REFLECTIONS ON DEVELOP3D LIVE AS ONSHAPE LOGS ALMOST A MILLION USER HOURS

“If you haven’t seen Onshape lately, you haven’t seen it!”
– Jon Hirschtick

WANT TO CREATE NEW CAD FEATURES ON DEMAND?

Continuing the tradition of breaking new product news at DEVELOP3D Live, Hirschtick also gave his audience a sneak peek at FeatureScript, a powerful tool for Onshape users to create their own built-in CAD features or modify existing ones.

Onshape founder Jon Hirschtick announces the upcoming public release of FeatureScript. No matter how many features a CAD system may have, he notes, users will always want one more.

FeatureScript is a new programming language that Onshape developed to make its own features. It will be made publicly available, along with a “Feature Studio” editing tool, sometime in May. Onshape will also share the code for its existing features to allow users to modify them in any way they wish.

Stay tuned to this blog and Onshape’s Facebook and Twitter feeds for more details soon!

WHEN RABBITS & ROBOTS COLLIDE

Although trade shows inherently focus on business needs and goals, they are also an opportunity to pause and remember why you chose your career field in the first place. One of the more fascinating stories shared from the stage yesterday was “accidental engineer” Philip Norman, of UK-based Ross Robotics.

For years, Norman worked as a newspaper cartoonist, ceramics artist, furniture maker and writer before dabbling in robotics. His French-language children’s book, “La Guerre Des Carottes,” focused on a war between rabbit nations and included a pivotal scene with a Trojan carrot.

Norman shared how his creativity as an artist eventually led him to stumble into the world of engineering and design. Part of his inspiration for robot designs comes from his observations of nature, such as how a cockroach squeezes between cracks, how his dog’s feet land on the sand when he runs on the beach, and how a sunflower packs its seeds at such a high density.

Roboticist Philip Norman finds design inspiration in the unlikeliest places.

Art is usually thought of as a way to better understand the world, he noted, while technology has an endless potential to change the world.

Perhaps artists and engineers are not so unrelated after all, he suggested, urging the audience to let their creativity take them in unexpected directions.

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