elon musk's tony stark 3D interface for designing spaceX rockets

elon musk‘s tony stark 3D interface for designing spaceX rockets

spaceX has been exploring augmented and interactive design methods for engineers, accelerating their workflow by manipulating CAD files in three dimension. elon musk, the founder of spaceX has unveiled a system that would allow him to design rocket parts like tony stark in the iron man film series. following up on his tweet from last week of ‘designing a rocket part with hand gestures and then printing it immediately in titanium’, his new 3D gestural design process integrates breakthroughs in sensor and visualization technologies to view and modify CAD more naturally and efficiently using 2D tools. in the video below, musk demonstrates how the software works by grabbing, rotating and zooming in on wireframe models of spaceX’s merlin rocket engine on a computer screen. the process uses leap motion and oculus VR to simulate the sci-fi and make it reality for manufacturing and industrial production. ‘I believe we’re on the verge of a major breakthrough in design and manufacturing,’ says elon musk, ‘in being able to take the concept of something from your mind, and translate that into a 3D object really intuitively on the computer.’

the future of design
video courtesy spaceX