The Future of Design and Manufacturing Is Here. Get Ready.

The typical story you hear about American manufacturing is about its decline. But in my conversations with people in the manufacturing community, it's not that American manufacturing is gone—instead, it's adapted to the future and you might not recognize it.

In my home state of Rhode Island, which was once the epicenter of textile manufacturing, we're experiencing a resurgence in that industry. The industry has gone far beyond simple woven fabrics, and into composites, embedded sensors, inflatable materials, and sci-fi materials like a fabric that helps incisions heal faster.

The first week of October 2018 gives me something special to get excited about in the design and manufacturing world. DEVELOP3D Live USA is returning to Boston on October 2, and LinkedIn Learning is proud to support it.

It's an intimate, affordable ($50; buy your ticket here) conference that attracts leading innovators in design and manufacturing. You'll have the opportunity to mingle with and hear from industry leaders and innovators. On the design side, you'll hear from ANSYS, Autodesk, Dassault Systemes/SOLIDWORKS, Frustum, nTopology, Onshape, Siemens PLM, and PTC. On the manufacturing side, the advanced manufacturing world is well-represented, with presentations from 3D Systems, Digital Alloys, Fictiv, Identify3D, Markforged, Velo3D, and Volume Graphics. The community of educators and innovators will be there as well, with Crave, Daughters of Rosie, Luchini Design, and Team USA Luge.

To support DEVELOP3D Live USA and to welcome them to Boston next week, we've unlocked a whole bunch of our design and manufacturing courses through October 9, 2018, so they are free and available to everyone until then:

Learn your way around popular CAD software:

• Learning Siemens NX by Steven Marjieh: Get an overview of the powerful and integrated Siemens NX, one of the leading CAD packages for product design, engineering, and manufacturing.
• SOLIDWORKS: Sketching by David Antanavige: Learn about the essential tools and functions for sketching in SOLIDWORKS. Discover how to leverage key sketch settings, use sketch and spline tools, approach 3D sketching, and more.
• Autodesk Inventor: Product Design Workflow by Jana Schmidt: Walk through a typical product design workflow in Inventor: sketching, modeling parts, building assemblies, and producing final drawings.

Tackle some design projects:

• Fusion 360: 3D Printed Product Enclosure by Vladimir Mariano: Learn how to design product enclosures to manufacture a 3D printing of the design using Autodesk Fusion 360.
• ZBrush and SubD: Design for 3D Printing with SLA by Jean Gorospe: Learn how to combine ZBrush and SubD CAD software such as Rhino, as you design objects for stereolithography (SLA) 3D printing on a Formlabs printer.
• SOLIDWORKS: Mold Design by Tam Black: Learn how to design high-quality molds and casts—for one-off prototyping or mass-manufacture—in SOLIDWORKS.

Go from design to manufacturing:

• Additive Manufacturing: Troubleshoot 3D Prints by Joan Horvath and Rich Cameron: Learn how to fix common 3D printing problems, such as prints that don't stick to the bed, pimples and dimples, and geometry issues.
• G-Code Programming for CNC Foundations by Gabriel Corbett: Learn the basics of G-code programming. Learn how to cut real-world objects on a CNC machine using G-code routines.
• Design for Additive Manufacturing: FDM by Kacie Hultgren: Use design for manufacturing concepts to optimize your parts for 3D printing with fused deposition modeling (FDM) technology.

I hope to see you at DEVELOP3D Live USA!