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Pat · Guest

I'm somewhat new to the CAD area, and while looking around at different CAD
products I've noticed that there seems to be a (somewhat vague) distinction
between those oriented toward machine/mechanical design vs those oriented
towards industrial design. However, it's not entirely clear to me what the
differences are. On first blush the model examples they show all look the
same.

So I was hoping someone could shed some light on this. What is it, in terms
of features or capabilities, that differentiates one from the other?

Thanks for any info.

Pat

Sporkman · Guest

You can get a good idea of the differences from the two different pages
of my online portfolio (Acrobat format), linked from the main page of my
Web site. The first page is all machine design, with one exception.
The second page is all product design which at least somewhat
incorporates industrial design principles (I don't call myself an
industrial designer).

'Sporky'
www.h2omarkdesign.com

Pat wrote:

Bonobo · Guest

If I had to say one thing which I have used to make my final choices on
CAD for now 20 years, it is ease-of-use.

Unfortunately for me, I have bought lots of CAD packages in both 2D and
3D before finding the ones which I consider easy to use.

SolidWorks handles what I need for medical plastic product design and
its tools, though I am not designing things with elaborate surfacing of
"organic" shapes. There are surfacing tools and they are getting more
powerful in SolidWorks, but I rarely used them and are not knowledgable
about the full range of capabilities. There have been flame wars about
the surfacing subject in the past year or so, but it is mostly by some
people hearabouts who have an agenda to promote their orator image.

If you are already in mechanical design, and work with other engineers
and companies, you will need to collaborate with files you both can
read and work with & will likely not want to deal with translation
issues in a major way.

Hence, talk to other companies and consultants and get a feel for what
is used.

SolidWorks has gone from zero users to something like 300,000 licensed
users in about 10 years because it does perform for a lot of users and
companies.

Bo

Sporkman · Guest

Guess I misread your initial post slightly, although I think the
graphics might be useful to help envision what is required for
industrial design as opposed to machine design. Good capability for
SURFACING is probably the most major thing that distinguishes CAD for
industrial design, along with good capability with lofts and sweeps.
SolidWorks has all that, but a couple of the higher end MCADs (like
Unigraphics and Catia) surely have some tools for that which outstrip
SolidWorks.

'Sporky'

Cliff · Guest

On Thu, 10 Nov 2005 15:28:39 GMT, "Pat"
<pkelecy(removethis)@insightbb.com> wrote:

neil · Guest

Bonobo · Guest

neil wrote:

Twit · Guest

A competent IDer will do both...

Ken wrote:

Ken · Guest

Machine design is about making a product work, industrial design is about
making it look pretty!

Ken
"Pat" <pkelecy(removethis)@insightbb.com> wrote in message
news:HGJcf.317549$084.70299@attbi_s22...

neil · Guest

ooooh!! - compulsory attendance at Ed's SWW presentation for you my lad...

Pat · Guest

Thanks for the all the replies.

It makes sense that surfacing abilities would be a notable difference, given
the intent of ID.

Some other things I've seen comments about are the use of constraints to
preserve "design intent" - which I guess is less common in industrial design
products.

What about things like the ability to detect interferences between parts,
compute part volume, mass, or center of gravity? Those also seem like
things that would be less critical for ID applications.

Anyway, just something I started thinking about which made me wonder what
the real differences were. Definitely a gray area though.

Thanks again for the responses. -Pat

Bonobo · Guest

Pat asked "What about things like the ability to detect interferences
between parts,
compute part volume, mass, or center of gravity? Those also seem like
things that would be less critical for ID applications."

SolidWorks handles all of these quite well, regardless of what you are
designing.

Bo

Bonobo · Guest

Pat asked "What about things like the ability to detect interferences
between parts,
compute part volume, mass, or center of gravity? Those also seem like
things that would be less critical for ID applications."

SolidWorks handles all of these quite well, regardless of what you are
designing.

Bo

TOP · Guest

The difference between industrial design is that industrial design (ID)
is concerned with "swoopy" stuff and mechanical design (MED) is
concerned with prismatic stuff. ID is organic shapes and aesthetics,
MED is blocky things and documentation. ID spends a lot of time with
creativity and variations on a theme for a single product, while MED
spends a lot of time varying a single product to fit multiple market
spots or grabbing things from catalogs.

Now before the IDs and the MEDs jump all over me, I have to lay out the
disclaimer that these are extremes and there is a blurred boundary.
Sporky is a good example of that blurred boundary.

There are CAD packages like Rhino that cater to the IDS. They are
non-parametric but very good at the freeform and aesthetic. At it's
heart Rhino is a math engine that manipulates state of the art math
models of geometry. Then there is SolidWorks which is parametric and
therefore able to make many variations on a single theme easily. But it
is also able to do a fairly decent job of the freeform but the freedom
to model is a bit more restricted. And at the heart of SW there is also
a math engine, but it is surrounded by algorithms to make it user
friendly.

Pat · Guest

"Bonobo" <bo@tilikum.com> wrote in message
news:1131660551.361533.177350@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

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