Cool- The Nucleus X was featured in this page at carbodydesign.com

So I was Interviewed for Solidworks World .
It was cool.

These are screen grabs from Solidworks and a render from Photoworks. I like to work top-down, so this is all one part file with multiple bodies. The file size ballooned from 4.5 MB on the first day that I posted here with rough surfaces. By the end of the week the file was up to 298 MB (yikes!) 

 

 

Gonna call it a night. felt productive though. 

 

Last minute cranking is never good :) 

 

So we stumbled onto a great Brainstorming Ice Breaker the other day. We called it "5 Worst". So for instance if you are designing a blender you think of the 5 worst things that you can do to design a blender. What does an outrageously bad blender look like?

1) Blender shoots out liquid through the motor when you start it
2) The button is on the inside of the blender jar
3) The blades are made from spaghetti
4) The blender wobbles as you turn it on - and it gets faster as you turn up the power
5) You cant remove the blade or clean it so that fungus grows within 30 minutes of putting the blender in the sink

See- pretty bad ideas, but...

you can already start to get ideas of what a good blender could be. I am looking at no.4 and thinking "Hmmmm....maybe a blender that works more like a paint blender that shakes the liquid?" at no.3 and going "hmm.. does the blade really need to be a blade...can it be something like a hedge string trimmer?"

I accidentally started out a practise session saying "Awright- give me some good ideas on Concept X" and even as I framed the question my mind was drawing a blank on good ideas. As soon as I started asking for outrageously bad ideas, "How would you go out of your way to design a bad product?", then ideas started flowing. The funny thing was that many of the "bad" ideas in retrospect turned out to be imminently workable.

Very fun little exercise

 

I was helping one of the CCi interns out today. I am kinda happy with this sketchover. 

 

Here are some quick sketches for luggage systems.

 

7 The whole human race is foolish and has no knowledge!
The craftsmen are disgraced by the idols they make,
for their carefully shaped works are a fraud.
These idols have no breath or power.
18 Idols are worthless; they are ridiculous lies!
On the day of reckoning they will all be destroyed.
19 But the God of Israel^[f] is no idol!
He is the Creator of everything that exists,
including his people, his own special possession.

(from Jeremiah 51)

How much of what we do is genuinely helpful to the world? We might design well crafted products, but how does it matter if our products become objects of desire without genuinely helping the people who use them? How much of what we do will make it to the other side? Will it be destroyed. How do my designs strengthen the human net?

I can appreciate an interesting sketch. I believe that I evolved my personal technique as a mish mash from the designers I work with, the work I see online, ArtCenter techniques and from the techniques of Ryan Church and Scott Robertson. However I ferreted out all these sources not to become an individual looking sketch artist, but somene who can quickly pump out as many directions as possible.

The crux of a sketch is that it is merely a means to an end. I am not
really worried if my sketch looks like everybody elses. If the design
is generic however thats the problem. I am still working on that. It is
only recently that I have grown comfortable with my sketch technique
and its abitility to represent shapes. I still have a lot to go as far
as clearly representing mechanical concepts and manually drawing
exploded view during meetings.

The frustrating part of designing products, is partially my own lack
of knowledge of all the manufacturing processes possible in China (it
is a pity that you can have really cool processes available
domestically that the marketing team doesnt consider because of
location), working with skittish marketing teams, as well as
time-frame. I suscribe to many different publications to get me more
information about materials and processes, but time-frame of
development usually means that the development team is not particularly
interested in rocking the boat. My own fear is that I am slowly
becoming too much of a trouble-shooter not exploring ideas, but
evaluating those created by others. So any empirical comments regarding
generating genuinely new ideas are much appreciated.

Addendum: I have worked with many creative engineers and marketers in the past, and I try not to be the slow one in the chain, but sometimes I am the one thats not creative enough. I just dont want to give the impression that the designer is always the creative genius (thats more the exception than the rule really :) )

Thinking of an entry to the Peugeot competition
 

Another sketch. I tried recording the render, but didnt succeed.
I will have to try again.
 

Sketch session at productdesignforums.com
 

  

Here is how I use the warp command in Photoshop to design multiple iterations quickly.
Commands used here:
Ctrl+L for levels
Edit>Transform>Warp
M: Rectangular Marquee
Select>Transform Selection

This was the result of a surfacing demo designed for VARS to demonstrate Solidworks 2007 capabilities. The renders could not be touched up in any way because they were intended to showcase Photoworks. That said I did do some color correction on the second render.



 

I was thinking a while back of making a Solidworks DVD for Industrial Designers. These are some sample files that I doodled with. What do you think of the DVD (or book) idea?