Influence of CAD on the designer

Design Discussions general design discussion
1

Hello everyone

I am currently studying industrial design at loughborough university, and am in the process of constructing my final year dissertation. The title of which is " an investigation into the tools used by the industrial designer and how computer aided design has influenced the design process"

I would be very grateful for any of your opinions on this subject. or whether some of you could answer some of the following questions.

What computer aided design techniques were available to you during your education?

Do you believe there is an ideal way of working for a designer? i.e. A model design process that can be used throughout the design industry.

How has CAD software developed since your first beginnings as a designer?

Do you feel emerging CAD technolgy has enhanced the design process? And why?

Has it allowed for more freedom in the products designed, or has it limited you in anyway? And why?

I have found varying opinions on this subject depending on the skill set, education and place of work of the industrial designer. would be grateful for your opinions.

Cheers[/b]

2

interesting topics of late.

i started in architecture. the curriculum was brutal. no, really. the way it was designed, you weren’t exposed to CAD courses until your junior year. i believe this was to sharpen your technical drawing skills by hand, perhaps to force more pen on paper. one assignment was to be done entirely on cocktail napkins.

i finished my degree in ID and i design furniture, primarily. i think that while doing a seating design, especially for younger designers, it’s extremely useful to draw out their finalized concepts on paper. i mean hand-drawn orthographic views. curve sets with pencils and everything. it creates a sense of comfort and function BEFORE it goes into prototyping. it’s such a great learning experience.

i believe a lot of designers try to compensate a fear of sketching or drawing into a CAD program. I know I did early on. I am not the greatest of renderers, and i still hate markers. however, by making myself draw more, i became better at it. other people noticed it before i did. my pen and paper stuff is ok, but i still prefer to render it in photoshop. it’s quicker and easier to make iterations. my current position, i use a tablet, so i don’t have files of sketes stuffed into a filing cabinet anymore.

i think CAD is a great TOOL, but it can become a crutch to a designer. my instructor in school told us about the importance of hand skills this way: “what are you going to do if the power goes out?”

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Sam Hecht of Industrial facility commented on that exact area recently. I can’t actually remember where the interview was cited, maybe Business Week or something, but Hecht rendered a chair that looked amazing, sent the CAD file off to Italy, flew to Italy to see the chair and found that it was disgusting as a physical product. It was at this point that Hecht kind of changed the way he designs, getting rid of CAD and so on to re-root himself as a pencil and paper designer (or ‘proper’ designer) rather than a CAD designer (at least I think that’s how the story goes).

I think it’s a really interesting area, I did my dissertation on something similar which was ‘physicalising’ things that are not physical, but things we access through haptic devices. The problem with CAD is forgetting that it’s only 2d based, and ID or Product Design is a 3d discipline (funnily enough).

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our manufacturing is mainly in asia. i send renderings all the time with this and that spec’d. if i’m sending a design that is outside our normal parameters, i send a cad model with the renderings…in 3d.

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CAD is our greatest asset and our biggest adversary.

I’ll give some of your questions a try:

What computer aided design techniques were available to you during your education?

I studied at Newcastle just as they were getting in their first PCs. We could use the Apple lab upstairs (but the it was hard to pry the graphic designs away), or put up with some ancient AutoCad machines (4 PCs between 100 ID students!). This was of course somewhere in the mid 18th Century.
I got into Alias at work later on though, and loved it.

It’s funny how CAD seems to draw designers in like moths. It must be the bright lights or something…

Do you believe there is an ideal way of working for a designer? i.e. A model design process that can be used throughout the design industry.

There’s an ideal way to make coffee. It’s just other people seem to think their coffee is better. Same with ID -there are many ways to reach similar goals, and no way of fairly measuring one result against the other.

Here’s my 2 cents anyway. CAD should just be used as a tool to AID the process and not to define the process.

How has CAD software developed since your first beginnings as a designer?

Quicker, faster, more intuitive and user friendly. Early days of Autocad sucked.

Things that haven’t changed: bad posture, long hours, carpel tunnel, and everything takes twice as long as you expect it will.

Do you feel emerging CAD technology has enhanced the design process? And why?

It has given us a lot more control over complex surfaces, that otherwise would have been limited to the size of the radius template or french curve at hand. Believe me, in a studio of ten drawing boards there was only one 150mm radius guide (the other templates went in 100mm increments), so if it wasn’t in immediate sight that handle would get a 200 mm radius instead!
CAD has also given us a better chance to solve more sophisticated assemblies that otherwise would have been left to the engineer to err…‘refine’.

Has it allowed for more freedom in the products designed, or has it limited you in anyway? And why?

Yes. I do however see that many people jump too quickly into CAD before they have solved the issue on paper. Once you’re working in CAD there are other problems to deal with, so if someone starts in CAD too early they limit there range of design-related problem solving to a very small area. For instance, they might jump into CAD to work out the best way to hinge two items when they should be ideating on paper to see if they need a hinge at all.

The other problem with CAD is the one Sam Hecht ran into. Everything looks so much cooler in CAD! It’s back-lit for one, and often rendered with some flattering lights and has no other distractions in the background. The problem comes when you see the object in reality. I don’t believe Sam’s approach is necessarily the right step to take though, I just think the designer should train his eye to evaluate the actual design behind the glamor.. I’ve seen some designers be able to do this well, and it shows in their work.

I hate it when people give long replies to short questions. Oops.

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That is a great quote.

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You should try my coffee

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French Press right?

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Any designer who relies too heavily in any one tool will be missing out on all of the “pro’s” of the other available tools (which balance the “con’s” of the tool in hand.)

The story above about the furniture designer is a great point. That guy should have at least made some rapid prototypes.

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French Press right?

Well, more like ‘British Press’… (fast and straight to the throat).

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very interesting views people, making my research come along nicely.

I am particularily interested in the fact that some people use CAD too early in the design process, limiting their design expression. I feel my course at Loughborough pushes students down the CAD route too much, and too much is weighted on using the taught design process, rather than allowing students to express themselves in the way they work. Having worked in industry i realise the products designed and way of working depends greatly on the type of project and workplace, so a sense of realism is paramount to the industrail designer. However i do not think courses should stiffle creativity in students.

Would be great if people could fill in my dissertation questionnaire, and continue discussing the topic.
here is the link

www.thesistools.com/?qid=28741&ln=eng

Cheers

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What computer aided design techniques were available to you during your education?

Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, 1973.

  1. Required computer course; Fortran Programing. I hated sitting there, in the basement of the Math/Science Building, punching out all those cards … and then having to come back the next morning to see if the program “ran”. What possible reason would I, as an Industrial Designer, ever have for an understanding of computer programing?

  2. Packard-Bell has just introduced the first electronic calculators; there were six of them in the Engineering Building. They were housed in beautifully machined ( by hand ) heavy brass boxes which were chained to a counter … only “engineering” students got access to them.

  3. PAD was the only other tool available … Pencil Assisted Design.