The production line workers take big planks of wood and cut them down to the desired size to assemble into the chair frame. Workers at another production line cut the fabric and stuffing in order to upholster the frame. If you were to bring the finished chair into a chemistry lab, you could analyze the molecular structure of the raw materials that compose the chair. The properties of any given object are a function of how its atoms and molecules are arranged. Instead of starting in a factory with masses of raw materials and cutting them down to produce a chair, nanotechnology starts in a lab-style factory with the atoms and molecules that will be inside the finished chair.
Photosynthesis is actually complex compared to what nanotechnology is proposing.
Drexler predicts 15 as his standard answer. Buckyballs in Support of Nanotechnology Nanotechnology is based on the assumption that humans can manuever atoms into new, desired structures. This assumption received support in 1985 when Richard Smalley led a group of scientists at Rice University in an experiment. The resulting carbon clusters reassembled themselves into a distinct, but previously unknown molecule of 60 carbon atoms. Smalley's crew named the molecule the buckminsterfullerene in honor of Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes.