Morphi Hopes to Make 3D Printing Easy with Tablet App

Morphi is hoping to bridge the gap between those with enough time to be able to become competent with the more complex CAD programs, and create an emphasis upon the educational angle for kids too. Mike’s overview of Maker’s Empire – a neat app for touch-screen devices to make computer-aided design somewhat more accessible – is in a very similar vein. In three dimensions there is a tactile element to touch-screens that a conventional 3D mouse or laptop touchpad simply cannot reach. Will Morphi make making easier for makers?

Let’s be honest. Autodesk’s Tinkercad, Trimble’s Sketchup, and Lagoa’s 3DTin et al, are good – and accessible for beginners compared to a functionality and interface rich program such as Blender, but still the majority of people aren’t going to find them fun. There has, of late, been a host of 3D design programs aiming to bridge the gap between the most accessible of the established entry level CAD programs, some have done better than others at fulfilling their brief. Using cubes to build and other geometric reductionism have been one angle at overcoming the complexity problem. Others have aimed to provide a simpler interface and hone down the range of functions to the purely minimal. Let’s give it a look:

Morphi is an intuitive app designed and owned by The Inventery, a New York start-up. The app was developed in collaboration with Geometros using the sgCore geometry kernel. The Inventery’s vision is to ‘make 3D modelling, designing + printing more accessible and affordable for people of all ages, skill levels and backgrounds.’ They envisage that Morphi will be a functional tool for prototyping, visualisation, making functional products, wearables, decorative items, building 3D models to teachScience, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math (STEAM) literacy, and so forth. To test how successful their app is at the premise of their vision, The Inventery team took their app to what became their first ‘Morphi Lab,’ at Udyam, a non-profitprogram for kids attending government schools in New Delhi, India. There the 13 to 16 year olds learned about the basics of 3D modelling and printing.

Morphi looks good. It’s not going to be an app that architectural designers are going to pick up and drop their existing programs for by any means, but as we’ve established, that’s not really the point. A clean user interface, simple gesture control and familiarised app quirks such as displaying your existing files as simple squares on a screen that are just asking to be made to wobble when you wish to move or delete them. These are real accessibility options for a three-dimensional design program that will invite those less experienced with creating forms to 3D print, to step on board and give it a try. After all, when a human enters any environment we seek familiarity to establish functionality. The more prior knowledge we can apply to a new place the quicker we settle in to using it, and learning the unique features of that environment.

How commercially successful will the new wave of CAD apps such as Morphi and MakerEmpire be? I’m still not in possession of a reliable crystal ball, so as usual, time will be the telling factor. But I’d guess they will do fairly well, and they are certainly needed in the marketplace. Soon little kids and big kids will be able to dig in to design more quickly and easily than ever before. And that has to be a good thing.