Academic Facets: News and Views from Spatial's University Community

[#1]

About two weeks ago the purchase of a new phone propelled me into the world of “apps” and touch screen interfaces. Very impressive and consistently surprising! One recent surprise is that there is an app for 3Dvia that allows CAD models (in 3DXML format) to be viewed (zoom, pan and rotate) on the iPhone. Models are downloaded from 3Dvia’s website http://www.3dvia.com/. So to view your own CAD file you have to upload it to a “my3Dvia” account (where presumably some cunning processing of the original mesh takes place) and then login and select the same filename on your iPhone.

What is surprising is how quickly and smoothly the viewer works. During my experiments I didn’t experience any lagging, or hesitation, as the 3D model followed the movements of my fingers on the screen.  The app also has an option for imposing a 3D model on a background photo. Its novel and fun (in a geeky sort of way), but I think only a hint of the sort of functionality that will be made available through touch screens and mobiles in the near future.

For example it’s not hard to imagine using the two fingered “pinch” action to stretch, or shrink, shapes in a particular directions (e.g. non-uniform scaling) or dynamic texture mapping allowing the photographed pattern of a fabric to be rendered on, say, a 3D model of a sofa.  But without knowing what is actually being downloaded (e.g the data format) to the iPhone when you select a model it is hard to know how feasible such extensions would be.

Regardless of how it works, 3Dvia’s app is interesting as an early herald of two significant 3D trends that will appear frequently in 2010. First 3D modelling is changing from being something only professional creative types (e.g. engineers, animators and architects) and geeks do, to being a frequent activity of the general population. Indeed there are already lots of systems that allow customers to create 3D visualizations of their product selections (see IKEA’s Homeplanner). Currently these applications only allow users to choose from a predefined selection, but it must only be a matter of time before the public are allowed to modify models rather than simply select them.

The second trend is the multi-touch CAD interface. With Windows 7 incorporating support for multi-touch interfaces developers have been keen to exploit the new opportunities. Indeed a “New York Times” article on June 2nd this year quoted the development head of one CAD Company as saying they would be releasing a touch screen interface this year,  the video trailer certainly looks good (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdkxqgbXaSI ).

So there is a whole bunch of “don’t touch the screen” zealots going to find the coming year rather stressful as the public start to poke and prod 3D models in ways unimaginable only a few years ago.