Oh no, you not gonna do it are you? please, no, no. YES. Slowly step away from the rotor. Bolt Circles my friends. Large, circular, equally-spaced bolt circles to turn your manufacturing nemesis into someone that buys you cakes on holidays. Manufacturers have a special place in their heart for “B.C.” , and as engineers…

I’m not saying that, one day, robots will eat and digest you for energy, but yeah, I am saying that. Especially given the state of the two minds that are creating carnivorous robots that run on the juices extracted from various pests and their materials.

How many ways do you think there are to share content online? hundreds? thousands? Who cares, cause we’ve boiled it down to four. Exactly four sites that are changing how people post content and interact online? Not only are these the coolest places to be online nowadays, they’re the quickest and most versatile ways to…

It rose right up I tells ya, a creature as wily as a hairless mouse with ten arms and no visible face. It did have a nice name though, Clarence Witherspoon, and presented these link calmly while drinking marbles and buttered hate. 20 Impressive 3D Graffiti Artworks – and you thought 3D was just for…

We’re reaching deep in our pool of unusual uses for 3D CAD today and pulling out something extra shiny for ya. If you’re into graphic design or making pretty 3D icons and graphics for your website, you’ll want to adjust your seat. You never would have thought it, but SolidWorks is extremely useful for creating…

Put down the oil can you’re dumping into the river and rev your electric motor Mr. Clean, we’re gettin’ sustainable and Xpress-ive up in this design. Yes, you could single-handed prevent further disintegration of the atmosphere and taxpayer burden by properly analyzing your design and applying a material that reduces those nasty carbon molecules causing…

There’s a wave of particularly large significance in the world of parametric, history-based modeling these warm summer days. A wave directed straight at your inability to manipulate 3D geometry any which way you want. Many a company has taken on the task of harnessing more ways to fiddle with your solids. Now, it’s Autdesk’s turn.…

I bet you have a hanckerin’ for accessing 3D models via an iPhone and learning how you’ll interact with your coworkers and customers in future CAD applications. yeah? just a little hanckerin’? We’ve got it. With a huge thanks to Al from Develop3D we’ve got first-time video of the interesting tidbits on future apps and…

Step back price conscious data storage shoppers. 3 new contenders in the NAS (network attached storage) market have risen from the tera-byte tundra of Seagate Technology. True, they’ll only store billions of files, instead of quadrillions, but for the price and features, I think you’ll be ok for a few months. The Seagate BlackArmor brand…

Ya see that shiny new building in the image to the left? That’s the new Dassault Systèmes (DS) campus in Vélizy, France and home to the 2009 Dassault Developers Conference (DEVCON 2009). So far, there’s little information escaping the glass edifice of the DS headquarters, except for the occasional tweet (#DSDEVCON09) and the typical press…

Can you feel it in your bones and tendons and fingers that just pressed the installation button for SolidWorks 2009 SP 4.0? I know you can. And if you’re one of the lucky companies that haven’t laid-off everyone, shut down and stopped your SolidWorks subscription service, you can download SolidWorks 2010 Beta right now. You…

What has Fur, Bumps, stereoscopic 3D support and reeks of SolidWorks Import possibilities? The brand new version of Luxology’s modeling/rendering/animation package, modo 401. Yes, all of that, in one integrated tool. Since first being show early this year, many a rendering fanatic has been anticipating the new rendering capabilities, while deep in the lair of…

I found it! Right here under this bowl of oats of all places. Now how does something that furry end up under a bowl of oats. I think we need to have a talk with the committee and subject them to these links. Industrial Decay – Who doesn’t love to see how things rot? Here’s…

Attack I say! Attack and plunder the riches… of … imported… geometry and… stuff. Ok, battle faces everyone, we’re on a warpath today, a warpath to create usable 3D geometric data from imported files. It’s an interesting issue submitted by a user tired of recreating sheet metal part when he already has a 3D .IGES…

I wanted to get this up last week, but ya know, you gotta let fine content like this simmer in it’s own meaty juices for a few days. Yes, It’s been nearly two weeks since the PTC/USER event in Orlando, but I’ve continued to to receive emails from users asking about it. So, to wrap…

I hope you all are ready for a fun and enlightening experience. I know we’ve pushed this iPhone modeling in SolidWorks clear around the table, but this is the model that everyone is and will be looking at for the foreseeable future. Nelson Au was kind enough to share his model and his process for…

You are lookin’ sporty. Really, you are stylin’ the design and engineering process like no other and everyone wants to know just how you do it… or at least, we do. Is it possible that you use more than one process or program to design and engineer products? We may not even realized it if…

It’s not so much that everything in the future will be built around the idea that we’ll need a proper vessel to study the organs of extraterrestrial life, but you can imagine very quickly that it would need to look stinkin’ cool… and have lights and bolts and stuff. For instance, it would almost certainly…

Raise of hands! Who wants to blow $489 for 3G Wireless and PDF Support? Huh? Huh? The MASSIVE 9.7″ vertical screen of the new Amazone Kindle DX is available Wednesday, June 17th for your monochrome viewing pleasure. You (or your company) could pop for one of these badboys so you can store ‘3,500 books’ on…

Just look at all the shiny mac-induced fun that happens when a highly branded product company *cough*Apple*cough* wants to develop it’s products, with it’s own product…. or so some would think. Well, for some of you, it’s time to put that Apple sticker back on your rear windshield. Siemens PLM software has announced the commercial…

Imagine, you’re five years in the future, trying desperately to get a handle on the new touch-screen gestures for CAD and it’s not all it’s cracked up to be… for designing products. Suddenly, it seems easier to strangle the people forcing multi-touch tech down your throat, along with the bloggers that keep going on about…

Ok, maybe not ‘Crush’ so much, maybe more like, boot it into the future. You need to drop your bagel, Blackberry or coworker on the ground and run, nay I say sprint, to read Oleg Shilovitsky’s 6 reasons Why Google Wave will Change PLM Collaboration. Pivotal, my geometry-glazed friends. Oleg briefly points out how Google’s…

Mwuuhaha!! I’m telling you, this is a viciously cool amount of noodles. I could never throw this many noodles at innocent people enjoying a leisurely stroll through the park, but I shall! Noodles at you! Noodles and links!! Marek Denko Buggy Series – We all love buggies, but these by 3D ar-test Marek Denko are…

I know, you have a few Class III Vault doors already and probably regifted a couple last Christmas, but maybe this will give you a little appreciation for the amount of torching and hammering these massive doors can take. Vault Structures has been creating security doors for a while. Their newest 9000 lb. vault door,…

While you’ve been gallivanting around reading posts about Pro/E and eating crumpets and cold pizza by the pool, there’s been a load of SolidWorks and other CAD-related goodness you’ll want to catch up on. Here, in the briefest way possible, are all the thing that I you may have missed over the past few days.…

You may have suddenly gagged on a dry crumb of muffin just now, so just give yourself a nice hard wallop in the chest and take another swig of scalding hot coffee. We’re actually about to expel muffintop all over SolidSmack with some tidbits I took away from the PTC/USER 2009 event I’ve been at…

Wow, looky here, SolidSmack is out in Orlando for a conference. It has to do with CAD, the 3D kind, and also users and also interacting with users, but it has nothing to do with SolidWorks. It’s the PTC/USER event. PTC is the company behind Pro/E, WindChill, CoCreate, and MathCAD. My favorite experience with Pro/E…

It crawls? Yes, it crawls. Slow at first and then before you know it your gripping your face skin for dear life pleading with anything nearby to let you have one last look at these links. 1895-1910 Hotel Luggage Labels – Like you’ve never seen them! Be prepared. Really, be prepared… ok, ready? ok. Morskoi…

Don’t ya just love slapping down a couple grand for a smokin’ hot 3D model pumpin’ workstation? There’s a whole heap memory-laden machine to smooth out design, render and simulate, but there’s comes a point when you hear what has worked best for others. Today we take a look at the magnificence of a perfect…

What’s in the wide, wide world of 3D CAD is going on? I’ll tell ya what’s going on, technology that has been presented over the past two weeks at E3 and various display and developer conferences has completely changed the way we are going to collaborate with people and design projects. They’re technologies that will…

Yep, can you believe it? There’s more insanity going on in the whole touch-screen market and 3D CAD is getting in on the action and finally starting to be included in the mainstream coverage. What use could touch-screen technology possible have with developing products in 3D? Is it even feasible? With new highly sensitive, capacitive…

If you’re like any other normal person, you occasionally sit at your desk putting stickers and labels on your face, thinking there’s got to be a quick and easy way to create labels in SolidWorks. There is and it’s much faster than importing AutoCAD files filled with RomanS terror. So, ignore the looks from your…

It’s here folks. A new search engine. The new one from Microsoft. Bing. Fresh into Beta and ready for you to compare to all those years spent in the glory of Google’s search results. It’s got some nice features, some nice lag on video, image and site previews and a fresh look at how browsing…

Raise your eyebrow in a menacing way if you’ve ever received a really crumby .pdf, concept print or model data to create a production model from? If only there was a little more info or a way that the data could be transformed into usable 3D parametric data huh? Adobe has just release a interesting…