3D printing and lego-style construction bricks are a pertinent, increasingly applied combination. IKOS, the 3D printed spherical building block enterprise, is not the only such project that is currently seeking crowd-funding. There is also the rather wonderful, beautifully frugal, Tiles. Back in December you may recall my writing about Google Build With Chrome, which was my appeal for lego-style simple-access easy-to-use interfaces for Computer Aided Design. It seems the Tiles team have been thinking something similar…
We live in an era where there are now literally apps for apes. A number of projects have emerged in various progressive zoos around the world whereby chimps, orang-utans and other highly intelligent primates are given the opportunity to express themselves creatively and perform basic maths on non-specific and specifically designed tablet applications. Apes with iPads. For real. And why not, after all, such species often outperform humans in mathematics, memory, spacial awareness and more. One thing I’ve yet to see anyone attempting, is creating a Computer Aided Design app for apes.
And that is little surprise, given how inaccessible the vast majority of CAD programs are to the vast majority of humans, let alone caged cuddly cousin creatures. Don’t let this put you off if you have yet to try out any of the huge range of input solutions out there now, from home pro’s using Blender, amateur experts using TinkerCad, Sketch Up and Meshmixer, entry level input solutions such as Autodesk’s 123D Catch and Shapeshifter, up to the real heavyweight professional software such as 3Data Expert and Materialise Magics. But what if you want an app you can start getting results with as quickly as you are now used to getting results in 2D imaging with your smartphone camara?
Tiles is simple. Tiles is accessible. Tiles is what ten thousand other entrepreneurs should have been thinking about two years ago when the 3D printing hype really hit media max.
Is it because the creative mind working for a large established company would buckle under the strain of ‘what if my boss laughs at me in the team’s brainstorming session?’ Is it because the RepRap Maker with programming skills already has so much technological and technical skill under their belt – putting together a degree level electronic device, able to proficiently handle at-the-least basic programming concepts, a mind for design, computing, engineering, mathematics – that by now they simply aren’t interested in challenging their genuine genius on something simple, as simple as a program that builds in cubes? As you can tell, I believe in this project. As per that Build With Chrome article, I have been hoping to see more simplicity in 3D printing design interfaces for some time.
We now live in the Apple age, where simple interfaces rule, and everyone knows that Windows Vista is, frankly, crap. We live in an age where Windows XP support expires as you read this, and people like myself have deliberately skipped an entire decade of Microsoft’s failed leadership to Windows 8 because Microsoft completely missed the simplicity niche. A niche now around the size of the whole consumer technology sector. It’s true, I’m typing on that Windows 8 laptop now. Its UI is the same as XP with ‘looks like Apple’ simplicity. Simple.
Whether the near future holds a ‘3D printing revolution’ or not, with printers merrily chugging away in everyone’s home office producing plastic, wood and basic metal products – some copyrighted and some open-source – downloaded from the internet; 3D-food-printer-microwave-oven-combo’s churning out personalised meals that taste great but look like a traumatised astronauts luncheon nightmare… or however it all turns out, we are only going to see real uptake with simple apps that are basic enough for kids to learn in school. Or apes.
As the Tiles team themselves say:
‘We think, in the future, a 5 year old will be able to pick up her tablet with Tiles downloaded on it. She will design herself something cool on Tiles: maybe a Skyscraper, or maybe a Boat for Barbie and Ken. Click Print. Now she has a physical representation of her imagination in her hand! That is powerful!
In my apartment I always spill water on my bed all the time. Soon I will be able to design a customized cup holder to the exact dimensions I need for it to fit on my bed! Tiles makes complicated 3D Printing technology useable by everyone.
Current CAD software is too clunky and hard to use. We need to streamline the highway between one’s imagination and them holding their 3D Printed creation in hand. Tiles is the solution we came up with.
It would be easy to take this as a simple Minecraft toy variant. It’s not… What it does require in due course is the option to dramatically change cube resolution, and multiple materials in multiple colours in multiple cube resolutions… ultimately there will be a stratification of voxel to vector based apps that fulfil the needs and niches that the maker audience create via feedback, whether via one digital entity of an application, or an entire market.
Tiles has a place in whatever future there is for both home 3D printing and CAD apps. But, it only has the potential that you provide for it, via crowdfunding. That’s part of the intrigue and joy of this maker movement phenomenon: supply and demand are highly permeable, and highly personal, as each individual backer makes a contributory difference to the shape of the tools, applications and utilities available to the community. I’ll leave you with the video of how it all works and the link to the crowdfunding page here to see what you think. I think it’s good. It’s simple. It’s accessible. It’s yours to fund…
