But will it be enough to make engineers get iPads?
The annual Apple Spring Loaded event held recently showed one engineering design application—Shapr3D.
Apple’s annual event is a must-attend for tech journalists who, during normal times, would come from all over the world to San Francisco’s Moscone Center. But the convention center is currently a COVID-19 vaccination site and the Apple event has gone virtual. For the first time, engineering.com is welcome. We attend, ostensibly to find something relevant to engineers, and secretly to see what cool people are up to.
Apple has long been laser focused on the creative professions, like digital artists and video producers, and this year’s event starts that way. CEO Tim Cook leads with colors, such as new colors and schemes, like on the back of the new iMacs or the new purple available on the iPhone.
Yes, the Apple products look stunning, cool and stylish, but we can’t justify an aesthetic appeal. We find ourselves feeling guilty in not engaging in more relevant and productive pursuits until … the new iPad is shown with Shapr3D. Finally, an engineering application we can get behind.
We have covered Shapr3D on these pages, but for most mechanical designers and engineers, the Hungarian-born CAD application remains obscure. We imagine CEO and founder István Csanády and his band of developers, masks on, high fiving in their Budapest office as their baby is shown on the world stage.
It would not be the first time Apple has rocketed obscure acts into stardom. Shapr3D may be this year’s White Stripes.
Shapr3D is arguably the easiest CAD application to learn—and the only one that can be used while you are standing up. On an iPad and with a stylus (the Apple Pencil), it does not need a keyboard. Shapr3D fits perfectly into Cook’s idea of a perfect computer: one that disappears. Shapr3D is barely visible on the iPad screen—there’s no interface to get in the way of your design. Apple gave Shapr3D its Design Award in 2020 for its innovative user interface (UI)—or, more accurately, its lack of one.
But can the slim iPad have the horsepower to run engineering applications? Most certainly, says Apple. The thread throughout the Apple event is Apple’s new chip, the M1. The M1 not only allows for the iMac to be reborn but also for all of it to be in a 24-inch screen that is an astonishing 11.5 mm thick—a feat made possible because the M1 is a system on a chip (SoC) combining microprocessor and GPU. The M1 makes the 2021 iPad 50 percent faster than its predecessor, according to Apple. The new iPad is available with up to 2 TB of RAM. All told, Shapr3D should be able to render and move models faster as well as handle and store larger assemblies.
Has the Revolution Arrived?
In the relative staid and conservative world of design and engineering, revolutions are few and far between. One revolution started in the 1980s when AutoCAD took over drafting from drafting tables. In the next decade, SOLIDWORKS rode Windows to displace the more expensive Pro/ENGINEER.
Throughout the existence of CAD, ease of use has improved marginally, if at all. The learning curve for CAD remains steep.
One may argue that Ivan Sutherland’s Sketchpad, released 1963 with a graphical user interface (GUI), was easier to use than line-by-line instructions or punch cards. But AutoCAD took a step back with the line-by-line instruction of its command line interface, then a step forward with keyboard shortcuts. Windows and the mouse came next. Ashlar-Vellum had a fiendishly clever interface that helped you accurately sketch in 2D. As you were drawing, it would sense that you meant to be parallel to another line, or coincident with a previous point, and so on. IronCAD’s “tri-ball” let you push and pull on a sketch to make it a solid. Solid Edge would give you the next tool that you needed, like an operating room nurse to the surgeon, as if reading your mind.
But all of them never changed the course of CAD, and therefore, can be considered incremental gains at best and, at worst, obscure footnotes in CAD history. Rather than a revolution, what we have had is change in fits and starts, with a few changes that have been successful in one place and copied elsewhere, but with the full effect on industry, an overall increase in ease of use has happened at a glacial rate—the rate of an evolution, not a revolution.
Ease of Use. Finally?
The next big step in user interface came with Apple’s touchscreens on its iPhone and iPad. Suddenly, the new interface was no interface. You interacted with what was on the screen directly. Moving a mouse to move a cursor was suddenly outdated.
Imagine zooming in and out, spinning a 3D model for a better view by just using your finger or stylus. Why would you have to look among the view icons or remember the command to key in?
Oddly enough, only Shapr3D recognized the ease of use that the touchscreen could provide, and by doing so, has ushered in the next revolution in CAD interfaces—which is basically eliminating it.
No command menu, no rows or column of icons appear on the remarkably uncluttered Shapr3D screen. You see your model. If you want to see it from different angles, you can use the stylus to spin it. It all seems … so natural.
Enter Shapr3D
Out of nowhere may be the source of every revolution, but the next revolution in design software user interface—the precursor to a bigger revolution in design software ease of use—may have come to us from Budapest, Hungary.
We saw Shapr3D’s CEO Csanády three years ago in a coffee shop in San Francisco, where he proceeded to demonstrate solid modeling effortlessly on an iPad. The adage oft repeated, the best interface is no interface, was on full display. With a few flicks on the iPad using a Pen, there was a sketch, an extrusion. Two fingers on the screen was all it took to view and rotate the object. At no point did Csanády need a mouse, a menu or the on-screen keypad. It was so weird to see solid modeling on a device we thought useful only for YouTube. Weirder to see CAD of any kind in a Starbucks.
We learned that Shapr3D is no toy. It is underpinned with the popular Parasolid geometry kernel, the same as is used by SOLIDWORKS and Onshape. You can trust the modeling to be robust and the model to be compatible with other modelers.
Upwardly Mobile
Perhaps sensing the Apple fan base contains too few with engineering intent, and with those who have engineering intent still believing the iPad is still not suitable for their purposes (despite the added horsepower in the latest M1-equipped version), Shapr3D is “working hard” on a Windows version, although no time frame for its availability has been offered.
In the meantime, Shapr3D will be available on the Apple MacBook. The MacBook Pro would be the most suitable for Shapr3D. However, Apple declines to offer touchscreens on its desktops and laptops—a major oversight, as far as we are concerned. Without the stylus interface, Shapr3D loses much of its advantage and appeal.
Revolution: Do We Have Enough?
Shapr3D may spark a revolution in design and software ease of use—a revolution that would certainly have the support of engineers. But history has shown that revolutions with the best chance of success—design software included—must provide revolutionaries with a clear economic incentive.
Swapping expensive mainframes/minis for cheap PCs: clear economic advantage. Switching from Pro/ENGINEER to SOLIDWORKS: same. Migrating from 2D to 3D makes sense to engineers, but the economic advantage is not quite as clear. Therefore, 2D is still very much in evidence and the 2D-to-3D movement is more an evolution, with many species completely land based, some amphibious, and others still completely at home in the sea.
On the contrary, Shapr3D faces a transition that increases costs in the short term. The hardware on which Shapr3D shines—the iPad Pro—is a pretty and expensive device. An iPad Pro with less than maximum memory can cost about $1,500. The Apple keyboard with the trackpad costs another $300. The Apple Pencil—the only stylus that works with the iPad Pro—costs almost $100. An engineer will need about $2,000 for their boutique, stylish lightweight laptop wannabe and has as much chance for approval as a conference in Hawaii (even before the pandemic). And if the boss does approve, will the other engineers laugh?
The future Shapr3D for Windows will encounter similar costs. A maximally configured Surface Pro from Microsoft will cost about the same as the iPad above.
Shapr3D seems to have neglected Android-based devices, for which a reasonable economic argument can be made. Android tablets are available at a much lower cost than the iPad. Their accessories (styli and keyboards) are less expensive, too. A top-rated Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+ 12.4″ that is similarly equipped was available at the time of this writing for $940. That includes a stylus, but you have to add $220 for a keyboard. Still, the total cost is half the price of an iPad Pro.
Without a slam-dunk argument of a clear economic advantage, it may be up to engineers to justify higher initial spending with eventual gain from the ease of use and speed of design that Shapr3D promises. The increasing might of Apple computers and devices making them acceptable for engineering functions and not just pretty hardware may make engineers see their Microsoft/Intel desktops as a bit drab.
