The CAD Insider

So It’s OK to Break Things Now?

Maker Faire, a rare success in the publishing world, may be making it fun to make things—and part of that fun is seeing how other things are made.

Look how we've grown. Sherry Huss, co-founder of Maker Faire, at Autodesk’s Design Night.

At the monthly party known as Design Night, held by Autodesk in its Design Gallery, Sherry Huss took the stage to extol Maker Faire.

Maker Media has been a surprise success in the world of publishing. It has united a diverse group of tinkerers, hobbyists, artists, inventors and others that now counts hundreds of thousands among its adherents. It has dotted the world with dozens of Faires that pull tens of thousands into beehives of activity that make ordinary trade shows look funereal in comparison. Its Make: magazine cruises along in the dire currents that have pulled most print magazines under.

Everybody is a maker, Huss says, including all those who create, rather than just consume. That includes grandmas making pies, musicians writing songs, kids making science fair projects—maybe even journalists writing posts for their blogs.

It’s a message that has been well-delivered and well-received. With it, Huss and Dale Dougherty (also at the event) seek not just to unite makers, but maybe even chide those of us who complacently drift into the role of a consumer—for example, those who eat at restaurants but don’t cook, those who watch football but never play and those who have watched a thousand YouTube videos and not uploaded a single one.

Maker Faire presentations are full of kids making all sorts of things. We saw plenty of giraffes, Arduinos, Legos and more. The cynical engineer may at first think their stuff offers little of value, that little of it would amount to anything. But to Huss and Dougherty, that may never have been the point.

“If you can’t open it, you can’t make it,” they are fond of saying.

Maybe now, the taking things apart, even breaking them open, just to see what’s inside and what makes them tick won’t be something that will get kids in trouble. Maybe it will be cool. Maybe more engineers will be born this way.

Lenovo’s Thinnest, Lightest Mobile Workstation Ever: The W550s

LAS VEGAS, NV (Autodesk University 2014) -  Getting a mobile workstation used to require making a tough choice between power and weight. If you needed to use a CAD or CAE application on the road, or were shuttling between offices, the field, home, or trade shows, a 10 lb. mobile workstation was easier to move around than a desktop workstation, for sure, but you had to pity the poor dweeb in the economy seat of the airplane or in the airport, always scrambling to plug the 1 lb. brick transformer into a power outlet. They never did last long enough on a battery, no matter how big the battery. The “mobile” in mobile workstation was a relative term.

A new crop of mobile workstations is making the term mobile more fitting. Two were on display at Autodesk University. 

David Harris, product marketing manager for Lenovo, not straining as he shows off the W550s

ThinkPads are THE business laptop of choice. They are the only laptops I have ever owned, starting with the ThinkPad 701 with the butterfly keyboard. ThinkPads are rock solid, and if you buy the maintenance (which I have needed no more than two times in 15 years), you can be assured of reliability.

Lenovo chose Autodesk University to introduce its latest, the W550s. It was so new they could not even show it turned on, because either Intel or NVIDIA had not had a chance to announce that the W550s was using its latest chips using less power. Finally, a workstation might actually last a full workday on batteries? Better than that, the W550s claims the longest battery life of ANY mobile workstation with 13 hours.

The first thing you may notice is that this mobile workstation is thin — really thin — as thin some of the thinnest laptops, except maybe Apple’s (less than 1 inch, according to the specs). It may not be the lightest mobile workstation even now, but at a shade under 5 lbs. (4.92 lbs. for non-touch screen), it’s definitely an improvement over its predecessor, the W540, which weighed in at 5.45 lbs.

Mobile workstations used to cheat the weight specs by ignoring the power supply, or “brick,” as they are known for their obvious similarity. But the W550s brick is less than half a pound. You can opt for a standard sized brick that you can leave on your office and use the smaller version on the road. The smaller version (45 watts) takes longer to charge, but that’s a small price for the weight that you may have around your neck getting from one end of O’Hare to another.

Though I’ll have to take their word for it, the W550s has a 3K display, with 2880x1620 display across a 15.6” screen. Icons get really, really small at that resolution, and I imagine with a 4K display, the icons are practically microscopic, but the W550s supports multiple monitors (up to three total) through a real docking station, where the laptop clicks securely into place rather than relying on a USB device pretending to be docking station which many other laptops seem to rely on.

The W550s has a dedicated numeric keypad, unlike some other mobile workstations that just leave a lot of space unused.

Nominated for TenLinks Autodesk 2014 Best of Show by:

Roopinder Tara, TenLinks’ founder and CEO, has been in CAD, CAM and CAE business since 1984, including roles as CAD manager, senior engineer, manager of a CAD division, editor in chief of CADENCE magazine, conference chair, professor of engineering and CAD. He has a masters in engineering and is a registered professional engineer. More…

More Information

• Lenovo Launches ThinkPad W550s Mobile Workstation - press release, Dec 2, 2016
• TenLinks Best of Show - criteria, nominate your product, apply to be judge

Fuel3D to Bring Point and Shoot to 3D Scanning

SAN MATEO, CA (MakerFaire 2014) - Getting 3D models from photographs seems magical when you see the results, but there are some barriers with existing systems. Consider Autodesk's 123D Catch, which involves someone taking 30 to 40 photographs. That's a lot of photos. A lot of data. And time. And though you don't have to be precise, some technique is involved as you must take a series of photos in two different orbits around the object. What happens if the subject moves? Racks of cameras shooting simultaneously can alleviate the time issue, but that means you have to have 30-40 cameras.

Fuel3D device contains a pair of cameras which take multiple shots with one click to generate a 3D model.

Fuel3D was at Maker Faire offering a system that seems to do away with the above problems

• It takes one exposure*
• There is one device.

People were lining up at their booth to get their faces scanned. Catering to individual vanity proved to be the way to draw a crowd. The ragged, incomplete scans were far from flattering, but the novelty seemed to make up for it.

Fuel3D was developed for biomedical application -- wound care, in particular. It could certainly lend itself to fitting objects around the face such as sleep apnea masks or prosthetics. Live subjects are a specialty. I expect a premium importance has been placed on accuracy and so I was hoping it could also lend itself to 3D scans for reverse engineering or other modeling of existing 3D objects but Fuel3D adamantly states that it is not capable or interested in it. Pity. The Fuel3D system can have an accruacey of 0.250 mm with the right conditions.

The device, which looks more like my bathroom scale than my camera, uses twin cameras mounted some distance apart. It is the difference in position that is used to calculate the position of points of the object in 3D space. The camera records color properties surface point positions, so it is subject to reflectance. Irregular subjects and surfaces (faces, skin, body parts), artwork, food...work well, shiny, smooth, sharp edges... not so good.

Perhaps that is a deficiency that can be overcome in the software? I hope so. The Fuel3D device offers considerable advantage over multi-shot or multi-camera photogrammetry systems.

When and How Much?

The Fuel3D is expected to ship October 2014. You can pre-order one for $1450 with mesh software included.

For More Information

http://www.fuel-3d.com/

----------------

*Technically, not a single exposure but a series of shots are taken over half a second. Movement of the device during this time is removed from the result by using a optical "tracker," which the people at the booth were holding to their chins. A tripod mount would do away with the need for a tracker --though there is still a question as to movement by the subject.

How to Get a $300 CNC Machine? Buy a Scrapbook Cutter

SAN MATEO, CA (Maker Faire 2014) -  Your own personal CNC machine could sit on your desktop and cost $300.

The Cricut was cutting patterns in paper at MakerFaire -- and attracting a crowd, both at its own booth and in space it shared in the Autodesk Instructables booth. What essentially like a bigger than normal desktop printer, albeit much more attractive, uses a very sharp, thin carbide blade (a pen is included, too) to cut intricate patterns in paper, cardboard and a variety of other material. The Circut's original reason for existence may have been scrapbookers, where it was no doubt a godsend, alleviating scissor-fatigued fingers and bi-focally corrected eyes straining at intricate patterns. Possibly because of that market, the Cricut was made to look so good and sit on top of a table -- and be very inexpensive. Laser cutters and industrial cutting machines don't come anywhere near the Cricut's $300 retail price -- or look as nice.

But frilly patterns and good looks aside, the Cricut is really a CNC cutter at a price no one can touch, and is begs for application in architects and engineers model shops.

Free Your Interns

If a primary activity for interns at your architectural firm is making models, you may consider incorporating a Cricut. Your interns will gladly drop their scissors and Exacto knives to run one. Granted, big building models and models for final presentation would still require skills, material and and tools closer to carpentry than scrapbooks, but a Cricut can cut shapes out of cardboard and up to thin balsa wood with its carbide blade. It could  offload some parts of a bigger model or be able to cut patterns for all of a small model. Or you could get used to making small model yourself for the the first show and tell.

Paper architectural model that would lend itself to a desktop cutter, like Cricut (picture originally appeared on Pictures Collection )

Another application that would be well suited for Cricut would be a topograhic model, such as the one below, where each contour be exported from a CAD application, cut on a flat sheet, then glued together to make the model.

Contour model of landscape, the type that could be made on a personal cutter. Picture courtesy of Jim Leggitt, originally appeared here.

For More Information

www.cricut.com