This much is certain: The fabricate-at-home future has arrived, and it's here to stay. But just how far affordable 3-D printers and other personal manufacturing devices will take us, and what other devices we should expect to soon change our lives, remain unclear. If anyone has a better sense than most, however, it's Carl Bass, the CEO of Autodesk.

 

The $9 billion company made its mark by creating industry-standard

design software called AutoCAD. And this month they partnered with MakerBot--creators of the high-res 3-D printer Replicator 2--to capture swelling numbers of potential customers equipped with 3-D printers.