A couple of weeks ago, I ran a 3dprinting introduction session at ESDI. A design school in Barcelona.
Although I used the same presentation we have in the 3dprint Barcelona group which targets general public, in fact I customized part of the content having in mind I was talking to designers.
Our standard presentation can be found here in slideshare.
The audience was pretty active and asking many questions. There was also a bit of debate on the designer role in the future, with positive and pessimistic views. For example, the 3d object repositories and the easiness to copy files will reduce significantly the need of a designer since one will find many objects there already. On the other hand, creativity will still be needed.
I also explained the bottleneck that prevents 3dprinting from booming at consumer level. And it is what to use it for at home. Will not improve until CAD design becomes more user-friendly with a shorter learning curve. Or the alternative is the apps that let you customize specific objects. I showed them nervous systems as a perfect example for jewelry customization.
In addition to the standard content, we also had a look at Shapeways and its business model: having designers create their own shop so everybody wins. Shapeways gets content for free and increases printing sales, designers have an infrastructure to sell their creations. People were amazed by the availability of materials, and I also showed around a couple of impressive cups from Bernat Cuni I got 3dprinted in ceramics.
Overall it is always a nice experience to share knowledge and get positive feedback. Although I also like to hear about things to improve.
The downside is that it takes a lot of time. There are other universities or schools interested in this kind of content, but my availability is low so I think I will keep it to the group events for now.
I moved back to my former hobby. I am doing a lot of mountain activity, trailrunning is the most frequent. In fact I engaged already in a 44k trailrunning event by Nov 30th. Let’s see what happens! it’s a challenge for me 🙂