Virtual designs into physical objects/Intro

At some point virtual designs that can be shared over the Internet, such as CAD models, need to turned into physical objects which unfortunately isn't perhaps as straightforward as downloading software from a website or even compiling it from source-code. Building, testing and modifying physical designs does require effort, time and material cost, although with access to emerging flexible computer-controlled manufacturing techniques the complexity and effort can be significantly reduced.

Some of the ways that collaborative designs created on a computer can be physically created range from getting your hands dirty and crafting it yourself, to sending the design, or at least parts of it, as an electronic file to an increasing number of flexible computer-controlled manufacturing systems such as rapid prototyping or advanced multi-axis CNC machines that can accurately create parts in 3D in a variety of materials. What is illustrated in this section is that the world of atoms is starting to catch up with the world of bits in terms of ease of control and duplication. Here are some of the increasing number of methods available to bring virtual designs to life...