WTF is Digital Prototyping – Part 2

A year ago I did a Part 1, in which I defined Digital Prototyping as “the difference between modeling and designing”. At that time I was talking about Autodesk and its idea of Digital Prototyping, while keeping Inventor at the center of the concept.

Today I would like to talk about another company that is doing digital prototyping – a company called GEOMATE with its product CADCALCS 2.0. I don’t believe I have seen anything like CADCALCS before. To put is crudely, it is a geometric calculator. But it is actually much more than that. I could spend an hour trying to explain what CADCALCS does in words here, but I think you will get a much better idea if you see this video. After you do that take a look at this PDF document to see a bunch of examples where and how the software may be used.

Even in the case of CADCALCS, my definition of Digital Prototyping still remains the same – “the difference between modeling and designing”. Like I said in Part 1, geometry is a solved problem. Of course, we will constantly strive ways to find new ways of arriving at geometry, such as direct editing or the thing which comes after that, but the real problem is to find an easy and accurate method of arriving at the right geometry that will satisfy the design requirements. This is a very complex problem and is probably the reason why we still need a particular class of humans to design something, a class called Engineers. Technology can only make our work easier; and CADCALCS is one such technology.

CADCALCS 2.0 is priced at $499. They also have an educational price of $99, which I believe is fantastic. A software like CADCALCS is an excellent tool to get young minds interested in engineering. For that price you even get an extra license for home use and free technical support via the web.