Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/110653
n n n n Business Trends Quietly, and over the past 10 years or so, the companies involved in providing machines, software, and services to the additive manufacturing industry have been staking out territory and making alliances. The market has evolved to what we have now: a battle between two major competitors—Stratasys and 3D Systems—with a large satellite ecosystem around them. The term "additive manufacture" is a broad term that encompasses industrial manufacture, right down to the hobbyist yearning for a 3D printer in the garage. And as the industry progresses, it seems likely we'll have all possibilities. Jon Peddie Research has classified the field as "digital reality," a much broader arena that includes metrology (measurement tools, scanners), 3D design, additive manufacture, photogrammetry, point cloud software, and augmented reality—in essence, the realm where the real and the digital interconnect. Lately, the field has burst forth from garages, service bureaus, and industrial backrooms and has become front-page news. Even right-wing political commentator Glenn Beck has seen fit to weigh in and pronounce 3D printing as the wave of the future and the salvation of America. (It's up to you to decide if this is good news or bad news for the field.) The latest in the list of acquisitions, at least at the moment of this writing, was announced just as the glitter was subsiding after New Year's Eve. 3D Systems, one of the more acquisitive of the competitors, has announced plans to acquire point cloud software company Geomagic. At the close of the deal, Geomagic CEO Ping Fu will join the company as a vice president and chief strategy officer. Fu is a high-profile figure in the geeky world of point clouds and 3D printing. The announcement of this deal follows the publication of her memoir Bend, Not Break, which describes her life in China during the Cultural Revolution to the present as the CEO of Geomagic and an advisor to President Obama as a member of the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (NACIE). In a conversation grabbed between stops on her book tour and interviews with journalists, Fu says maybe the timing could have been better, "but really, nothing ever happens at the perfect time." The news of the acquisition is not a huge surprise for those watching the industry. 3D Systems has been especially aggressive Photo courtesy Autodesk. This motorcycle was created using Stratasys's Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) process, which results in very durable models. It was a big crowd pleaser at Autodesk University in 2008. about acquiring all the pieces in the digitalreality pipeline, and Geomagic is a prize piece of the puzzle. In fact, Geomagic has long insisted that it was not interested in acquisition, and as a result of the ongoing buyouts in the additive manufacture field, Geomagic enjoyed a strategic advantage as an independent supplier. At the time of the recent announcement, Geomagic had strategic relationships with almost every company in the wider field of digital reality. Based in South Carolina, 3D Systems is a neighbor of Geomagic, which calls North Carolina home, and both companies have danced with each other as collaborators and sometimes as competitors. Earlier in the year, 3D Systems acquired a competitor of Geomagic's, Rapidform of Korea. Both Rapidform and Geomagic are pushing the development of tools for translating point cloud information into CAD formats that can be edited and used to further a design, create a new design, produce a detailed photorealistic render, and, of course, bring the image into the real world via digital reality. A major difference between Rapidform and Geomagic is that Rapidform has an integrated CAD product based on Siemens' Parasolids engine. Instead, Geomagic has concentrated on being compatible with the leading CAD products out there. For situations where customers need a CAD option, Geomagic has collaborated with 3D direct modeling company SpaceClaim to create Spark, a scan-toCAD solution using Geomagic's point cloud technology. Geomagic has also acquired Sensable, which offers sculpting tools that pro- Photo courtesy RedEye On Demand, by Stratasys. 28 January/February 2013 CGW0113-PingFu2pfin.indd 28 1/31/13 5:05 PM