Core77

I've spent some time with the guys that developed CosmicBlobs. There are two perspectives at play here. Firstly, SolidWorks' parent company, Dassault Systemes (developers of Catia, Enovia etc), have a corporate goal of '3D everywhere.' In the first instance (in the cases of SolidWorks and Catia) that's getting 3D CAD data out of the design and engineering departments into sales, manufacturing, production, servicing etc. They have also extended this to the consumer realm with CosmicBlobs, aimed at the youth market (which is massive). The other perspective is that this is straight from the research labs within the group's technical team. CosmicBlobs represents a brand new 3D modelling technology that one day, might or might not be integrated into SolidWorks and perhaps other Dassault products.

One thing that hits me is that kids today spend a massive amount of time in front of a screen or TV. If this is a digital PlayDoh product, why not just give them some PlayDoh for some physical interaction. Much the same goes for the software games that Lego developed and sold. That said its fifty bucks, allows you to create some cool forms and shapes and even includes automated bi-pedal animation (which is really cool). Shame there's no export functions.

If you want a hint of how the next generation digital product development tools might work (albeit without the chemistry lab interface), it's worth a look.