RE: [rp-ml] International Terminology Standards

From: Deelip Menezes <deelip_at_sycode.com>
Date: Thu Jan 08 2009 - 11:50:28 EET

Adrian: "As Terry says, we've had this discussion before. Like him, I think
that in the short to medium term "3D Printing" will be the phrase, because
no sane general journalist would use anything else."

That's because the sane journalist knows that the Rapid Prototyping industry
(or whatever you want to call it) has convoluted itself with technical terms
flying left, right and center, and keeps adding more terms every now and
then. The sane journalist does not want confuse his reader with these terms,
that's assuming that he understands them himself. All he wants to do is give
his reader some information that will help him get a 3D physical part from
his 3D virtual CAD model.

And I believe we can learn something from these journalists. They know what
their target audience wants to hear and tell them stuff in a manner that
they can comprehend. Any idiot will understand "3D printing" if you give him
2 seconds to think about it. Take a look at this video from Autodesk.

http://download.autodesk.com/us/subscription/autocad/3d_printing/subscriptio
n_bonus_pack_3d_printing_340x300.html

I know almost everyone on this list will laugh at the video. I did too. But
it gives you an idea of the nature of our target audience. We in the
industry should be educating our target audience and talking to them in a
language that they understand, not confusing them with more technically
accurate terms and acronyms. We seem like a bunch of neuro-surgeons
discussing the biological composition of the human brain when the person who
we have to treat is simply asking for an aspirin to clear his headache.

So to answer Terry's question, in my opinion, whether we like it or not, "3D
Printing" is the term that will be most popular, not just in the near
future, but for a long time to come. Little wonder that we chose "Print3D"
as the name of our company.

Deelip Menezes

CTO - Print3D Corporation
www.print3dcorp.com
Received on Thu Jan 08 11:54:51 2009

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