Capturing Objects with Autodesk 123D Catch

Autodesk 123D is slowly replacing FreeCad as my favourite place to create 3D models for printing. This is because I’m spending ages trying to get my head around how to use it. Turns out that designing things in 3D is much harder than 2D. Who’d have thought?

Of course the perfect way to make a 3D model of something would be to wave a camera at it and then have something crunch all the images and then drop out a design. That’s what Autodesk claim to have done with their 123D Catch application for iPhone and iPad. I’ve not had a chance to try this yet (the lack of an iPhone is slowing me down a bit here), but if you’ve got one you might like to give it a whirl. You should be able to convert the resulting scans into stl files and then get them printed.

This, of course, brings along lots of new and scary issues. If I go to an art gallery or shop and scan all the things I find interesting I can then go home and make my own versions. Basically, copyright problems are now moving into the third dimension…