Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/110653
■ ■ ■ ■ Business Trends Images courtesy Geomagic. Image courtesy University of Manchester. Geomagic's technology includes tools for taking point clouds into design tools with 3D polygons and NURBS surfaces. Everything Changes But, isn't content a vulnerable area? Isn't content the area where the crowd comes in? In one sense, yes, says Fu. She believes the software business is looking at an inflection point that will utterly change the industry, and she compares it to the Internet revolution that transformed the publishing industry. "Software will become free," she says with certainty. As far as she's concerned, the crowd can come right on in because what the industry needs now is content. According to Fu, an object that is printed is really software code made real. It's not the code that matters; it's the creativity that goes into creating it and the use it is designed for. 3D printing is manufacture for goods needed on-demand and one at a time, or at most, just a few at a time. The result is what counts, not necessarily all the steps in the middle that went into creating it. "If you have good content," says Fu, "you're never vulnerable." "If you look at what's happening in software now, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple, to a certain extent, they don't sell software, it's free. They sell something else. Autodesk clearly sees this coming," Fu says. "They're offering their technology in this field for free." Autodesk has also been forging alliances and acquiring companies on the content side of digital reality. At the recent Needham conference, the Stratasys presenters also identified content as a significant piece of the puzzle. Talking about the enthusiasm of the Maker community for 3D printing, Crump said, "in order for Maker applications to be successful, first there needs to be content." Crump compares the consumer side of the industry today to the very early days of Apple. "We all thought there was a place for the computer in the home," but it wasn't so easy to figure out exactly how to do that until applications like desktop printing emerged, he says. 30 This idea of content is expanding rapidly. fulfilling its promise. In the future, the real will As Fu says, "everything is 3D," and she's co-exist with the digital. ■ right. Digital reality is already blending information captured into digital form (via Kathleen Maher is a contributing editor to CGW, a senior scanners, cameras, and measuring devices) analyst at Jon Peddie Research, a Tiburon, California-based with real-world information, and it is being consultancy specializing in graphics and multimedia, and used by plants to visualize and incorporate editor in chief of JPR's "TechWatch." She can be reached at real-world conditions of pipe mazes into the Kathleen@jonpeddie.com. digital plan of the factory. Or consider Siemens' recent acquisition of LMS, a German engineering company with measurement tools for design, enabling car manufacturers to capture information about a vehicle's performance and incorporate it into the design. And additive manufacture helps close the loop, bringing the idea out of the digital and into the corporeal. At the same time as 3D Systems was announcing the planned Geomagic deal, Autodesk announced an initiative to create front-end CAD tools for Organovo, a company that could have been invented by science-fiction novelist Philip K. Dick. Organovo plans to use 3D printing technology to build tissue on structures and print human parts, including blood vessels, skin, and, someday, even organs. Content is everything, even us. Yes, additive manufacture has been hot stuff for a while now, but it's not just hype. With every acquisition, with every alliance, and with better Designers are making a splash on the runway with 3D printed fashion, integration with adjacent tech- including this cape and skirt, output using the Objet Connex printer. nologies, it's coming closer to Recently, Stratasys and Objet completed their merger. January/February 2013 CGW0113-PingFu2pfin.indd 30 1/31/13 5:05 PM