June 2005 - Vol. 48 No. 6

June 2005 issue cover image

Features

Opinion Editorial pointers

Editorial Pointers

Senior Editor Andrew Rosenbloom’s annual sojourn to SIGGRAPH always ends with a list of technological gems to editorially explore and ultimately share. Indeed, he’s spent the past year cultivating a select group of articles inspired by the 3D hard copy technologies he’s experienced over several conferences and will be a presence again at SIGGRAPH 2005 […]
News News track

News Track

A disturbing increase in pharming—the latest online scam to lure potential identity-theft victims—has security experts apprehensive. While phishing uses email spam to deliver fake messages to entice individuals to reveal personal or financial information, pharming automatically directs computer users from a legitimate Web site to a fraudulent mirror image of that site without any warning. […]
Opinion Forum

Forum

I must respond to Vinton G. Cerf’s Viewpoint "Spam, Spim, and Spit" (Apr. 2005) concerning the disadvantages of challenge/response (C/R) email systems. (Disclaimer: My company, DigiPortal Software, Inc., sells C/R anti-spam products for both consumers and enterprise users.) Cerf wrote that C/R systems require unrecognized senders to confirm their identities and that "…some senders find […]
Opinion Hot links

Top 10 Downloads from Acm’s Digital Library

Communications of the ACM Volume 48, Number 6 (2005), Pages 19-20 Hot links: Top 10 downloads from ACM’s digital library Diane Crawford Table of Contents Tables Back to Top Tables Table. The Top 10 Most Popular Papers from ACM’s Refereed Journals and Conference Proceedings Downloaded in March 2005 Table. The 10 Most Popular Courses and […]
Research and Advances 3d hard copy

Introduction

The growing interest among the graphics, vision, and manufacturing communities in transmitting 3D computer-aided design (CAD) image files directly to inexpensive fabrication machines promises on-demand physical prototype consumer products, industrial components, mechanical parts, biomedical parts, scientific visualizations, heritage reproductions, and even abstract artwork.
Research and Advances 3d hard copy

Rapid Prototyping in Consumer Product Design

Why are only certain consumer products the hot gifts to give and to get each holiday season? Last year the digital camera and the iPod portable music player (and its MP3 clones) were perhaps the leading contenders. One part of the answer is they are deliberately designed to deliver a high-quality consumer experience. Or as my colleague in Japan, Noriaki Kano of the University of Tokyo, has said about the best products, they "surprise and delight" the first wave of consumers to use them. The next part of the economic cycle is that the products are praised in design magazines and by word-of-mouth; before long they are must-have items for perhaps millions worldwide.
Research and Advances 3d hard copy

Layered Manufacturing For Scientific Visualization

From the moment we're born, we learn to use and depend on our sense of touch to gain knowledge and understanding of the world around us. Today, it can also be exploited to understand scientific data. Rapid prototyping, or layered manufacturing (LM), is a mainstream technology in engineering product development, enabling engineers to create prototype parts from new designs before their organizations invest in final production. The Center for Visualization Prototypes (CVP) at Oregon State University (originally at the San Diego Supercomputer Center) uses LM technology to create 3D visualization hard copies, collaborating with geologists, astronomers, oceanographers, cartographers, biomedical researchers, chemists, and other scientists to enhance data understanding. During its 10 years of operation, it has fabricated more than 1,000 physical models, helping them visualize their data.
Research and Advances 3d hard copy

Layered Manufacturing Technologies

From the holodeck in "Star Trek" to the slice-by-slice reconstruction of the alien Leeloo played by actress Milla Jovovich in the movie The Fifth Element, science fiction has long predicted the possibility of automated one-off construction of the most complex objects from a stream of digital information. While we are still a long way from being able to build living beings in this manner, digitally controlled layered manufacturing (LM) technologies are transforming prototyping and mass customization of mechanical and biomedical parts of extraordinary geometric complexity.
Research and Advances 3d hard copy

Shape-Based Retrieval and Analysis of 3D Models

The number of 3D geometric models available in online repositories is growing dramatically. Examples include: the Protein Data Bank [1], which stores the 3D atomic coordinates for 29,000 protein molecules; the National Design Repository [9], which stores 3D computer-aided design (CAD) models for tens of thousands of mechanical parts; and the Princeton Shape Database [5], which stores polygonal surface models for 36,000 everyday objects crawled from the Web. Since graphics hardware is getting faster and 3D scanning hardware cheaper, there is every reason to believe that demand for and supply of 3D models will continue to increase into the future, leading to an online environment in which 3D models are as plentiful as images, videos, and audio files today.
Research and Advances 3d hard copy

Rapid Prototyping: a 3D Visualization Tool Takes on Sculpture and Mathematical Forms

Many technical and scientific objects are far too complex to be properly understood through pictures. 3D representations that can be touched and physically manipulated by the observer convey information not obtainable from 2D projections. Thanks to some emerging affordable rapid prototyping (RP) technologies, such models are beginning to find a role in design, science, and manufacturing. RP is already firmly established in the automotive industry and among designers of consumer products, including household appliances, toys, and electronics. With this personal case study from the arts and mathematics, I hope to encourage designers from other application domains to use RP technologies as a truly 3D physical visualization tool.
Research and Advances 3d hard copy

Protecting 3D Graphics Content

The digital rights management problem of protecting data from theft and misuse has been addressed for many information types, including software code, digital images, and audio files. Few technological solutions are designed specifically to protect interactive 3D graphics content.Demand for ways to protect 3D graphical models is significant and growing. Contemporary 3D digitization technologies allow the efficient creation of accurate 3D models of many physical objects. For example, our Stanford Digital Michelangelo Project [3] has developed a high-resolution digital archive of 10 of Michelangelo's large statues, including the David (see the sidebar "Generating a Replica of Michelangelo's David"). These statues represent the artistic patrimony of Italy's cultural institutions, and our contract with the Italian authorities permits distribution of the 3D models only to established scholars for noncommercial use. Though everyone involved would like the models to be available for any constructive purpose, the digital 3D model of the David would quickly be pirated if it were distributed without protection; simulated marble replicas would be manufactured outside the provisions of the parties authorizing creation of the model.
Opinion Inside risks

What Lessons Are We Teaching?

Recently, the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s (NJIT’s) Homeland Security Technology Systems Center proposed "smart" cameras that would identify everyone entering school premises and send out an alert when an intruder is discovered. That plan follows a similar action by a middle school in Phoenix, AZ, which in 2003 installed video cameras and face-scanning technology […]

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