DEVELOP3D - Technology for the product lifecycle

Rob Rodriguez has a new book out for those of you looking for some assistance with PhotoWorks. One thing that’s always baffled me is the complexity of PhotoWorks. Yes, you can produce stunning imagery, but it Takes A Lot of Time. Rob’s book is surely a good place to start if you’re looking for more information on how to step up your rendering and visualisation skills.

What I love about the wealth of books coming out of the user community is that they are exactly that - books. Printed matter. And people like books, they aren’t a throw away PDF that’s hard to track down, but something tangible that you can pick up, flick through and learn something from.

Pre-order details are here

I found the recent addition to the Autodesk Labs web-site pretty interesting. There’s a new download for an STL exporter for Revit. According to the web-site you can “Create 3D Prints of your Revit 2009 models. As architects and engineers start their digital designs earlier and keep them digital for longer, they want a way to still physically interact with their designs. With the economical availability of 3D printers this has become possible.”

This is interesting for two reasons. Firstly, the Architectural world is going nuts-out-crazy for 3D printing and other rapid prototyping technology that designers and engineers have been using for decades (in some cases). Also, its interesting that this comes out for Revit, when the Inventor STL output tools are a little sketchy. It doesn’t allow you to export individual parts from an assembly (each has to be created separately), and it only supports the heavyweight ASCII version of STL, rather than the more compact binary version.

Desktop Engineering is a magazine I’ve written a lot for over the past few years and its odd that I never actually get to read the paper version. But anyway, I like Mike Hudspeth’s comment peice this month, on the relationship between Industrial Design and 3D design tools. Just because you have the tools, doesn’t mean you’re any good at it - something i couldn’t agree with more.

“First, and perhaps most important of the myths, is that anyone can do industrial design. After all, it’s just about styling, right? Wrong. Not everyone can design.”

“Industrial design is a whole lot more than meets the eye. It takes into account how things work and what the target audience needs — with an eye turned to their expectations. Customer psychology plays a huge part. Industrial design also has to do with responsibility — to one’s customers as well as to the environment. Safety issues are very important. And form doesn’t always follow function. Sometimes a product cries out for an artistic re-imagining to reinvigorate it and save it from sheer market boredom.”

Its not a case of trying to protect a career, or trying to protect a field of specialism, but one of training, of research, and shear bloody talent. Just because you have a set of paints, you’re not a good painter. And the same goes, just because you have a 3d design tool that includes surface modelling, G3 curvature continuity, does mean you’re an industrial designer.

Nice one Mike.

Its with no certain amount of shear, unadulterated joy that I can announce that think3 are back. For those that aren’t aware, think3 has been one of the most entertaining companies to watch in the CAD industry for years. They started out decades ago, as CAD Lab I seem to remember. Went through a rebranding excercise, ran a competition to find their new name (think3). Hired a big shot CEO (can’t remember.. Joe Costello) and started calling themselves an upstart MCAD company. That CEO caused a bit of stir because he ripped into the press for not covering his products and came unstuck. They also released training tools that used a video game to teach 3D modelling - The Monkey Wrench Conspiracy.

But the shame of it is that they had some interesting tools, some technology that was uniqe. Many vendors couldn’t touch their styling and surfacing tools, particularly the Global Shape Modelling (GSM) tools.

These were pretty unique back then - but if there ever was a story of a loss of potential, then this is it. Times have changed and with today’s technology, new players on the market, and the old guard doing innovative stuff, I wonder if this is a last gasp attempt - at what, I’m not too sure - acquisition?

I wonder if the users on the web-site are still using it - are the design teams at Alessi, Buel, all those others, still plugging away with ThinkDesign? Who knows.

The Press Release says: “Think3, the only supplier to offer technology solutions that combine product concept, development and design implementation environments, has launched new release of its CAD and PLM product lines ThinkDesign Suite and thinkPLM Suite 2008.1.”

Quite.

Welcome Back.

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