Attending the COFES 2008 (Congress on the Future of Engineering Software) conference has been a nice surprise. For one thing, the event is being held at the beautiful Scottsdale Plaza Resort near Phoenix, Arizona. Think bright blue skies, hot sunny days, and unusual fauna such as the bottle brush tree, which has what looks like thousand of red, ...

New, so-called direct manufacturing methods will soon let individuals make products at home using high-tech, smaller versions of industrial equipment. Smaller tool and die shops are now using laser sintering machines, previously the province only of large manufacturers, to ''print'' or build 3D parts directly from CAD models. Rust ...