A soft-skinned car?

Leslie_Gordon — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:14:00 GMT

"Let the material do the talking" is one of the ideas behind GINA, BMW's concept sports car. Instead of a metal body, it has one made from stretchable material. Thus, designers don't have to worry about, say, smooth continuity between the wheel wells and the body -- the material naturally takes care of a flow. Also, the car's headlights act and look like human eyes, blinking open and shut as needed. GINA stands for something like "Geomety shape functions In N Adaptations." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTYiEkQYhWY

New surfacing mathematics

Leslie_Gordon — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 02:23:00 GMT

A few other things gleaned from SolidWorks 2008:

-- One conference theme was that of teaching kids engineering through robotics. Robotic contests mentioned included ROBOCON, FIRST, and ROBO Cup. Kids can use 3D ContentCentral, a free service on the SolidWorks Web site for locating, configuring, downloading, and requesting 3D parts and assemblies, 2D blocks, library features, and macros.

-- Tulane University has closed it Mechanical Engineering Department.

-- Check out Gliffy, a nifty drawing program that works on a hosted Web site.

SolidWorks CEO Jeff Ray says it would be good to apply Creative Commons to product design. CC defines everything between full copyright — all rights reserved — and the public domain — no rights reserved.

Today, CAD is all about design intent, not just geometry. Scott Harris, co-founder of SolidWorks says there are now new surfacing mathematics that are better than NURBS. There is said to be a new kernel in the works for CATIA. Basically, a kernel is software code that solves topology.

A last view from my hotel window shows why Ione might be tempted to move to San Diego!

From Shop Floor to Software : mathematics

A soft-skinned car?

New surfacing mathematics