Most famously, Leonardo da Vinci showed in his work how Science can be as beautiful as Art and how Art can be part of the essence of Science. Now that we are so immersed in the digital world, can we not merge the two subjects even further into our CAD world?

On SWW mainstage a few years ago, we saw a customer who used SW to generate some beautiful art work with our software. For many years now, artists and scientists have been exploring the power of fractals to generate organic 3D models to use in gaming engines and movie FX to generate dynamic landscapes and natural objects. SW already has the 3D chops, would it be that much of a stretch to put in the computational engine to crank out formulaic generators of 3D shapes? Why shouldn't you be able to generate a shell, a tree, or a blade of fern in SW by adjusting variables in a fractal formula? Could this be a SW app? Could the model designed be something we can 3D print or push back into SW to use in a model? Perhaps there can be a MMO 3D universe that people can showcase their creations and walk through (wearing an Oculus Rift or Google Cardboard) to view and experience them.

At the recent NESWUC, I attended a session where one of our customers used SW to model the earth, the moon, and the Sun. With sketches and annotations, and some gearing mates, he was able to illustrate the movement of the earth around the sun and simulate the seasonal positioning of the earth relative to the sun, giving a very comprehensive lesson on something that I remembered struggling to learn when making those Styrofoam models in school.

This customer proceeded to add a decal of the astrological constellations on the inside of a cylindrical wall around the earth and showed us how at different times of the day/year, the stars would align differently in the sky. It was pretty awesome. So how much of a stretch would it be to provide add-ins to SW to give simulation tools for Astronomy? Astrophysics?

Are there other areas of Art or Science we can bring into the folds of SW? Do you see any opportunities to enter into markets we have not yet entered, or markets we have not yet made an impact on?