Participants created new or used pre-made designs with Autodesk's Fusion 360 software to digitally visualize the chocolate engraving. Here's the breakdown of how things went, in a cocoa-nut-shell (we'll get into the details below): So why not let folks design chocolate for themselves or for that special Valentine someone in an unconventional way - through CNC milling - and try out our own products (after all, we make software for people who design/make/use things) and some pretty nifty hardware? For X Summit 2016, we were looking for more of a challenge this time around, a chance to try something new and raise the bar (mediocre pun intended), and an opportunity for participants to explore the software-hardware interface. While chocolate maybe doesn't last, it's been with us for ages, centuries, millennia, essentially any time period relatable to the human experience - and it's been a significant part of that experience, whether as 'food of the gods' in pre-colonial Mesoamerica, during Valentine's Day highs and lows (chocolate is the best consoler), or as the main theme for one of the best SpongeBob SquarePants episodes known to man.ĭoesn't look as though this Mayan ruler is pleased with his xocolatl (a bowl of frothy cacao)ĭuring last year's X Summit, Autodesk's internal design and user experience conference, individuals were treated with custom chocolate bars - made beforehand, the traditional way (with molds), all good and well and delicious.

It's either eaten as soon as it emerges from its wrapper blanket, or it just melts away in the sun only to be trodden on by someone yelling obscenities here and there at the fact that he's just stepped in something brown. With their permission, I am sharing it with It's Alive in the Lab readers.Ĭhocolate doesn't last. Philippe and Lucas recently did some work with fabrication and filed this report. Lucas is part of a team that just won two Spark awards for their clock design. Lucas Prokopiak is a Technical Assistant to the CEO for Applied Research and Innovation. You may recall Philippe when he was one our interns for the Summer of Fabrication 2015.

Philippe Videau is Technical Assistant to the Head of Product Development at Autodesk.

Mesh enabler keeps crashing inventor