The costs of rapid prototyping machines continues to plunge, with the latest being a $2950 machine from Solido. The Solido SD300Pro uses a subtractive process, cutting layers from a sheet of raw material.

What’s not clear from its low sticker price is the true cost of materials; I have a hunch companies are finally aggressively pursuing the inkjet printer business model, losing money on the cost of the printer and making the profit in the raw materials needed to run it. As such, I think the coming few years will be a confusing time for those looking to buy a rapid prototyping machine, as the true cost of ownership will be difficult to figure out.

Mac fans no doubt know about Bootcamp, a way to dual-boot your Intel-based Mac into either OS-X or Windows. It generally works fine from what I’ve heard, but who wants to dual-boot? Well, the latest version of Parallels Desktop not only allows you to run Windows applications from the OS-X environment, but finally supports OpenGL. This means that, in theory, you’d be able to launch SolidWorks (or any other cad system) just like you would any other application. I expect there’ll be some performance hit, but likely minor. Before I rush out and spend $80 to get this ability, though, I’m going to see what Apple has to say about its next version of OS-X, Leopard, at their developers’ conference next week. There have been rumors that bootcamp will become more tightly integrated with the OS, perhaps making Parallels Desktop unnecessary.