Industrial Archeology

I heard a new term at SolidWorks World: industrial archeology. That's where museums use SolidWorks to reconstruct industrial objects that no longer exit. The museums work with photographs, drawings, and diagrams.

SolidWorks allows the museum construct a digital model that works, incorporating original colors. It's not necessary to create the object physically -- just show a rotating 3D model with moving parts.

Examples include a Mason Bogey steam locomotive from 1880 and a vertical steam engine used by the Dresden Ferry in Germany a hundred years ago.

Comments

[John Nolin]

Similar work is being done in SolidWorks for 3 museums in the heart of the industrial revolution area.
Charles River Museum of Industry
Waltham, Massachusetts
http://www.crmi.org/
Tsongas Industrial History Center
Boott Cotton Mills Museum
Lowell, Massachusetts
http://www.uml.edu/tsongas/index2.htm
Manchester Historic Association
Millyard Museum
Manchester, NH
http://www.manchesterhistoric.org/mill.htm
Great places to see new tech demonstrating old tech. When visiting in Manchester, remember to bring the kids up to the 4th floor for the SEE Science Center.
http://www.see-sciencecenter.org/

[hbgdude]

Another example of this is the Historic Fowler Gage airplane, which was modeled with yet another MCAD tool - Autodesk's Inventor, in this case. See http://inventorparts.com/ivug/FowlerGage/Index.htm

[Miles Hellon]

As "Industrial Archeology" is a well established discipline, you might have thought they could have come up with a slightly more specific word to describe 3D graphic reconstructions.........

[Evan Yares]

One example of industrial archeology is the recreation of the USS Holland, the first boat in the US Submarine Service, commissioned in 1900. Gary McCue began the Holland project in 1992, when he was looking for something he could model using CATIA that could be used for public demonstrations.