Creation Engine Blog

SolidWorks Student Edition 2011-2012 Now Shipping!

SolidWorks Student Edition 2011-2012 Now Shipping!

Educational Discount Price $99.95

By learning SolidWorks, you’ll gain vital mechanical CAD, design validation, and data management skills that today’s employers demand. With a SolidWorks background, you’ll have a clear advantage in the engineering or industrial design job markets. The easy-to-use SolidWorks Student Edition lets you sharpen your skills outside the classroom as you learn to design better products. This package also includes one free Certified SolidWorks Associate (CSWA) exam code. It allows you to take the certification exam and stand out in today’s competitive job market.

Image Creation 5/18/2011

Link via ZBrushCentral

Zflow project for Lacta Chocolates by Lala.

Created with ZBrush.

Rendered with Vray and MaxwellRender… composed and retouched in photoshop

Adobe Creative Suite 5.5: Not just a dot release

Link via Adobe Edge

It’s clear that several things will change in the near term:

How content is created for devices

How devices are used in the creation process

How content is delivered and monetized

Put simply, everyone wants better ways to build content for these devices, and they want to start looking for new ways to monetize the content they build.

Adobe plays an important role here, and we have realized that our historical 18-month release cycles are not going to be sufficient to address these rapidly evolving trends. So Adobe decided to ship major milestone releases of Adobe Creative Suite software approximately every two years, with mid-cycle releases that incorporate the most critical features customers need in the interim years. The first mid-cycle release is Creative Suite 5.5, and it addresses these challenges.

All Adobe CS5.5 Student & Teacher Edition and Education/Non-Profit Edition Products Now Shipping!

Model Creation 5/16/2011

Link via Google 3D Warehouse

New World Trade Center by Patrick Griffin

Google SketchUp 8 is free.

Google SketchUp Pro 8 is available at a student discount price of $49.

Google SketchUp Pro 8 is free for instructors.

Google SketchUp Pro 8 Lab licenses are available at a school discount price of $15.

After a burst of invention by three friends, the company was formed two years ago— “built on caffeine,” said a founder, Bre Pettis — and has since expanded to 32 employees and thousands of MakerBot kits sold. Three-D printing has existed for years, but the machines were cumbersome and expensive, relegated to art and engineering schools, often monopolized by specialists. The MakerBot, which tops out at about $1,300, gives anybody with a computer and an idea the same creative horsepower, and artists are beginning to take notice.

According to the MakerBot FAQ:

What’s the design process like?

It all starts with an STL file which you can make in a number of 3D modeling applications. We like Blender, Sketchup, and Art of Illusion because they are either open source or free. Practically all professional 3D Design and CAD softwares can create STL format files as well.

Once you’ve got the STL file, you slice it up in skeinforge and then import the resulting G-Code into ReplicatorG which sends the instructions to the MakerBot. Once I finish my model, it’s usually a 10 minute process for me to scale it and slice it. Then it’s printing time!

Build-Your-Own ‘Ultimate’ Photoshop PC guide

Link via ZDNet

Probably one of the most of the most-requested features here on Hardware 2.0 is for a ‘Build-Your-Own PC’ plan for the ‘Ultimate’ Photoshop system. Why Photoshop? Because it’s a big, heavy application that when pushed hard can really tax a system. The better your hardware, the better your Photoshop experience will be.

Well, here is is – my ‘Ultimate’ Photoshop rig guide.

A Photoshop rig needs three things:

A fast, quad-core processor

Lots of RAM

Lots of big hard drive

Let’s take a look at these three things in a little more detail.