Fab Cafe Shibuya: Best PD in ages . . .

2/23 was a PD day at school, and three of us were lucky enough to be able to travel to Shibuya to go to the Fab Cafe and meet with Daiki, who gave us a great overview of the space, tools and software one could use in the space.

We did quick hands on with AutoDesk 123D Make, 123D Creature, Adobe Ideas, and talked about 123D Catch, MeshLab for simplifying triangles, Grasshopper as the plugin for pyroetric modeling in Rhino, and other options like Modo (mesh), and 3DS Max, as well as Tinkercad and Sketchup.

We got to output a quick vector sketch to the laser cutter, in two versions of acrylic (two thicknesses, one also was a mirror).

We collaborated on a "creature" in 123D Creature and output that to the 3D printer.

Here's Dave getting scanned

We also got to play with the Sense 3D scanner  - first Dave got scanned, then I did. :)

Here I am, scanned! 

There are other options (this didn't have great resolution) such as the Makerbot digitizer, and the iSense for the ipad. Kids can also use 123D Catch on their iphone or android, which seems to have the same resolution (roughly) as the Sense scanner.


Here are a few other neat things we saw around and about on our visit:

showing settings with the laser cutter on acrylic

showing depth/darkness settings on the laser cutter

scale and resolution from the 3D printer