Around the world, and particularly in Chicago, various individuals and groups are getting involved in the 'Maker Movement', seeing 3D printers, laser etchers, and other digital fabrication machines as a technological revolution in the making. To be part of this, corporations, universities, and various Chicago institutions have been setting up stores, fab labs, and hackspaces where people can not only utilize tools like 3D printers, but also learn the skills sets required to use them.
With all new things, though, there's a learning curve. Tech gurus all over predict that there'll be a 3D printer in every future home. But how will schools teach people to operate 3D printers? And what pieces of 3D 'Computer Assisted Design' software will people learn to use at various points in their education from childhood to adulthood?
We can't know for certain. But we can predict what such future education might be like by looking at the current forms of 3D CAD (Computer Assisted Design) software freely available on the internet, and postulating how individuals at different levels of aptitude might make use of some of them.
Let's take a look then, at some of the more popular 3D modeling software programs online, and try to predict the schooling levels at which these certain programs might be used:
