The first stage in anyone’s entrepreneurial journey begins with a fantastic company concept, according to successful entrepreneurs. A great concept alone won’t make a would-be entrepreneur into a successful businessperson, however. You’re not alone if you’re an ambitious entrepreneur who wants to launch a new company but isn’t sure where to begin. Whether you want…
Have you ever wished to enjoy a Pokémon-themed playground before? Well, it’s about to be a dream come true for kids in Japan. Well, those children who live in Fukushima, at least. You could find Chansey all over the prefecture even before this thrilling news. Then, the character just got hotter and is now the…
There are two ways to increase bike visibility at night. You can either make the bike extremely big, or you can make it extremely gaudy so that everyone in your vicinity will notice you. This bike pedal leans towards the latter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WKTlsyFo30&ab_channel=redshiftsports The Arclight Bike Pedals are modular LEDs that snap onto your bike peripherals.…
You may just write it off as another animated film, but most people consider The Lego Movie as a big leap for LEGO animated features. That’s because prior to Chris Pratt taking center stage as Emmet Brickowski, LEGO features were quite unrealistic and focused more on the CGI rather than the strengths of LEGO. So…
After all those stories about heat gun life hacks and crafts, you probably think that there are no more interesting things left to talk about it. But – no – it turns out it can be used to cook food, as well! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6mu_iQPzyM While not that efficient when it comes to time and energy consumption,…
Picture this: it’s 1955. The United States and Russia are beginning their forays into space travel. But how do you get about exploring a frontier no one has ever been to before? The U.S.’ answer: by getting as close as possible and collecting a bunch of data along the way. But to get close to…
One of the biggest strengths of an artist is being able to see the world in a different light and to bring their vision into reality. Painters do it with brushes and a canvas. Musicians do it with instruments. But for a special artist in Korea, his medium of art comes in the form of…
SimplyColor3D has now now moved to version 2.0, and it includes a lot more features. With the increased availability of multi-color 3D printers, there is a demand for multi-color 3D models. However, there’s a huge problem: there are hardly any such models available in popular 3D model repositories. In fact, I took a cruise through…
Without a doubt, if ever a virtual reality was needed, 2020 is it. With the insanity of social distancing, self-isolation, and tyrannical mandates looming, it’s important to get your exercise and stay healthy. With that, we need equally ridiculous, yet helpful products to make lockdowns bearable. While you SHOULD just GO OUTSIDE for a walk…
If you awoke from a dream this morning with P’s written in Sharpie all across your torso, there’s a reason. Lenovo has announced the next generation of the ThinkPad P Series laptops bringing a whole host of upgrades to the ThinkPad family. Altogether there are five laptops in the mix and while they all hit…
We have Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality but what if you could explore live scenes, in the next room or distant planet, using the same head-mounted gear? You may recall the scene from Blade Runner where Rick Deckard uses the voice-activated Esper Machine on a photo to zoom in, enhance, track left, pan right, moving…
You’ve seen lots of bowls, giant eggs, and other semi-round shapes hand-shaped on a lathe, but have you ever seen the creation of a bowl within a bowl? How do you imagine you would even go about turning it? With inspiration from German woodturner, Martin Adomat, YouTube creator SteRa Turning tried his hand (quite successfully)…
Get that stretch out of your system with this week’s Spotify-powered SolidSmack Radio Playlist. It’s fashioned up, ready to make you pull your shoulder blades back and knock out another week of meaningful work while you bob your head to the beat. Whether you’re in the shop milling aluminum, sketching the latest product prototypes or…
It’s time for another round of apps that cover the spectrum of your beloved smart device(s)! The Weekly App Smack is the best of new or updated design and productivity apps (and maybe a couple of fun ones, too) for the busy design or engineering professional. This week we have a list sure to make…
Long considered an indispensable asset for anybody working in CAD, the 3D mouse is a quintessential tool that belongs on the desktop of any industrial designer or engineer. Within a 3D application such as SolidWorks, Rhino, Fusion 360, or Keyshot, the directional, zoom and rotate functions provide an intuitive extension of the users’ design intent.…
It’s time for another round of apps that cover the spectrum of your beloved smart device(s)! The Weekly App Smack is the best of new or updated design and productivity apps (and maybe a couple of fun ones, too) for the busy design or engineering professional. This week we have a list sure to make…
These days, you can get just about any computer rig designed to your exact specifications. Whether you’re a RAM-hogging SolidWorks user, or simply just want a powerful workstation, there’s something for everybody. But no standardized hardware mod will ever replace the satisfaction of building your own rig from scratch. If you’ve ever wanted to create…
Get that stretch out of your system with this week’s Spotify-powered SolidSmack Radio Playlist. It’s fashioned up, ready to make you pull your shoulder blades back and knock out another week of meaningful work while you bob your head to the beat. Whether you’re in the shop milling aluminum, sketching the latest product prototypes or…
Mondays might not be your favorite day of the week, but the good news is that we’re all in this together ladies and gentlemen. As purveyors of prime Grade A web content, the SolidSmack crew has done some of the heavy-lifting to make sure you get your Mondays started on the right track. Welcome to The…
When it comes to product design books, it’s not always easy to eliminate glamorized portfolios from those that get down to the real nitty-gritty of product design. And when it comes to those actually worth reading, Don Norman will never do you wrong. As a strong (and very early) advocate for user-centered design, Norman is…
When it comes to serious marker work, bleed-resistant paper can make all the difference in your finished product. And when you’re already spending a small fortune on markers, investing in the right paper just seems to make common sense. The Bleedproof Marker Pad from Copic scores high points for blending quality and price in a…
Get that stretch out of your system with this week’s Spotify-powered SolidSmack Radio Playlist. It’s fashioned up, ready to make you pull your shoulder blades back and knock out another week of meaningful work while you bob your head to the beat. Whether you’re in the shop milling aluminum, sketching the latest product prototypes or…
We LOVE collecting things–Odd design tools, pencil shavings, quesadilla drippings, and software, especially software. We’ve long wondered which 3D CAD software developer was going to pull an Adobe CC and launch an all-in-one of their entire software line. Autodesk has come pretty close and is making their Product Design Collection even more attractive announcing the addition of…
Mondays might not be your favorite day of the week, but the good news is that we’re all in this together ladies and gentlemen. As purveyors of prime Grade A web content, the SolidSmack crew has done some of the heavy-lifting to make sure you get your Mondays started on the right track. Welcome to The…
Mondays might not be your favorite day of the week, but the good news is that we’re all in this together ladies and gentlemen. As purveyors of prime Grade A web content, the SolidSmack crew has done some of the heavy-lifting to make sure you get your Mondays started on the right track. Welcome to The…
Dating all the way back to the earliest sci-fi books, television and films, humans have been both fascinated and scared of what the future might hold. Whether it is imagination—or fear—that is driving technology and design forward, it’s safe to say that a lot of these concepts were in some way or another born out…
Every. Simpsons. Episode. Ever. Need we say more? Head over to Simpsons World to stream via your browser or get the FXNow App to stream to your devices. Just remember to occasionally use that second monitor for something other than watching the Simpsons.
After a colorful career as a design director of Nike and now having ‘retired’ to establish the Pensole Footwear Design Academy in Portland, Oregon, D’Wayne Edwards has been showing no signs of slowing down. The self-educated footwear designer came from a rough neighborhood in Los Angeles and got his first job at LA Gear after…
If you like the Simpsons and you like Mathematics, this excerpt from The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets by Simon Singh is a must read. It could explain your attraction to such a show and, even though you push 3-dimensional objects around on a screen all day, could also explain some things you may have…
Today, President Barack Obama, did a first. He published an article on Medium, a crowd-driven story publishing site. It didn’t have to do with any crazy policies or world events. It was about makers, the ‘new economy,’ and how students are pushing America forward. “I saw this new economy at Pittsburgh’s TechShop, one in a…
Ever feel like you’re working on a project FOREVER? It’s evident when you look over in the mirror at work and you’ve turned into a 120 year old man with half a mouth of teeth. It’s not all that bad though. Eventually, things will get done. As Jason Fried puts it, it’s hard to live…
Already a leader in defining how modern day CAD tools should be bundled and priced, Autodesk has announced a new package for their popular Fusion 360 modeling and manufacturing platform. ‘Fusion 360 Ultimate’ will include all of the existing features of the existing Fusion 360 package but will also include 2D drawings, 3D exploded views…
While the ‘BendGate’ issues of the iPhone 6 Plus have certainly put a sour taste in Jony Ives’ tea over the past couple of weeks, it is merely just a hiccup in an otherwise storied career for the famed industrial designer. The notoriously shy Ives recently invited an interviewer from Vogue Magazine into Apple’s top-secret…
When it first rolled off the production line in 2007, the Rally Fighter from Local Motors presented an entirely disruptive way of approaching automobile design and manufacturing. More specifically, it proved that an automobile could be made in local facilities from a crowdsourced design direction. While Local Motors has been busy producing the Rally Fighter…
By now we all know about Apple’s looming hardware design issue centered around their revolutionary and pliable iPhone 6 Plus design. We don’t need to get into specifics about ‘BendGate’ here, but if you’re one of the select few who purchased an iPhone 6 Plus and haven’t decided if you want to hand over your…
When it comes to smartphones, the most logical place to keep it when not in use would be a front pocket, right? Well, we may soon be hearing from Apple that we are “doing it wrong” if recent reports from MacRumors are confirmed: the new iPhone 6 bends by simply having it in your front…
Red Lines? Green Lines? Perpendicular? Let me see the pen! This short highlights the craziness that can happen in client meetings and according to the the filmmakers, “illustrates how hard it is for an engineer to fit into the corporate world”. Definitely worth 7 minutes and 34 seconds of your time today…
What would CAD look like if you started fresh, and built it from the ground up for the way engineers work today? …so says the text on the spankin’ new Onshape homepage. No seriously, what would it look like? The venture-backed company has been busy applying cloud, web and mobile technologies to develop a new-take…
With 31 hours left to go, the Coolest Cooler has raised a whopping $11.2 million dollars and counting with 31 hours still left in the now-infamous Kickstarter campaign. The project surpassed the Pebble smartwatch as the all-time most funded Kickstarter project when it passed the $10,266,245 mark…which it had held for 862 day. In this…
They come in peace. Interesting insight from Scott Eckert, who is making robot happen with Rethink Robotics founder Rodney Brooks and their product Baxter, the human-friendly, assembly-line co-worker… “…a year-and-a-half after Baxter’s commercial debut, manufacturers who’ve added the bot into the mix haven’t laid anyone off as a result, according to Brooks’ company, Rethink Robotics…
Joey Pepper, skateboarder extraordinaire shows how “everything is about the process” in his life as a woodcrafter making freeform objects and his first canoe. “Growing up, my whole family, they worked in the wood industry, they were all loggers. So, one day I just kinda decided I wanted to learn more. I started building stuff…
Sure, self-driving (flying?) cars are the future, but if everything and everyone are connected, why do we need lights? “In the long term, you could wonder why we even need traffic lights,” says Stiller, who predicts that every car will be equipped with communications within 30 years. “If all traffic participants will be equipped with…
With Shark Week 2014 already going full-throttle, we thought we’d share an interesting tidbit that offers more science and less Sharknado that might help with some biomimicry inspiration for you down the road. Heck, researchers have already started 3D printing multi-material ‘shark skin’ to improve wetsuit, marine and aircraft design. Check out the informative piece…
Why didn’t somebody think of this sooner? Either way…we’re just glad that somebody did. Japanese illustrator and designer Akihiro Mizuuchi has combine two of the best things on Earth into one glorious building block in the form of chocolate LEGOs. Presumably created no differently than any other chocolate mold, the modular edibles just gave us…
Nathan S. Jacobs explains how your photo-receptors and brain assemble visual information into the 3-dimensional world you see around you. “…edges should get extra attention, because things with edges can help you or kill you.” http://youtu.be/rfdJyDfIHIc
Laura Vanderkam, author of 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think gives that final bit of insight to help figure out how you really get things done–work like you’re going on vacation. “The deadline of leaving is the thing that’s finally going to motivate you to get it done. The stuff that gets…
How do you deal with organizational excess? Clutter, in all of its various forms, is a problem—meetings, emails, interdepartmental complexity. This article talks about it, of course, and describes how some are dealing with it. “Clutter is taking a toll on both morale and productivity. Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School studied the daily routines…
This article, yeah, it’s all about web design and even more, about frameworks used in web/app design and even more about destroying old notions. It’s interesting though. Out of articles like this, I get a lot of inspiration–and see a lot of application–for product design and engineering, both in product and software. “There’s an inherent…
Delightful piece over on D3D today. Definitely worth a skim. IMHO digital design is the new craftsmanship, and manufacturing–additive, subtractive, injection, stamped, punched, pressed, rolled, or whatever you like–is the new craft. Am I less an artist because my chisel can cut ten thousand sculptures at a time?
As a self-employed person, the boundaries between business and self are pretty blurry. Josh and I have often been advised to make EvD Media more about “us,” and to leverage our “personal brand” to make it great. While the ultimate substance of the advice isn’t bad, the nomenclature is, well, dehumanizing. EvD Media is indeed…