Category Maker

Autodesk Design & Make Contest Winner

At Autodesk University last week the winning team of the Autodesk Design & Make contest was selected by the audience as Autodesk CEO Carl Bass and Autodesk CTO Jeff Kowalski couldn't reach a consensus on the winning team. The Design & Make contest was Autodesk employees using our Autodesk 360 product internally to collaborate and using Autodesk products to design and build a project in a short time. The finalists were shown all week at Autodesk University.

BatKid’s Key to Gotham City

A gWhat an amazing story of San Francisco going all out for a child's Make a Wish.

News coverage of this heartwarming event:
Video by SF Chronicle: http://vimeo.com/79541124
Watch Make-A-Wish Turn San Francisco Into BatKid's 'Gotham City –Thewire
Batkid's Make-a-Wish Transforms San Francisco Into Gotham - ABC
Batkid: Thousands cheer on pint-size superhero –SFGate

Kudos and good karma to fellow Autodesk team members Arthur Harsuvanakit, Evan Atherton, and Maurice Conti of the Office of the CTO aka "OCTO" as well as Autodesk for getting involved when asked by the mayor. As I have said before many times, Autodesk does indeed have a heart and a soul. Also big thank you to everyone involved in this from the people of San Francisco to the Make a Wish organization. Making an sick child's dreams come to reality does more than just provide a fun memorable day for everyone.

Science Can Be Fun!

For six decades and three generations, the Leakey family has dedicated themselves to uncovering, understanding and promoting the story of our origins. They have been systematically discovering evidence of our ancestry in East Africa. The Leakey team have collected thousands of fossils of human ancestors and other animals, as well as stone tools and other artifacts that are stored permanently in the National Museums of Kenya and at the Turkana Basin Institute (www.turkanabasin.org).

Aware of the general inaccessibility of these national treasures in their current locations, Dr. Louise Leakey, a third generation of the ‘fossil hunter’ family, took it upon herself to find a way to make them globally accessible for educators, kids, and science enthusiasts. Inspired by the possibilities presented by new capture and digitization technologies, about two years ago Dr. Louise Leakey began a fruitful collaboration with Autodesk (www.autodesk.com). Together, the team captured 3D digital models of the most significant fossils, and built a beautiful, interactive web site to host them.

How to Make Anything Using Instructables – Perfect for Halloween

I have not mentioned my friends over at Instructables for awhile, but Halloween is a really busy time of the year and a perfect time to mention them.

Autodesk acquired this super creative community back on August 1, 2011. Instructables is a wealth of knowledge and community of Makers and do it yourself types sharing ideas and techniques to make your ideas a reality.

There are tens of thousands of instructions created by the community from how to make robots, 3D printing projects, some woodworking projects by Autodesk Chief maker and CEO Carl Bass, my 3D printed cabbage moth decoy to baking a cake or a nice drink or even learning to play the bass guitar. I am always surprised at what I find on Instructables.

For Halloween there are crazy fun things like the broken glass cupcakes, a crazy smoking pumpkin or creating your own Plants vs. Zombies costume.

Design Some Circuit Boards Using 123D Circuits

Announced today and now available in the 123D Sandbox you can design circuit board designs using the new 123D Circuits (http://123d.circuits.io/). Now you can not only design your 3D robot using 123D Design, but also what powers the robot and that is the electronic circuits that interface with perhaps an Arduino. But you say “Shaan I don’t have the ability to produce the physical board I design for my robot,” no problem as you can get your design manufactured and shipped to you.

123D Design Challenge – Enter Now

The Autodesk 123D Design Challenge has started and you have 50 days to submit your entry and gain fame and fortune, ok maybe just some 3D street cred. This is open for all ages and most countries worldwide. You can see the entries as they are entered to get inspiration or to cause you to amp up your entries awesomeness levels. You could even win a 3D printer.

Go create your 3D project and show others how you created it using Instructables before October 12th 2013.
http://bit.ly/178GzXP

3D Printing Coming to Your Neighborhood UPS Store

I have been waiting this announcement since 3D Printing started going mainstream and the Maker movement grew to more than a few people tinkering with 3D prints in garages, basements and dorms. I wrote over a year ago that someday you would be able to 3D design or print a pre designed 3D part from your home to a local brick and mortar store and pick up the 3D printed part.

Now you don’t have to buy that expensive 3D printer for occasional use or use a online print service and wait on UPS to deliver your 3D print. Soon you will be able to get it when it is done at the local UPS Store. It could be a replacement part for something in your house like that always breaking plastic dryer door clip, the worlds next big invention prototype, or perhaps you made a 3D model of your head using 123D Catch and made it into a 3D door knob using 123D Design to add that unique style to your home. With so many 3D software out there I am assuming all UPS will require is a STL file.

UPS Stores will be proving a 3D print service using professional Stratasys uPrint SE Plus 3D printers. No details on pricing per cubic inch just yet. It will be interesting to see how many stores expand this service and how many people prototype their next great inventions using them.

Autodesk 3D Print Utility

Autodesk has just released the Autodesk 3D Printing Utility (A3DP) for free. You can use this free standalone utility when installing Autodesk’s 123D Design, 123D Make, or 123D Catch and selecting the option to install the standalone 3D Printing Utility or go to the 3D Print Utility download page: http://apps.123dapp.com/3dprint/install.html. Make sure to close all applications and save all files before installing the utility. I experienced an installer reboot problem that might have only happened to me, but I wanted to make sure if it wasn't that you were aware

The utility optimizes the 3D printing of a model for best results and making it super easy to get a good 3D print by making sure the model is oriented the best way to print and support, healing the model of bad surfaces or holes as your model must be “watertight” closed to print in most cases, and also optimizing the material usage. You can print from within some of the 123D Apps, or use the stand alone 3D Print Utility to open a STL or OBJ and print them.

In addition to the healing, the 3D Print Utility also allows you to change options like thicken thin regions or hollow the 3D print. It auto-magically adds support material so you to print more complex objects with overhangs like the Delicate Arch model of mine.