Autodesk University Day 2

Here is a picture of the 12-foot-tall (by 10 feet long) turboprop concept model 3D printed by Statsys.

(Click image for larger picture.)

Other 3D items of  note seen on the exhibit floor:

Zebra's color holographic prints:  when held under a point light source, you see a 3D image on the flat sheet of plastic. Not cheap, not fast to produce, but intriguing. Also, it is not possible to take a photograph of it, for then the 3D effect is lost.

Alioscopy's 3D monitor: you do not need to wear special glasses to see the 3D effect. Resolution is lower than what we are used to, however, and I got a bit of a headache watching it (due to the rapidly alternating viewpoints being displayed).

Faro's laser scanner that captures up to 1 million 3D points per second. While AutoCAD 2011 gets the ability to read millions of cloud points, you won't be able to afford the scanner: $99,999 for the scanner, license to transfer cloud data to AutoCAD, two days of training, and a year's of maintenance.

nVidia's 3D with wireless polarizing glasses.

Comments

[Kelly]

Re: Zebra's Holographic Prints

Perhaps a photo does flatten them, but I took an interesting video with my iPhone as I rotated it, and this seemed to work rather well at getting across what you actually see in person. These are somewhat of a novelty item, but I can see a huge demand for promotional / fundraising eye catchers that will really generate interest.

[Bill Fane]

I noticed an interesting "theme" at the AU vendor's show; there seemed to be quite a few booths lionked to producing 3D output from 3D CAD models. This included the 3D prints you mentioned, but there were also quite a few booths demonstrating solid 3D printing such as the turboprop engine.

By comparison, the vendor show at the last SolidWorks World had a predominance of 3D-to-CNC machining G-code generators, with very few of these at AU.

Interesting...