Over the past few years we have concludedthat 3D Printing is not a one hit wonder but a very versatile and robusttechnology that has the potential to change the way we make and sell products.Like any other technology 3d printing comes with its opportunities and challengesand if it has to be used as a replacement for the traditional manufacturingprocesses it would need to address its challenges as quickly as possible.

Few of the major barriers that restrictcompanies and individuals from accepting 3D printing as a main stay productiontechnique are as follows.  

1.     Speed of printing

2.     Legal issues with intellectual property rights.

3.     Lack of 3D Design skills and expensiveDesigning Software’s.

If we ponder over these issues we willnotice that all the above mentioned limitations are there as this technology isat its infancy and hopefully as time passes by these will be addresses andresolved accordingly.

We have already seen 3d printers becomefast and printers like Carbon 3d could give traditional manufacturing methods arun for its money. On the hardware side 3d printing is somewhat following Moorelaw and getting better and faster ,but if we really want things to go highspeed we would need a workforce which knows how to work with 3D tools and havethe vision to visualise things in 3D.

The limitations here are that 3D Tools aretoo cumbersome and super expensive to work with, if we need to hasten the skilldevelopment of the work force we need software’s which are easy to use andaffordable at the same time.

Unfortunately the software industry seemsto be dumbstruck with the rapid growth of the 3D Printing technology. Thereseems to be huge gap between demand and supply, some would object with mystatements and refer to highly advanced software’s made my Autodesk (Leader of3D Designing Software). While I partially agree to the object and agree thattheir software’s are amazing however they are very difficult to learn and donot come cheap.

This called for a major change – and the good news may notbe far from reach. 

Microsoft recently leaked a video of theirrevamped Paintbrush software which will not include options to create objectsin 3d. The Video shows Paintbrush to include touch screen and pencompatibility, range of new stickers, fonts, markers, and shapes, and mostnotably, 3D modelling tools.

This is great news as Paintbrush being freesoftware that comes along with Windows OS it is certainly one of the firstdesigning software people learn. This will certainly see a wave of change andhelp users with flexibility to readily adapt to changing technologies like 3dprinting.

The video does not clarify if these 3Ddesigns created using Paintbrush could be converted into printable fines, butwith Microsoft taking keen interest into 3D Printing we are hopeful it includesthe feature in the final version of the software. The latest version ofPaintbrush will be available as a free update on the Microsoft website in thelast week of October 2016 (possibly on October 26th).