Reprint of our first review in TCT Magazine from the authoritive Rapidnews. This is the story of Jim Woodcock based on an interview with Manfred van der Voort / CTO of ICR3ATE some weeks ago.

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2. Design, ICR3ATE is an ambitious project that has
so far been five years in the making and
that still has several months of
collaborate and development to go before it is unleashed.
The man behind it, Manfred van der Voort,
is an IT consultant, designer, carpenter and
make in the Cloud technology enthusiast in the extreme —
and the partners that are working towards
making ICR3ATE a reality read like an
enviable ‘who’s who’ of the 3D design,
collaboration and manufacturing world...
But what exactly is ICR3ATE?
Perhaps the best way to understand the ICR3ATE platform is to Scan-This
look at the problems that it is setting out to solve. In a nutshell it The commercial name of the input channel for inputting a scan
aims to be an accessible, secure and safe online platform that — the system is able to deal with all 3D scanner data from
covers the concept creation, 3D design, global collaboration and Microsoft Kinnect through to high-end laser scanners.
flexible production of things. A huge undertaking then, but one Geometry, texture and geometry modificiation are all catered for.
that could revolutionise the way we think about the entire Cloud service partners are involved in taking scan data and
design, development and production process. See Sidebar 1. transforming to CAD solids, or 3D digital capture — essentially
any way you can get 3D data about the real world is compatible
with the ICR3ATE platform. Once the scan data is imported it
is optimised and made available to the 3D design tools.
in 3D Design
Perceived Business Problems
ats, resulting in
n 130 diffe rent and often incompatible file form 3D Design Anywhere
gner s The ICR3ATE platform aims to bring 3D design to the cloud
inefficient collaboration for 3D desi
a 3D co-design process across without platform bourdaries. The company has huge ambitions
n Traditional CAD doesn’t support
for this section of the project including getting the likes of
organisational borders
y open and promising web SketchUp, Rhino, Spaceclaim and others to collaborate as cloud-
n Without exception they don’t appl
based creation partners. The cornerstone of the technology is
standards (WebGL, HTML5) citrix XenDesktop that transforms desktops and apps into on-
n Some invested in Flash… demand services — allowing access anywhere, at any time and on
ce files lacks IP security, leading
n Current sharing of 3D model sour any device.
resulting in release and change
to 2D collaboration on 3D designs
management challenges The citrix system also puts security first, meaning that users can
ber of physical model defects in
n Net result is relatively high num design and collaborate with confidence. The platform puts digital
phase
the development and prototyping rights management at the heart of the system with the Collada file
standard (and its .dae digital asset exchange file standard) used
across the platform along with an as-yet-undisclosed partner with
an exciting rights management system that will help to ensure
While the challenges can be overcome in-house by the largest that all IP created in, imported into and collaborated on through
OEMs through deployment of bespoke systems, small and the ICR3ATE platform.
medium enterprises (who generate far more data than do the big
OEMs) do not have a sensible solution. Through extensive
research and surveys, the team behind ICR3ATE hope to
produce such a solution. Manfred van der Voort, the lead behind
the projects, has taken up the challenge to specify, design,
develop and release this solution in the form of ICR3ATE.
The ICR3ATE platform consists of six user options covering
everything from data capture and creation to manufacturing:
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3. [Software]
Publish-in-3D Make Instantly
What Manfred calls the ‘simple’ bit of the platform, publish in Once you have scanned and imported you model, or created it
3D allows users to publish their 3D models on the web with full on your device in the cloud, published it and collaborated with
IP control and social sharing. Again there is more than meets the your global team, you might want to make something. That
eye with this aspect of the system with a number of high-profile something could be a digital model, a physical model, an image
development partners helping the team to address some of the or something else. By connecting to a myriad of output
problems inherent with publishing 3D content in a collaborative mechanisms from 3D printing services, prototyping services,
and safe environment as well as managing material libraries manufacturing services and others teams have the ability to
across multiple applications. seamlessly get the desired end-product.
The ICR3ATE platform will also include a cloud-based near- Conclusion
real-time rendering solution that will allow geographically distant The ICR3ATE platform is an ambitious project but one that
teams to develop collaboratively in close-to real time. could be revolutionary — with much of the back-office still
under wraps there is sure to be more to the platform by the time
Collaborate2Go it is launched at TCT Show + Personalize in September.
Another well-known set of tools tweaked and integrated to the
platform. The kicker here, like for the rest of the tools, is that
collaboration will be open-standard, secure and — unlike most ICR3ATE
i
current web-based systems — independent of plugins. www.icr3ate.com
Run SketchUp Pro Collaborate with 3D model View the 3D model
• anywhere • near real time rendered • interactively
• on any device & OS • interactively • realistically
• asynchronously • physically
Validate
Design Visualise
Collaborate Publish
Visualise
Draw Promote
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