UC Berkeley’s Goldberg thinks Autodesk’s progress so far is impressive, but he cautions that while a Lego model-building robot is applicable to industry, it’s by no means a straight line.

Today, Autodesk is launching 123D Design. It’s the latest addition to their family of free 3-D modeling applications for the rest of us. 123D Design is a cross-platform 3-D modeling tool — it ...