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Shape Search

the idea collector — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:33:58 +0000

Partbrowser allows you to search your 3D library using a rough 3D shape as a search query:

PartBrowser – Browse-by-shape for CAD files from Andrew Sherlock on Vimeo.

This technology will be REALLY interesting when we’re downloading 3D files and printing them at home.

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Realtime Ridesharing – Optimizing Existing Automotive Infrastructure

the idea collector — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 09:40:41 +0000

What if you could easily fill empty seats in cars on existing roadways? Avego is a good first step.

Avego Shared Transport

“Any car that travels while occupied only by a driver is inherently inefficient. And yet, 85% of the time, that’s how cars travel. With our use of iPhone GPS technology, web services and your participation, we can fill up those empty seats.”

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Autodesk’s New Digital Sketching Technology

the idea collector — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 15:27:26 +0000

Al Dean of Develop3D posted an interesting video from the AU2008 conference. It looks like Autodesk is working on technology very similar to “I Love Sketch”.

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Golf Balls + Computational Fluid Dynamics

the idea collector — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 08:37:31 +0000

If I had 300 hours, 500 fast processors running in parallel, and a PhD in fluid dynamics I still probably wouldn’t analyze golf balls. But a team of researchers from Arizona State University and the University of Maryland did.

Up to now, dimple design has been more of an art than a science. For many years, sporting goods companies would design their dimple patterns by simple trial and error, testing prototype after prototype against one another. The new study takes a different approach, asking how to design dimple size and pattern based on mathematical equations that model the physics of a golf ball in flight. Working out the solution to these equations — even on the fastest personal computers today — is not feasible since it would take more than 15 years of computing time just to get a glimpse of the flow around the golf ball for a fraction of a second.
…

In the end, they produced a model that reveals the physics of a flying golf ball with the greatest level of detail ever seen — the first step in achieving the project’s long-term goal of optimizing dimple design to realize the lowest drag possible. The next step, says Smith, is to extend the work by comparing different dimple designs.

Check out the video on the Newswise article page. Pretty nice.

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Improvised WiFi Phone

the idea collector — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:45:00 +0000

The fees on my global cellular plan are big while I’m roaming internationally. Skype is great for making calls over an internet connection, but you have to be at your computer to make the call. Most hotels have an ethernet jack in their rooms and some have WiFi for guests. I wasn’t excited about spending a bunch of money to make international calls on my cell phone and I wasn’t excited about sitting behind my portable all night. So I turned on internet sharing on my Mac, fired up Fring on my iPhone and made all of my calls for $0.02 per minute through my Skype account.

I’m sure you can do the same thing with a PC and a Smartphone or Blackberry. If you know how, let me know in the comments.

Valentines Day Cards from Patent Illustrations Steve Hoefner takes a different approach to Valentines Day cards:...

I Love Sketch

the idea collector — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 08:30:31 +0000

ILoveSketch from Seok-Hyung Bae on Vimeo.

Described as an “As-natural-as-possible sketching system for creating 3D curve models,” three students at the University of Toronto have developed the most interesting 3D design interface I have seen in a long time. They call it “I Love Sketch.” One of the things that makes this application so compelling is the way the software behaves just as a designer would expect it to; anticipating things such as intended sketch planes, gesture recognition, auto-generating symmetric curves.
They are presenting their paper (pdf) on day 2 of the 2008 ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology.

A 3D curve sketching system that captures some of the affordances of pen and paper for professional designers, allowing them to iterate directly on concept 3D curve models. The system coherently integrates existing techniques of sketch-based interaction with a number of novel and enhanced features. Novel contributions of the system include automatic view rotation to improve curve sketchability, an axis widget for sketch surface selection, and implicitly inferred changes between sketching techniques. We also improve on a number of existing ideas such as a virtual sketchbook, simplified 2D and 3D view navigation, multi-stroke NURBS curve creation, and a cohesive gesture vocabulary.

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