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Entrepreneur of the Year: Ping Fu

The next stage in the DSSP process is the creation of polygons. Thousands, multitudes, of tiny triangles form when Black clicks the mouse and each point in the cloud is instantly connected by a line to its two nearest neighbors. The triangles are then interconnected, forming a full-color second digital draft of the turbine.

The part spins on the screen in smooth, gleaming verisimilitude, accurate to within three-thousandths of a millimeter, ready for a range of design, manufacturing, and inspection applications.

The third phase of the process, and Geomagic's technological breakthrough, is the rapid creation of NURBS--non-uniform rational B-splines. NURBS create a smooth surface on the image, as if the object were perfectly shrink-wrapped. Before Geomagic, NURBS could not be created with a single click; it required a technique that tested the skills of topflight engineers and designers, working with the patience of monks copying illuminated manuscripts. Largely because of the laborious NURBS phase, it took a designer two full weeks to digitally process an object such as this turbine part. DSSP was too inconvenient and expensive to become standard practice in most industries.

But now, when Rob Black clicks the mouse, magic--or Geomagic--happens. A faint but furious humming issues from inside the processor. Black gives an expectant smile. He explains that this is the eighth edition of Geomagic Studio, which is used mainly for design and manufacturing purposes, and Qualify, which is principally used for inspection. Each new edition of the software represents a major improvement, closely connected to advances in the hardware. "When I first started here in '99 that scanner would have cost $200,000," Black says. "Today it costs $50,000, and it's 10 times more powerful and easier to use."

Ditto for processors, he adds. "Five years ago you needed a high-end engineering workstation to digest a good-sized point cloud. Right now, I'm running all this off my laptop."

And here it comes: Its NURBS automatically produced in less than three minutes, the part spins on the screen in smooth, gleaming verisimilitude, accurate to within three-thousandths of a millimeter, ready for a range of design, manufacturing, and inspection applications. The part can be virtually redesigned, for example, and the new version (or versions, any number of them) compared in function with the original. It's possible even to age the part, to see how it will perform during years of use.

The engineer gazes into the monitor to admire the virtual turbine, whose existence is all the more amazing because it is not his handiwork.

She hoped her death would be fast and painless. Given her countrymen's taste for torture, however, and her own agonizing past, Ping wasn't optimistic.

In February 1981, without a trial or even a formal charge, the Chinese government locked 23-year-old Ping Fu in solitary confinement, in a wing of Nanjing prison reserved for political criminals. There was neither heat nor a latrine in Ping's cell, but most dreadfully there was no light, natural or otherwise. Ping sat in utter darkness. She slumped against the wall and waited to die, wondering, almost dispassionately, about the means of her execution. She hoped it would be fast and painless. Given her countrymen's taste for torture, however, and her own agonizing past, Ping wasn't optimistic.

When Ping was 7 years old and her sister, Hong, 3, the two little girls were taken from their home in Shanghai and delivered to a dormitory for the children of so-called "capitalist-road" parents in Nanjing. It was 1965, the dawn of the Cultural Revolution.

Ping was forced to watch the Red Guard tie a kindergarten teacher to four horses. The Guard members--just teenagers themselves--then startled the horses. Ping was forced to watch another teacher be dropped head-first down a dry well. She watched the Red Guard scald her little sister with boiling water because one day Hong made too much noise as she played. Another day, the Red Guard threw Hong into a river for the fun of watching her drown. Ping jumped into the river and dragged her out. The enraged Guard members then beat the girls, and raped Ping. Now that Ping was an adult, and condemned as an enemy of the people, what hope did she have for a quick death?

As the dark hours bled out, Ping considered her "crime." Five years earlier, in 1976, Chairman Mao had died and the Cultural Revolution had come to an abrupt end. Schools and colleges opened for the first time in a decade. Ping entered the university in Suzhou. She hoped to study business or engineering, following in the footsteps of her engineer father and accountant mother, but the Party directed her to study English as a second language. Any sort of learning was a glory for Ping. She read Anna Karenina in translation and grew interested in journalism. A professor suggested that she go out to the provinces and research a rumored epidemic of infanticide. Ping accepted the assignment.