Inspiration for this post:
Autodesk released 123D Catch for the iPhone this month. This means even more 123D app customers will now be able to happily create and print 3D geometry from photographs using only their iPhones. No more having to wait until you get home from grandma's house to fire up your Creaform scanner and 3D Systems printer just to make a bobble head of your best friend for his birthday party. Just take a few pics and send it off to the cloud to process and print.
Since its release, 123D has received its fair share of praise and even a bit of criticism. Is it really just a glorified toy for kids? Or is it a sophisticated reverse engineering tool in disguise with an amazingly simple user interface? Although I can see both sides of the argument, the answer really lies somewhere in between -- but in my opinion, it's far closer to the 'toy' side of the argument. That doesn't make it any less brilliant though. In my opinion, that brilliance is in streamlining the end-to-end process of producing fairly complex things using just that single tool set. You can now make that same bobble-head toy using only your iPhone.
I could spend a half hour or more on that point alone, but to get back to the toy vs. engineering tool question, I'd prefer to speculate on what I think is the more important long-term take-away is here... not where these kind of low-end and high-end tools stand against one another today, but rather where they will stand against one another 5+ years from now.
Autodesk has the broadest set of engineering and design-centric tools available in today's emerging post-PC market. I believe they are separating themselves from their competitors by appealing to an audience that will be ready to step into tomorrow's engineering environments during the biggest generational sea-change of engineering talent we've seen. As today's hardware and software technologies continue to evolve quickly, the market landscape will also evolve and likely be filled with plenty of folks that used to made bobble-heads of their best friend using Autodesk tools. Meanwhile, Autodesk will have learned plenty since serving today's consumer market.
I don't expect 123D will cause companies to begin replacing existing 3D scanners with iPhones anytime soon, but I do expect more companies will be confiscating iPhones from visitors to their shop floor today.
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