Another one lost to my host’s hardware problems. I recall this one pretty well so here’s a basic rehash.

BusinessWeek is carrying a surprisingly good article originating from Car Design News (if you recall, I noted that some recent entries seemed not to be up to their usual high quality; glad that might not be the case after all). The article (link) features design firm Motorcity Europe and has an accompanying slideshow (link). I’ll post a small piece of the article here:

With an international base of talent, a high proportion of value creation done digitally, and a network of associate organizations and individuals with specific capabilities, Motorcity Europe is perhaps the pioneer of this type of new leaner, fitter 21st century independent design studio.

Gives you some idea of where I’m coming from when I say my favorite images in the slideshow are the page of rough sketches and the Alias surfacing for the Galaxy headlamps.

Caught a post over on Wonderland about Valve’s interest/effort in creating “cooperative building games”. Hello. PLM, anyone? Like I said earlier, “This is about the convergence of work and games”.

{Note: Ongoing hosting problems caused me to lose a day of entries – this post included. Fortunately, the entire text was preserved on Wonderland’s trackback.}

And in this corner comes news from C|Net on a new start-up called Multiverse Network. It’s an interesting idea. From the article:

Multiverse’s founders think consumers should be able to switch easily between different virtual worlds. And they say their new game developers’ platform, called Multiverse, can make that happen, while giving small online game developers the ability to work on top of an existing network of games and software code.

Multiverse is a lot like the enterprise software developers’ kits used to build back-end systems at big corporations, but with an open-source twist that lets programmers share what they create.

Instead of defining business processes for things like accounting, the game platform provides developers with a physics engine; the basics of a virtual economy; art assets and much more that they can use in their own games. Once a developer has incorporated those elements and others into a new online game, Multiverse links the new title to its network of virtual worlds, all of which share a common entry point for users.

I only have one question though: can I get something I create out to an SLA machine?

I had an excellent (and long) conversation this morning with a former lead programmer for PTC who has been reading my blog and shares many of my interests. Without getting into details, our discussion turned into a brainstorm about a tool for content creation; only the more I think about it, the more I realize it’s really more than just a tool. It initially felt like a mash-up of a number of different apps, but in reality, after turning things inside out, at the core is what may be an entirely new way to think about digital content and the applications used to develop it.

I have a feeling something like this would gain some traction. And it would almost certainly have to be an open source project, so if it does by some miracle move forward, I’ll be posting about it.

Roland seems to pop up more and more. The most recent news being their new easy-to-use 3D scanner (press release). The specs aren’t bad (10″ x 16″; rotary and planar), the output files are good (STL/GSF/3DM), and the price of roughly US $12,000 isn’t completely out of reach. Nice.

Now if I were 3D challenged and lacking creativity (and ethics), I’d get one of these and kick out a 3DM. I’d load Rhino, import that and export as an IGES into a solid modeler like Pro/E. I’d convert the surface there to a solid and – assuming it doesn’t choke – shell it to a thin wall stock. From there it’s back out to any format that can fab a part in metal. Custom metalsmiths and jewellers, all your base are belong to us.

via Desktop Engineering