This week, Autodesk president and CEO Carl Bass wrote a blog post (opens in new tab) about accelerating the future of 3D printing, commenting that for years he has "been fascinated by the promise and frustrated by the reality of 3D printing".
So, addressing both issues, Autodesk has annouced Spark (opens in new tab), an open platform software for 3D printing, which Bass comments will "make it more reliable yet simpler to print 3D models". Autodesk will also be introducing a 3D printer to serve as a reference implementation for Spark.
The software will be open and freely licensable to hardware manufacturers and others who are interested. The design of the 3D printer will also be made publicly available to allow further development.
Want to know more? Visit the dedicated Spark section (opens in new tab) of the Autodesk website.