Hollywood’s Vision of Future CAD

Hollywood’s Vision of Future CAD

I’m not one who frequently goes to the movies but since my wife and I had a gift cards given to us we decided to catch a flick last night. We went and saw Iron Man. I’m not going to discuss the story go see it yourself. However there is one scene that I will mention as it does relate to CAD.

In the lead character’s workshop we see Tony Stark designing the second generation of the Iron Man armor. He is standing in front of a bank of computer monitors on which is displayed several windows of technical information in what appears to be some sort of design software. Tony merely points at a window showing a CAD model of the suit and drags the window from one monitor to another and finally to a large table like surface. I’m thinking, oh great here is the Microsoft tie in using their ‘Surface’ technology but then I see the model actually take on a 3D holographic appearance that Tony manipulates with his bare hands. In another scene Tony actually inserts his arm into one of these holographic models to test form, fit and function. WOW!

Even if you’re not a fan of movies based on comic books you might want to check out Iron Man just to see one vision of what CAD design software might look like in the future. Can anyone say SolidWorks 2010?

StrokeIt?

StrokeIt

No you have not stumbled onto some obscene blog. StrokeIt is the name of a program I just found by Googling ‘mouse gestures’. If you’ve been reading the blog you might have seen the posting on things I liked in other CAD programs I’ve used. In the Applicon Bravo3 software we had mouse gestures and since I couldn’t think of a thing to write about today I decided to see there was anything out there that could give me the same experience now.

I down loaded StrokeIt from http://www.tcbmi.com/strokeit/. The install was easy other than the required reboot to start the program. StrokeIt is free for individual and not-for-profit charitable entity use. Individual licenses are available for $10. But try it out for free and see what you think.

After the install and the printing of a handy tutorial off of the website I was programming StrokeIt to do some neat stuff in SolidWorks. Now I can draw a ‘W’ (for Whole) and a ‘F’ keystroke is transmitted to SolidWorks and you zoom to fit. I also did the ‘S’ key which is starting to get worn out on my keyboard and I also did a ‘M’ for measure. I actually had to add a hotkey for this one to work.

You draw the characters by holding the right mouse button and drawing the letter. You actually see a blue line being drawn on the screen which is better than the Bravo software where you did mouse gestures blind. It takes a bit of practice to get the character drawn so that it is recognized and so that you can do it quickly. If I remember correctly the DEC VMS Windows mouse was faster at this that my Logitech trackball. But anyway it might be something you like.