Good point, Tim, about the iPad and field applications in engineering.
To your other point, not only are CAD programs getting so rich in graphics capabilities, they are also borrowing lots of technology from the gaming world so we're starting to see photo realism and animation as a standard part of CAD platforms. This allows engineers to visualize how a particular mechanism might move within a design to check for parts interferences, for example, or to see how a particular part of a machine might operate from an ergonomics standpoint. All pretty amazing stuff!
An Ipad may not be the best device to design a component, but it is a fantastic tool to display a design to potential customers and management. The ability to zoom, pan, and rotate on a tablet is remarkable.
I remember when 100 mhz Pentiums became available and game software was readily available with graphics that blew away most CAD programs avaialbe on the market. Now the CAD software can display graphics with stunning effectivity.
The changes like the user interface all come along when design teams finally realize that tailoring the product to user needs and user ease ups the product's value. Apple is a master of this. The iPod, iPhone, and iPad all existed in different forms before Apple. But before Apple, users didn't care much for those early products.
Facebook beat MySpace for the same reason. While cool technology wins the first wave, the second wave is usually won when companies addresses the users' needs.
I believe current touch screens (Ipads and even the biggest tablets available) to be too small for efficient use for "next generation" human touch input. A mouse still seems the best way to turn human input (with small, precise motions) into commands for the computer.
To go beyond this, I think we'll begin to see larger input systems (beyond tablets). Microsoft blazed the way with Kinect. Imagine if you will, a Kinect vision system watching hand gestures, combined with haptic feedback gloves which would give some tactile feel to the 3D model you're manipulating with your hands. Maybe not surgical-precision fine feel, but the at least the feel that you're manipulating an object the size of a basketball in front of the screens on your desk.
The tricky part will be disengaging your hands from the 3D model to initiate commands. The mental image I have is your hands stuck on a sticky ball, unable to release it.
A new battery design, which replaces lithium with abundant and low-cost elemental sulfur, is still in its nascent stages but shows real promise for giving batteries more energy potential.
PTC will offer a virtual desktop environment for its Creo product design applications, potentially freeing engineers to run them from remote desktops on a variety of operating systems and mobile devices.
The push to achieving more intelligent, integrated manufacturing is putting a strong focus on networking and connectivity as key enabling technologies.
Now that solar and wind harvesting technologies are a thriving market, researchers are seeking other environmentally related energy sources for which they can create harvesting devices.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
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I've been using workstations for more than 10 years and love finding ways to get more performance from my system. With demanding professional applications that require more power each ...
A lasting memory from my first job as an engineer in an auto assembly plant is standing on hard concrete at six in the morning, vending-machine coffee clutched in hand, listening to ...
For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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