3D printing is changing how we make everything from medical implants to houses. Now, FabLab Nyack will introduce the public to the new intersection of 3D printing and fine art. The Hudson Valley-based fabrication laboratory is taking art competitions into digital 3D with Bits to Its: 3D Printed Art competition, the world’s first juried 3D-printed art show.
Summer days are coming among us here at our Geomagic Solutions RTP office, nice enough, in fact for a company lunch outside today. But the serious work continues on and here are a few highlights from our week for your reading (and viewing) pleasure.
By Calvin Hur, VP and General Manager of 3D Systems, Geomagic Solutions
3D Systems has integrated the combined power of Geomagic, Rapidform, Alibre and Sensable into Geomagic Solutions, which I believe will be at the vanguard of 3D authoring and is already one of the most creative, innovative and passionate groups around. This group is reinventing the engineer’s desktop. And I am honored to be a part of it.
This morning it was announced that James Mason, a product designer in the UK, was the winner of Develop3D Magazine’s Make A Bot competition.
By Rachael Dalton-Taggart
3D is seemingly popping up everywhere: 3D printing, 3D movies. But 3D has been successfully used in visual effects (vFX) for entertainment for about 20 years. In that time, has just been getting better and better at creating stunningly realistic worlds for your TV and movie screens.
When we get on a commercial flight to go across the country, we are all pretty sure that the pilots, and indeed the attendants, are well trained. And we inherently know that parts of that training have been in virtual environments. That is, not many of them have been specifically involved in a crisis or emergency, but they have trained for such a situation in a virtual environment, and we all have a certain confidence that they can cope.
For over 12 months now, the Geomagic team has been advising and watching as the team at Idaho State University’s Virtualization Lab went full bore into creating 3D data out of natural history subjects: whale skeletons, dolphin skeletons, fossils and more.
By Rachael Dalton-Taggart
3D Systems Geomagic
We have been talking a lot about Weatherstone Elementary recently, but there’s something about the teachers’ and students’ enthusiasm about 3D that is difficult to ignore. Last weekend, 3D Systems Geomagic attended a STEM Expo at the school in Cary, N.C., not just with our usual repertoire of 3D toys and gadgets but this time with the Cube Car.
What do you get when you pack a room with the world’s technology leaders, forward thinkers, innovators, explorers, tinkerers and visionaries, and give them a small taste of how far 3D can take them?
You get a singularity: a point at which function takes an infinite value, a point at which ideas run riot like bouncing balls.
That’s pretty cool. We need ideas and agents of change to convert those ideas into disruptive, humanity-benefiting actions.
The poker-faced students, all fifth graders from Weatherstone Elementary School, strolled out of the elevator in single file, adult chaperones in tow, toward the 3D Systems Geomagic scanning lab. They marched through the lobby, past the boardroom, averting the reception desk (“Hold all my calls.”) and into the lab like scientists on a mission. Each had a container of assorted origami – cranes and frogs, flowers and stars – tucked under her arm. Laser scanning, even with a subject like origami, is serious business.
