A beautiful image Pixero. Love it. On the other hand, the basic principles of modeling remained the same. What has changed is the huge development of render engines and the ability to support huge meshes. Having this 3d digital sculpting. (ZB, MB, 3DC, Sculptris, Blender) Most importantly the tremendous power of modern CPUs and the excellent freeware around. Back in 1996... when a quadra 700 and in 1997 (mac G3) where more than enough to run the excellent macromedia freehand. I was able to construct a 24 pages brochure, full of quality scans. If I recollect right, it was more flexible than Indesign or QExpress are today. In 1998 when the best ever Illustrator (V8.01) was able to run a 2dCAD plugin.

@rich o brien said: If you have a camera already then all you need is TGI3D. You also don't need to sit in a dark room and the results can be super accurate. I use it quite alot. [EDIT] TIG to the rescue Ah ok, im hoping our DSLR is compatible im sure i can wrangle some software that will make it so. Yes thanks Tig and Rich.

Coool. I can't wait to fight some ghosts. [image: gbpp_june2007_front.jpg]

It's nice to see that personal drive and initiative are still alive in today's youth...

and I lose... doh!

@leedeetee said: Just thought I'd post this up in case anyone was interested in entering ... http://www.ronenbekerman.com/the-museum-maxwell-render-challenge/#utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=%27The+Museum%27+Challenge+-+Ronen+Bekerman%27s+Newsletter+-+June+2012+&utm_campaign=%27The+Museum%27+Challenge+-+Ronen+Bekerman%27s+Newsletter+-+June+2012&utm_term=Go+ahead+an+read+the+announcement+on+the+blog___+and+join+the+challenge_21 Thanks for doing so And yep - The prizes are great and the subject even greater. I would love to see as many SketchUP users giving this one a go. See you on the challenge Ronen [image: the-museum-challenge-preview-001.jpg]

I got a look at the Cube printer recently and wasn't really impressed. Their target market is kids, and so the whole system from printer to the software used to run it is dumbed down and not at all customizable. The print quality was not great either. For a printer in this home user/hobbyist class, I think most people would be better off with a Makerbot, or if you want to build it yourself for a cheaper price, look at a Reprap. If you want to see other options, here's a huge list of them: 3D printers under $1000. These little printers can't really be compared to the commercial ones like Z-corp and the ones used by Shapeways and other 3D print services. The commercial printers often cost upwards of 100K, and have much bigger build space, better resolution, and better quality in general. The home printers are good for getting quick results for concept testing and for simple low resolution functioning parts.

Thanks Tig, I will pass this along. Baz

It's like off-shore casinos...

Update, No-cost Windows 8 desktop development returns with Express for Desktop http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/no-cost-windows-8-desktop-development-returns-with-express-for-desktop/

Some heads-up: http://googleblog.blogspot.hu/2012/06/never-ending-quest-for-perfect-map.html and the "what happens to my GE models" announcement: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/3dwh/-GQj7OlZshA/discussion

A really good table

one of my favorites. [image: sDyV_quitter.jpg] [image: Hrav_ba.jpg]

@unknownuser said: Al, Curious what error message you get when trying to save an image. (is it something like "fails to recognise the drive") I ask because I have a 1tb Seagate Goflex ext. drive I purchased of October 2011 to which I have no problem with saving a Win7 drive image. Charlie The error is something like "I/O error while writing to drive" You can see if the drive i unsupportable by typing in: Fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo F: (replacing F: with the drive letter) It is the Bytes per Physical in bold below which is the problem. "Not Supported" means that the drive does not report the number of bytes to Windows, so Windows does not know that it is not a 512 byte drive. NTFS Volume Serial Number : 0x7420b59d20b566b0 Version : 3.1 Number Sectors : 0x000000002baa0a1f Total Clusters : 0x000000002baa0a1f Free Clusters : 0x000000002b78d793 Total Reserved : 0x00000000000df800 Bytes Per Sector : 4096 Bytes Per Physical Sector : <Not Supported> <------- Bytes Per Cluster : 4096 Bytes Per FileRecord Segment : 4096 Clusters Per FileRecord Segment : 1 Mft Valid Data Length : 0x0000000000d00000 Mft Start Lcn : 0x00000000000c0000 Mft2 Start Lcn : 0x0000000015d5050f Mft Zone Start : 0x00000000000c0100 Mft Zone End : 0x00000000000cc900 RM Identifier: 230A744D-C625-11E0-9ECD-101F740C3A98

Well anyway, that will turn the search function into a directory listing - something Google has just suspended to provide.

Yeah I'd love to play with this option, though I can't understand the lingo of much of the tips and seems you have to dig around everywhere to find the right info. Little is up to date! Plus the proposed use for commercial works attract massive licensing fees.

Reminds me also of the grid shell, although some use steel fasteners, some are apparently all wood joinery.

If only they'd shown us stuff like this in school.

@pugz1983 said: Then the Diabolo will be a toy also not known to children nowadays. It's like yo-yo-ing but with sticks. Might be a good game to port to the Nintendo Wii Are you kidding. My son (10 yr) and daughter (6yr) are crazy about their diablo's. They are doing tricks with that thing that amazes me every time I see them practising. (I can't even keep the damn thing rollin ...)