Are your Industrial Designers using Alias Design

Yesterday I slipped in to the IDSA Conference that's being held here in Portland, OR this week to check out what's new in the world of Industrial Design. Key take away for me - everything, and I mean everything is curved, sculpted, ergonomic; nothing is orthogonal anymore. Nothing. Square isn't even square anymore, look at the iPhone. That thing feels just right in your hand and that's not by accident.

Here's the disconnect though as I see it through the walls of my cubicle anyway... Industrial designers come up with some hot looking form to update the design of an otherwise plain looking product. The ID guy (or gal) uses a tool that allows them to machine gun ideas with the stylus set to fully automatic. Sitting down and watching an industrial designer work their art is amazing and in no way could they be held up by setting up a sketch plane, or positioning a work point on a curve so that the loft comes out right.

I get asked all the time - "Why do you guys have so many products?" Because each of our products are purpose built for a specific user profile. In this example, ID needs fast sketch and surface creation tools where an engineer needs design and analysis tools that will allow him / her to make the component lighter, stronger, etc. So... could you do all of that in one application? Yes, you "could" but what's the advantage to ID using an engineering tool or engineering using an ID tool? More often than not, ID looses out and is forces to use the engineering tool limiting the creative flexibility that they may have if they were to use Alias Design.

 So now you have to ask yourself why anyone would do that. The answer from my perspective is pretty clear; it’s all about re-work. Engineers don't want to try and re-model something that was sketched out or drawn in a format that is unusable, or if it is usable its most likely not fully associative. Of course in this example I'm using associative as if the ID design changes, so should the reference to it in the engineering model.

I saw a blog post the other day where a bunch of guys were in somebody's basement trying to figure out if  Pro/E or SolidWorks had better surfacing tools. In one of the pictures the caption was something like we were trying to get Alias like behavior... something, something. I don't remember the rest because I about had an aneurism. Are you serious!? That illustrated my point probably more than I could. Why the H E double hockey sticks would you try to make one application work like or as good as one that already exists and is the standard for industrial design and surfacing.

Uh, I couldn't believe it. But that leads me to asking: "Are your Industrial Designers using Alias Design?"

Lets discuss....
-Rob

 

Comments

[J.D. Mather]

Without Alias Editor for Inventor in the core Inventor product Inventor is doomed to always be behind SolidWorks.

[Rob Cohee]

J.D. Please for the sake of all my readers, enlighten us as to specifically how Inventor is "doomed" to be behind SolidWorks? Please tell me how providing purpose built tools for the different phases of manufacturing is a doomed strategy? What does SolidWorks have for say...electrical? I bet it has something to do with AutoCAD. What about industrial design? Alias perhaps? Don't come in here with a blanket statement without some specifics. It's like that Evo vs iPhone YouTube video. "I don't care, I want the one with the most GB's"... But it's SolidWorks so it's better... What does that mean? Please elaborate.

-Rob

[J.D. Mather]

I would have to write a book to cover all of the bases - it is more than software functionality that is involved here. Perhaps over the next couple of months (this happens to by my busy time) if you care to continue the discussion we can flesh this out.

To start the discussion - who is going to see this technology.
Students can download Alias Automotive, and Inventor from the student community - but not Alias Design.

Alias Design is not included in the Manufacturing or the ID software packages for schools.

[Rob Cohee]

I really think you hit the nail on the head JD. It is absolutely more than software functionality, and I think it would do well for the readers for us to continue this discussion on that level. I think we all grow tired of "but my loft can do this"..."yes, so does ours". Who wins there right?

As far as Alias Design goes yes we give Alias Automotive to students, which has more functionality than Alias Design....except of course Alias Design for Inventor. If I had an empty whiteboard I would go into how that decision was made, but I think it’s safe to say that we are constantly evaluating our go to market strategy with our new technology. Most importantly we are listening to what you guys have to say, and making decisions from there.

The point of this post was to illustrate using the right tool for the right job. Students could absolutely utilize the workflow that I'm advocating using Alias Automotive. Which I strongly believe is superior to using SolidWorks for Industrial Design purposes.

Thanks for the conversation J.D.
-Rob