3D Print Preview is an app that does pretty much what it sounds like. It’s an .stl viewer specifically for Android devices that allows users to see a print before they print it. It doesn’t seem to offer all that much functionality, for now. With it, one can alter the colour, the size and the orientation of a 3D object. What’s most interesting about this app is its potential. Using a Neo3Do (the makers of 3D Print Preview) android tablet, the objects can also be viewed in stereoscopic 3D without glasses.
When I met the guys at Occipital, makers of the Structure/iSense 3D sensor for iPad, they tried to impress upon me the fact that handheld devices were going 3D, but there lacked an infrastructure. What they were trying to do with the Structure Sensor was to push the 3D app ecosystem further. Though they had developed the sensor, which people can use to scan the world around them in 3D, Occipital is, at heart, a software development team. Because, in the near future, handheld devices will likely come with their own built-in 3D sensing technology, they want to be the ones programming a line of apps that rely on 3D technology. Things like: 3D mapping and measuring software, 3D printing software and augmented reality apps. Eventually, when our devices are faceheld instead of handheld and we’re living in a more consistently augmented reality, Occipital will be prepared with their own apps that more closely stitch together the relationship between devices and people. The Structure Sensor, then, gives people a relevant tool for beginning that 3D, augmented reality revolution.
Also in the short term are apps like 3D Print Preview. For the time being, it’s a way for seeing 3D objects on your Android. Put it on a Neo3Do tablet and you’re beginning to see the future of 3D interfaces. Neo3Do hints that it will add augmented reality features to the app in the next version, so, really, what 3D Print Preview is, is a method for demonstrating the capabilities of the Neo3Do tablet, a preview of the 3D things to come.
Source: 3D Focus
