I’m always trying to share with you my view about the future of technology. However today I’d like to take a different angle.  I wonder how future 3D technologies and applications can help us to know more about our history?

I truly believe that 3D technologies will play a key role to help us re-create our past. And to understand our past is important in order to build our future.

I’ve found several examples where I see 3D technologies already helping us to understand, re-build and preserve our history for the future.

The first example comes from my personal history.  Many years ago I lived in the former USSR. Even so, during that time I wasn’t able to visit Lenin’s mausoleum on Moscow’s Red Square. To my big surprise, I found a website (thanks DL blog for that) that has recreated this architectural monument in an interactive way (interactive link is here).  The 3D technologies for this specific project were provided by ParallelGraphics. On a side note, for a few years the president of the Moscow-based ParallelGraphics was Francis Bernard, a person key to the creation of CATIA software, as well as the former president of Dassault Systemes.

Another example is the appreciation of Industrial Archeology with 3D CAD, which helps designers and engineers preserve history by recreating products that no longer exist.

“Industrial archeologists like Californian William L. Gould use SolidWorks software as an efficient, mechanically faithful way to illustrate, in three dimensions and myriad individual components, a piece of lost history. Gould’s (pictured) full-color 3D CAD model of the 1879 Mason Bogie steam locomotive, is rendered in SolidWorks and PhotoWorks software, and exists only as a 3D CAD model with hundreds of discrete parts. It is available as a fine art lithographic print or a set of plans in exacting detail.”

Lastly, you’ve probably heard of the Khufu Pyramid project by French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin?  It’s  an impressive theory presented with Dassault Systèmes’ 3D technologies to help and understand of the secret of how the Great Pyramid was built. I enjoyed watching the video again and thought you would too.

I hope you enjoyed my 3D Future in Reverse perspective. Please share any other examples you have about the usage of  3D to discover and recreate our past.

Best, Oleg