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Microsoft Integrates Autodesk's 3D Printing Platform Spark Into Windows 10
An anonymous reader writes: At Microsoft's Build 2015 developer conference today, Steve Guggenheimer, Microsoft vice president of developer and platform evangelism, announced new 3D printing features in Windows 10. More specifically, Autodesk Spark is being integrated into Microsoft's latest and greatest operating system. Spark is a platform for building 3D printing software, hardware, materials, and services. Adding it to Windows 10 is a big win for Autodesk.
Autodesk has tied themselves so tightly to Microsoft that they might as well just become another system utility.
Just what you need more stuff to go wrong especially if you never plan on using it. A lean OS makes more sense than an over bloated one.
I agree with the sentiment, but I'm pretty sure 82 million billion gallons of sea water was enough to suppress any fire on the Titanic.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Most users don't even use their regular 2D printers in any sort of creative or interesting way.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I miss dot matrix printers: https://vimeo.com/58200103
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Some may grumble about this, but speaking as one who's developed an entire suite of tools for 3D printing, I see this as a very positive step towards streamlining the 3D printing process. I wouldn't call it bloat, as it seems to be an available tool rather than a resource-hungry feature loaded as start-up time.
While an interesting idea, I don't think this is a very good idea. Most people aren't even going to touch it, and it still requires a printer of some sort and a supply of plastic - all it will do is take up valuable space, and if this is a version of Windows you are supposed to download...
Making it a free, separate download though, that wouldn't be so bad. Microsoft actually has some really underrated software they offer for free - I think my favorite is Microsoft Mathematics. Definitely worth checking out if you're ever looking for a math suite.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
linuxberg dead a head
I talked with folks from the Microsoft side at the build conference. The Microsoft team was pretty passionate how 3D additive devices can change the future of manufacturing and make communities. They were really focused on the needs of small-med-large manufacturers making high quality slicers and standard drivers wildly available. The person I talked to said that they wanted to help let printer manufacturers focus on the things they innovate and not worry about the software as much that was outside their area of expertise.
Some of the larger machine shops are talking about being able to build parts with additive processes that are impossible with current techniques. You can add cooling channels, hollow spaces, internal honeycomb structures that can't be forged or milled. I'm not a machinist but it sounded like a change on the scale of computer controlled CNC
If you look at the Spark workflow (http://spark.autodesk.com/about) prominent on the list of features is "copyright protection". How exactly this system goes about deciding what you are and are not allowed to print could be quite significant, especially if Microsoft's market share makes it the de facto standard.
Bleh, after looking into this a bit I think it's even worse than that.
Autodesk is calling this an "open platform", but it's most certainly not "open" in the same way we'd usually talk about more permissive "open source" licenses, such as BSD or Apache. So, it's more of a "free as in beer" sort of open, as far as I can tell. They've got a bunch of cloud-related features that (I think) are intended to facilitate transfer of models from design to manufacturing regions, but it looks like it's all very tightly under Autodesk's control, and they're very clear that they're not giving anyone else any control or licensing rights to the code or platform.
Check out the Spark Terms of Service. Open, my ass. How do you get "open" out of that? They're simply defining open as "anyone can use it if they sign up with us", which is about as "open" as Facebook. I was initially hopeful that this might be a good thing for the 3D printing industry, but all it would do is cede a massive amount of control over the 3D printing process to Autodesk, and I can't see how that's a good thing at all.
Meh. Now I'm sort of hoping this dies.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.