Bringing a critical gap between 3D scanning technology and functional outputs for architects, designers and homeowners, Canvas can scan a room in minutes then generate useful CAD software files.

Raw scans of spaces can be helpful in terms of generating rough measurements and usable as a baseline for a more rigorous three-dimensional model, but it takes time and energy to translate between the two. So while they are great for point-to-point measurements and as-built drawings, such scans are limited in terms of letting someone rework or envision changes to a structure.

Occipital, the startup behind Structure Sensor, wants to make that transition smooth, painless and effectively automatic. After a users scans a room (or a whole house) with their iPad, they can send away for CAD files that will be returned in two business days. They can then plug those files into software of choice, like Sketchup, and begin remodeling their space.

The company calls their vision “augmented home” and pictures their software and hardware getting increasingly refined over time to the point where on-the-spot shots can be immediately transformed into precise and full-color 3D files.

“I think we’ll probably look back at today as a time, just like the 1830s, when we just started to have photographs,” says Adam Rodnitzky, the company’s VP of marketing. “We’re now entering the era when we’re going to start having a 3D record of the world around us.”

Used by architects and engineers, Autocad and other computer-aided design (CAD) programs have a long history as boring and blunt instruments of drafting, but this architectural illustrator has breathed new life into these drawing and rendering tools.

Fabiola Morcillo Núñez is a young Chilean architect who builds imaginary landscapes inspired by exotic architecture and pop art, a sort of modern-day Escher intent on blurring the improbable with impossible.

Many of her scenes play on elements believable at first look, like a deconstructed isometric or axonometric drawing of a house … but on fire, or flooded or featuring an impossible room or staircase.

“Architecture as a discursive tool has helped me a lot in constructing my own form of representation,” she says of her work. She is interested in deconstruction, spatial limitations, layers and multiplicity.

Her pieces borrow from various sources of inspiration in the media and world around her: “I like to take several references, be alert to life itself, be very observant and have a broad sense of understanding of beauty and the tools of creation that are presented throughout the day, for example; the internet, books, movies, the street, travel, personal stories, aesthetic preferences, dreams, philosophy etc.”

Beyond her artistic explorations, Fabiola’s work is an implicit statement about how the tools we use, even the ones with less-rich histories of creative expression, can be turned to new and inspiring purposes.

If you could have a vending machine spit out a small object in any shape you could dream up, what would it be? The DreamVendor, an interactive 3D printing station for Virginia Tech students, is envisioned as “a vending machine with an infinite inventory” that’s only limited by the imaginations of those who put it to work.

Created to enable students to quickly fabricate prototypes for academic and personal design projects, the machine reads CAD files from the user’s SD card, prints the three-dimensional part desired, and dispenses it into a bin when it’s done. The prototype machine is located on the Virginia Tech campus, but soon, new DreamVendors could pop up in retail centers for use by the general public.

Anyone who walks up to a DreamVendor kiosk – located inside a store, likely beside photo booths and soda machines – can choose to either load their own CAD designs into the system, or choose a pre-designed item to print. Plans are still in the developmental stage, but production is expected to begin next year.

3D printing pop-up shops have already begun to appear around the world, from a Baltimore studio that will help you create personalized products to a Japanese cafe that will scan your face and turn it into an edible chocolate treat.

Like a flip book, there is no text, and each page of these volumes contains a slightly different scene. Except instead of paging through them rapidly to reveal the story, the ‘reader’ unfolds the entire book at once into a dynamic panorama.

Artist Yusuke Oono has a whole series of these 360-degree books telling stories of daily home life, remote jungle adventures, and everything in between.

Each one unfolds into a three-dimensional scene, created using CAD-derived designs and laser-cutting programs, completed with a splash of color.

The resulting negative space allows viewers to see through pages and visualize scenes, assembling them from the two-dimensional information on each layer – like rotational cut-outs of some miniature reality (or slices of life, if you like).

Ground, trees, walls and roofs provide the context – small figures of women, men and children tell silent stories that change with perspective and light. Each page is both a moment in space and in time. Brilliant, beautiful, simple.