For a maker of things, it’s completely natural to think in terms of shape, to remember shapes made before and to dream of the shape of things to come. The trouble is that we name our parts with descriptive language and complicated numbering conventions that attempt to describe shapes but don’t do it very well. Instead of typing words and numbers into a search box, imagine inputting a shape — in the form of a 3D CAD model — into a search box and finding everything similar. It’