We all know LOL (laugh out loud), OMW (on my way) or ASAP (as soon as possible) and in the engineering world we also have our versions such as 3D, JIT, CAD, ECO/ECR, CAM, FEA, CMM and PLM.

What if, for fun, we reversed one and started changing the thought process. Take CAD for example, on the surface you see “Computer Aided Design” … but what if you reversed that to DAC?  “Design Aided by Camera”? Is it a hidden message like the ones in classic albums played backwards? Led Zeppelin, Judas Priest and The Eagles all had some creepy messages on their vinyl played in reverse, but that’s a story for another day. We are talking about the world of Mechanical and Industrial Design, and now more than ever, we oftentimes actually are designing aided by images from cameras and scanners!

Take 3D printing for example, you can 3D print almost anything out of a myriad of materials and, of course, linking your 3D printing to a solid CAD system is really needed. But where will the DAC technology be in 10 years?  What if you could simply scan an item with your phone camera or photon laser (whatever we want to call it 10 years from now), send the file via Wi-Fi over to your 3D printer and BOOM you print the world’s smallest violin to give to your significant other when he/she is whining.

I am just kidding, but not really.

Back on track, we sort of can do this scanning thing now … you need a laser scanning device or a Faro Arm to find the locations of key features on your item; you send those results over to the Geomagic software to reverse engineer the “3D digital image” and your re-design time is cut in half.  THEN you can 3D print the item with the correct parameters and 3D referencing you need. So DAC is mostly here now!

Already a revelation, but it will be better in 10 years and then maybe you will be handing your significant other the world’s smallest violin and thinking “man that blog guy was right! I can 3D print a joke of sympathy.”