycle

Online open 3D print site Shapeways has been around for a few months now, but has now added its own Creator engine, allowing anyone to go online to design, model and print.

The latest step towards making 3D design more mainstream, Shapeways, the offspring of Philips Research sponsoring bills itself as ‘the next generation of consumer co-creation’. It joins a number of sites, including the impressive laser-cutting based Ponoko, that offer anyone the chance to grab their mouse and create anything onscreen to be built and shipped to them.

CMO of Shapeway Jochem de Boer, said:“In today’s world, consumers are universally less and less satisfied with the choice that the usual shops offer. Instead, they are looking for ways to reflect their personal identity in the objects that they choose to have around them.”

The sites gallery shows this clearly, with the greatest uptake beginning to produce seasonal items; Christmas Tree decorations, Nativity scene candle holders and snowmen ornaments hoard the pages and fill the niche of the personal gift, with the benefit of having someone else make it and having a 10-day shipping period.

I might be missing out on the weather, the casinos, the showgirls and something called Autodesk University in Las Vegas next week, but the AU Design Slam by the guys behind Cut&Paste is something I’d really have loved to have seen.

The live on-stage design competition is going to be the first to feature 3D design, with teams hacking out designs against the clock using Autodesk Maya, AliasStudio, SketchBook Pro, and Revit Architecture software.

20 minute rounds mean competitors are pushed to use their wits and showmanship to entertain the crowds as their progress is projected in real-time onto massive screens.

In an interview in the build-up to AU, Cut&Paste executive director John Fiorelli, said: “It’s a live battle between industrial designers and between architects, it’s very similar to the digital design series we do for graphic designers around the world. We’re working with Autodesk University to bring it to industrial design and architecture for the first time this year.

“The idea is to do in 3D what we do in 2D: Give people a chance to see what the creative process is like; give people a chance to see what industrial designers and architects do in real-time,” explained John. “In essence the show is pretty straightforward. We put designers on stage, we give them a theme or a brief and they create work alive in front of your very eyes on LCD projectors. You can watch every brushstroke, every mistake, every scratch-out, every revision, and it gives you the chance to see what people do using Autodesk tools.”

The design briefs are issued to contestants a week or so in advance to allow for concepts to begin developing, but organisers throw in extra elements just before the battle begins, adding a bit more spice to the events.

In case you’re wondering where I’ll be while the rest of the D3D team apply their factor 30, bare their pale flesh, and delve into the 3D battles in Vegas; I’ll be reporting back from deepest-winter Frankfurt. Chilling.

*might not constitute actual death

It seems like its a good day for looking at how different organizations are spreading the word. If these are old, my apologies, but I hadn’t come across them before. if imitation is the sincerest of flattery then Autodesk just LOVE Apple.

“here’s red. or not so red”

Here’s how Hyphen Design use Showcase:

The comparison between the post below and this one couldn’t be greater. I was just looking to see if the Discovery Channel had confirmed a UK air date for its new Prototype This show when I came across this little nugget (its via AOL, because the Discovery Channel web-site is doing wonky things with video at the moment - the original discovery channel link).

I don’t know if SolidWorks pay for the position of the product in these shows, I kind of hope not. But, when all is said and done, it doesn’t matter if they did. What matters is that it’s through shows like this that we’re going to build the next generation of designers, of engineers. It has to be shown to be the fascinating, challenging career that it is. The passion that the majority of people involved in developing products feel has to be communicated and the way to do that is through inspiration and yup, the plain old fact that it has to look cool.

PS: there’s a good one on 3D printing..

Design team interaction is something that DS are taking to new levels.

Dassault Systemes has launched Catia V6R2009x at its annual European Catia Forum event at Disneyland Paris. As ever, the press release is an absolute doozie. When you spend your time reading these things, getting anything from DS is always a joy. Why? Because the company’s shear inability to actually tell you what they mean is always fascinating thing to work with. Take this paragraph:

As with the previous release of V6, Release 2009x is designed to extend the value of customers’ existing PLM assets. Dassault Systemes continues to develop and make available transition scenarios for its varied user base, including customers with mixed DS and non-DS applications. Support for collaborative design scenarios between V4/V5 and V6 enables gradual adoption of V6 for an OEM and its supply chain. Further, DS plans additional releases of its popular V5 line of solutions, such as the recently announced V5R19, whose functionality enhancements are synchronized with and available in V6R2009x.

What I think they’re trying to say is:

With V6R2009x, you can do more with your data. If you’re using V4 or V6, then there are tools to move data to V6 (the use of transition is telling - it means its a one way move, not bi-directional). If you mix and match data (such as Catia and something else), then this is also possible. They’re not going to discontinue V5 and have a new release out now called V5R19.

Dassault have some truly breathtaking technology and products, and as you dig into the web-site that details all the advances made in the R2009x release of V6, that becomes more and more apparent.

The real time rendering looks incredible, the ability to work interactively on your live data, with geographically dispersed design teams, to inspect data visual and gain a meaningful idea of how your product is progressing (using the 3Dlive tools) are all ahead of the game.

Why Dassault can’t manage to communicate that in a simple press release baffles me. Baffles me entirely.

Nvidia has again upped the ante in the professional graphics sector with the launch of a new monster of a board, which is likely to set you back around £2,000.

With 4GB RAM, the ultra high-end Quadro FX 5800 has the biggest amount of memory on any graphics card, doubling the previous 2GB record held by AMD’s ATI FireGL V8650. However, this amount of memory and the high-level performance that this card boasts, is only likely to appeal to a small proportion of users, with nVidia touting the medical imaging, oil and gas, and automotive styling sectors, as key markets. Additional interest is likely to come from high-end CAD and design visualisation users with products such as NX and 3ds Max, particularly if these companies need one or two top-end workstations to complement their mid-range machines.

Built using the nVidia’s parallel CUDA architecture, the Quadro FX 5800 is also set to play a key role in the company’s drive to move complex computational problems away from the CPU and onto the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit).

While nVidia has done much to promote this technology, which is specific to nVidia hardware, little progress has been made in the mainstream CAE sector, with the majority of developments coming in the more niche areas of science and finance.

One development that should help bring CUDA more into the mainstream, is the launch of nVidia’s new Quadro CX card, which is a dedicated graphics accelerator for Adobe Creative Suite 4. With the Quadro CX, CUDA is used to encode H.264 videos in Adobe Premiere at what is claimed to be lightning-fast speeds. The card also powers real time image manipulation in Photoshop for the first time, though this feature is actually supported by all OpenGL 2.0 compliant graphics cards.

While the £1,000+ price tag is likely to put off all but the most power hungry users of Creative Suite, nVidia Quadro supplier, PNY, told DEVELOP3D that this card would also deliver excellent performance in 3D CAD/DCC applications. This could make it an attractive proposition for design visualisation specialists who use Photoshop and Premiere alongside products such as 3ds Max.

At the other end of the spectrum, nVidia’s Quadro business is also concentrating on the lower end of the market with the launch of the Quadro FX 470, the company’s first integrated professional motherboard GPU, and Quadro FX 370 Low Profile (LP), an entry-level Quadro graphics board for small form factor systems. While Nvidia has not yet signed up any of the major workstation OEMs for the Quadro FX 370 LP and Quadro FX 470, specialist workstation manufacturer CAD2 told DEVELOP3D that it was currently investigating the new technologies and hoped to be able to offer small form factor workstations in the New Year.

www.nvidia.com

As Christmas approaches many a man will go bleary-eyed reminiscing of that childhood memory of waking in hope of finding a Scalextric set under the Christmas tree; only to find they’d been brought My Little Pony.

Now PTC are jumping on the retro toy bandwagon and joining up with Hornby to launch the Scalextric4schools Slot Car Design Challenge.

Using Pro/Engineer Wildfire software secondary school children to design their own Scalextric car then manufacture their car, fit it with a standard Scalextric motor and drive train and then race it on a standard Scalextric track. During this process the aim is to teach the students how the car works mechanically and dynamically and strive to design a car to go round a Scalextric track as quickly as possible.

“PTC is committed to delivering a truly unique and rewarding academic learning experience,” says PTC education programme manager Mike Brown. “Our strong relationship with Hornby Hobbies, together with their world-class Scalextric range of products provides the perfect foundation on which to continue development and expansion of our STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) curriculum modules.”

Via the ‘CAD in Schools’ initiative every school in the UK can obtain a 300 seat site license of Pro/Engineer software at no cost to the school; the license also includes free home use for students.