Suppose you have an idea for the ultimate street rod and decide to enlist master-fabricator Chip Foose to produce it for you. Lacking a car design app, you might take pen to paper and sketch out your concept. Unfortunately, Foose’s builders can’t use your sketch to extrude body panels. That involves 3D CAD rendering, something that traditionally requires expensive AutoCAD software and years of training to produce.
uMake: A Car Design App for the Masses
An app called uMake changes all that. The app works using an iPad or iPhone and a stylus. The basic commands require a few hours to master. However, it’s a much simpler, less work-intensive process than AutoCAD. uMake’s fundamental commands enable you to quickly reshape, extrude, create symmetry and snap-to-grid.
Once the image exists in uMake’s virtual three-dimensional universe, the user can spin and flip it around with ease. Different views make it a snap to refine the design.
With the uMake app on your iPhone, your car design sketchbook will grow lonely.
Throw Away Those Markers
“I used to design cars using a drawer full of markers and a pad of paper. Now I use an iPad and a stylus,” said Nyko dePeyer, uMake’s design community manager. DePeyer was formerly the design community manager at Local Motors. He initially became involved with the project as one of the app’s beta testers.
The basic app is free: professional auto designers will want to upgrade to a version of uMake’s car design app that enables them to export renderings in IGES or OBJ formats.
uMake CEO Evi Meyer started his company after heading up the design and product management teams for Autodesk’s AutoCAD project. Autodesk was the first company to bring CAD to the cloud and create a mobile app. Unfortunately, its cost and complexity gave the software a limited audience.
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“At this point AutoCAD belongs to 20 percent of the market,” said Meyer. “While 80 percent is better served by apps.” Meyer believes that uMake’s simplicity and portability will make the initial phases of car design more accessible to industry professionals who are not designers.
“We really think uMake is the future of design. It’s a more natural user experience,” said Meyer. “In a way we are going back to the 1960s with the stylus and the joystick. uMake allows more people to participate in the design and ideation process. That will result in better, more compelling designs.”
Ready to give automotive 3D rendering a whirl? Download uMake’s car design app for a free trial!
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