Carrying on from the previous posts concerning D.I.Y. design, this entry looks at my attempts at using Cosmic Blobs to create a new design for a computer mouse. It’s far shorter than the posts dealing with SketchUp, because frankly it became apparent very quickly that there was no way Cosmic Blobs was capable of the kind of modelling needed to create a functioning consumer product. Nonetheless there are some interesting concepts behind some of the tools which could certainly be interesting for anyone considering the design of ‘consumer-CAD’ software.

Cosmic Blobs was a software package aimed specifically at children (though I’ve not been able to find anywhere that states what ages that was meant to include), developed by Dassault Systemes. Unfortunately it’s no longer available (although copies sometimes appear on Ebay), having been discontinued in 2007; this means there is no longer any support and none of the official documentation and tutorials are available. It also means that, despite being unlike any CAD software you’ll have ever seen before, the user interface already looks old. You’ll need Windows XP to run it (at least, it wouldn’t work on my machine with Vista installed), but it felt very sluggish to me.

Cosmic Blobs Lab Rat Edition © Dassault Systemes

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