Friday, May 30, 2008

Designing round products in a square world

Product designers are often faced with the challenge of how best to model organic-shaped products or add sculptural details to their designs. Curvaceous products may be aesthetically pleasing, yet using traditional computer-aided design (CAD) programs to design these types of products can be so time consuming that most designers abandon their original ideas and adjust their designs to fit the tool they are using instead of the other way around.

Traditional CAD programs are based on mathematical representations and highly procedural work flows. These are very good for creating large prismatic shapes and detailed engineering designs but are limited when it comes to providing rapid ways to produce intricate shapes, high levels of sculptural detail and complex blends.

Sculptural CAD — an alternative and complementary approach to traditional CAD — offers product designers a whole new way of working.  Based on voxel technology (think of voxels as 3-D pixels) instead of mathematics, this approach has no topology restrictions, and the order of operation doesn’t matter. Working with virtual clay, designers intuitively plan and create multiple versions of their models by inflating, tugging, smoothing and carving. Combining or removing parts of a model is fast and accurate, and textures can be embossed directly into the model.
 
Manufacturing hurdles
Complex organic shapes and products with sculptural details also present a whole different set of challenges to prepare them for manufacturing. Designs must be easy to prototype and then described to manufacturing teams — many of which are offshore. They need to be cost effective to produce, not requiring an excessive number of molds or amount of materials. Interoperability with traditional CAD/CAM programs is also often required. The sculptural CAD approach again provides compelling “can do” answers to these challenges.

So what types of products can benefit most from the sculptural CAD approach? Basically, just about anything organic in shape: “spare parts” for the human body, since there’s little else more organic in shape than people; toys; footwear; motorcycle parts; collectibles; home décor items; and consumer products with ergonomic handles, such as razors.

The sculptural CAD approach enables companies to create sculptural designs more efficiently than ever. In a world of square edges, here are four tips for enabling better, easier design of organic shapes and sculptural details:

• Choose the right tool for the right job — and for the right person. Don’t spend 80 percent of your time doing 20 percent of the job. Sculptural CAD is a natural fit for creative types, especially those with physical modeling skills and for designing complex organic shapes. Choose traditional CAD for modeling prismatic shapes and detailed engineering designs. 

• Churn out conceptual models and prototypes to accelerate time to market. Getting it right early in the process saves you time downstream. The faster you test your ideas, the faster you finalize your designs and get client approvals. Look for tools that allow you to quickly create multiple versions, mix and match re-usable parts and then output for rapid prototyping.

• Shorten your learning curve. There’s never enough training time. So stick with 3-D tools that are intuitive to use, fun to learn and allow you to leverage the modeling skills you already have. Solutions that let you work using more of your senses, such as sounds and touch, and not just graphics alone, help speed the learning process and foster productivity.

• Ensure interoperability. The typical digital product design process involves teams of people in different locations, and multiple processes and tools. Plenty of solutions can enhance creativity and manufacturability, but you’ll see limited value from them if they don’t work together to support a streamlined digital work flow.

By using modern technologies applied to the same techniques that have created classic organic sculptural objects from the caveman through Michelangelo to Rodin and beyond, today’s CAD designers can much more easily model manufactured products that look — and are used — like the real-world equivalents.

Laura Wallace is director of marketing at SensAble Technologies Inc. of Woburn, a provider of 3-D touch-enabled (force feedback) solutions and technology. She can be reached at lwallace@sensable.com.