Subjects the 'other' manufacturers could try kitting?

[RAGIII]

That CAD 3D stuff sounds very interesting but I have to ask what the cost would potentially look like for the program and Machine/ Materials to make the parts come to life would be? That being said, I think the ODD release like the Bristol Fighter from MPC/ Special Hobbies is what we will see from Major players in 1/32nd. As for the Other scales, why No Major Player has done an AWFK8 in 1/48th( Always High on the Poles), a 1/72nd, BE2, RE8, ( Other than the Ancient Airfix), so on and so on.....  I believe there is a MArket but the Manufacturers have to be careful and the Cost is always an issue to some like Myself!
RAGIII

[davecww1]

The 3D CAD drawing is very interesting to me, my town's adult education program was offering a class on 3D CAD programming, but unfortunately I was the only one to sign up for it so the class was cancelled. Currently the cost of a 3D printer may be a lot for the individual modeler, but there are already many of them available at local high schools and colleges, and like all new technology the price will only come down in the years to come.  I can just imagine drawing the 3D  graphics for various guns and bombs that are not being made, and printing them out at a high level of detail, but of course first I have to learn how to use the program, and then find a place to print the parts out once I have a file.
Dave

[uncletony]

You can find places online (for example Shapeways & iMaterialize) that will "print" the parts for you.

What I was trying to say a few posts back is that the entire economic landscape of small scale manufacturing is changing, not solely because of these on-demand manufacturing technologies, but because of the influx of information technologies in general. It means the economics of distribution changes, it means product design can be crowd sourced, it means easy access to global markets. All of these things bode well for niche products like esoteric models of obscure WWI aircraft.

Yes, as someone pointed out, these kits will not design themselves, but go spend ten minutes in the nutball hobby flight sim world and you will quickly discover there are tons of highly skilled 3D artists out there designing extremely detailed and accurate models of aircraft for free or next to nothing, solely to advance their hobby. Yes, the end application is different and specialized in its own way, but the basic skill set is the same. I've done both modeling for SLA production (3D printing) and for computer games, I'd say the latter is much harder because the limitations are so much stricter.