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Conceptual Inspiration for Less Than $200 (Tech Trends Feature)
1 Nov, 2007 By: Kenneth WongTriple Squid dives into the CAD pool with a low-cost modeler.
His pet rabbit Jo Jo was hopping around somewhere in the background, and Michael Gibson, previously employed at Robert McNeel & Associates and Microsoft, checked the bulletin board dedicated to the public beta of MoI, or Moment of Inspiration, his new company's flagship product.
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"The last time I checked, it was more than 100,000 downloads," he said. "As of right now, there're 1,004 people registered on the MoI bulletin board."
Gibson named his company Triple Squid Software because he once scored triple points with the word squid in a Scrabble game. The company headquarters is located in the basement of his home in Seattle, Washington. It consists of "a messy desk, two 17" flat-paneled AG Neovo monitors, and a couple of computers," he said.
The MoI Beta is a 4.6 MB download, a surprisingly compact package. In October, Gibson plans to start selling version 1 for $195 — less than what you'd pay for an iPhone and slightly more than what you would for an iPod. His vision for the software is to "make it quick and easy to do simple things," he declared.
As sensible as it sounds, this philosophy is actually an anomaly in the CAD market, where complexity is the norm and mastering a software package can take a lifetime. It's difficult to predict whether MoI from Gibson's seafood-named company will sink or swim, but one thing is certain: It's bound to challenge conventional CAD thinking.
The Disclosure
Gibson is forthright about the limitations of MoI. One of the reasons he can afford to sell the software for this price, he said, is because "MoI just doesn't do everything that many people would expect from a CAD program. For example, there isn't any way to add annotative-type dimensions or any kind of printing or rendering. The focus is exclusively on modeling, for now."
Gibson is betting that the consumers will consider these omissions a fair tradeoff for the low purchase price. In time, he plans to add more features to MoI, but he doesn't want to be toiling for decades in his basement before releasing a product. Without a revenue stream, Triple Squid would simply go belly up, he said.
MoI's modeling engine is IntegrityWare, the same kernel embedded in Rhino, Bentley, and Autodesk Alias. Gibson acknowledged that the comparative affordability of IntegrityWare (versus parasolid or ACIS kernels) was the reason for his selection.
"I didn't have a whole lot of choices," he said. "I'm starting out on my own, so I didn't want to have a royalty-based license. I pay a fixed amount per month [with IntegrityWare]."
Currently, MoI facilitates model exchange via the CAD-neutral IGES format (figure 1). The software can save files in Rhino's native 3DM format as well.
 Figure 1. MoI's strengths include Boolean operations. The boat cleat (left) and conceptual rain-collection device (right) show the types of curved designs users can create. |
Defining MoI Territory
On the MoI discussion board, someone asked where exactly the software fits in: "Mechanical, industrial design, or conceptual design?" In response, Gibson quipped, "Do I have to pick only one? MoI has elements of all of these to a certain extent. Probably more towards the industrial design and conceptual design, though."
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