H AVING USED VIRTUALLY EVERY CAD (computer-aided design) program out there at least once, I thought there was no chance they would ever be simple ... until I met Takeo Igarashi. Takeo was a grad student from Japan who wrote an incredible little piece of software called Teddy. It’s basically CAD for 5-year-olds: if you want to design a plush toy, this is the program. It’s intuitive. It’s beautiful. CAD doesn’t have to be awful or expensive. It doesn’t have to come with 1,000-page instruction manuals.
My hope was that Teddy would influence the world of CAD and make incredible packages cheap and easy to use. That was six years ago. Things haven’t changed that much, but there is still hope.
Why, as a reader of MAKE, should you care? I care because I just enjoy using CAD; it’s better than playing a computer game. You can spend the same 36 sleepless hours in front of the computer, but at the end of it, you have a beautiful 3D object from your imagination, planned out and ready to be built or shared. But the real and exciting reason to care is because someday kids should be able to unleash their imaginations on a Teddy-type CAD program and then print their imaginings into the real world on a chocolate- or sugar-powder 3D printer.
You should care because the capacity to share 2D and 3D models is at least as important as sharing music and video. Making CAD representations of your “makings” makes it easier for other makers to make things too.
Before I launch into my CAD diatribe, let me sketch out the playing field for the uninitiated. Very broadly, CAD programs can be classed in a number of ways. On the hardcore engineering side, there is parametric 3D solid modeling, with exact equation-driven descriptions of objects; there are surfacing or wire-frame-based programs, which bring nice rounded surfaces and squishy shapes to life; there’s a world of rendering tools for making the 3D models look cool; and there are architectural-type 2D drafting programs for laying out plans in 2D.
For completeness, I should also mention CAM, which is computer-aided manufacturing software. It takes your CAD design and converts it into a “ tool-path” for a drillbit, mill, laser, inkjet head, or some other tool to follow and construct your object.
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need a laser cutter or a 3D printer or an NC mill to realize your CAD designs. On your desk, you likely already have a high-precision machine tool: an inkjet printer. These things will print designs onto paper with 50-micron,
or better, accuracy. I very often use the inkjet printer to print a pattern or template, which then can be used to align the holes you will drill by hand or to cut out the fabric you will stitch together. So, in fact, the world already has the capacity to build cool CAD 3D models and share them via their desktops.
One program taking advantage of this is Pepakura Designer — it calculates a pattern of triangles that, when folded up, can make your 3D object. It’s high-tech origami. I’ve seen business cards that fold into toy cars made by this technique, and Japanese anime characters and dinosaurs.
In the same vein is a program called Lamina Design, which takes 3D curved surfaces and figures out how to construct them from flat sheets. Again, the nice thing here is that you don’t need NC machine tools to get real-world output; you could use this program, print to paper, trace to plywood, cut with a hacksaw, and make beautiful organic furniture, or even design your own kayaks.
A great little company called SketchUp has a CAD package that allows you to build buildings and place the 3D models in Google Earth. Of all the packages
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