Ken Nakagaki‘s Comppass takes brings an age old design tool into the modern era. “The initial idea came from simple curiosity. How would it feel to draw a square with a compass?” Nakagaki told Dezeen.
Equipped with Bluetooth, it is able to draw 2-D shapes from digital files that are beamed over via iPhone. Two steel rods emerge from a center that is stuck into the paper, and by rotating the rods 360 degrees, the attached arm can trace or cut the programmed shape, just like a regular compass drawing a circle. The Comppass also can easily trace existing shapes from paper–or any desired shape you conjure up–to store in its memory as a digital file from which exact copies can be made immediately. Even more amazingly, the “copy and paste” function even works with 3-D objects, automatically drawing a shape that can be folded into the dimensions measured.
“Down the ages, people have been used rulers or compasses to draw precise figures with their own hands,” Nakagaki told Dezeen. “On the other hand, as computers developed, CAD software has enabled us to draw precise figures and duplicate them easily on the display. But these systems lack the intuitiveness of drawing on paper. We needed a drawing tool that included the advantages of both digital and manual.”