Links Checked 29 June 2003.
According to leading Australian ID consultancies in September 1998 in a survey conducted by the University of Canberra Industrial Design Department, the following is a list of those skills sought by an employer of a Industrial Design graduate:-
1) Sketching and freehand drawing ability have to be excellent... designers have to be fast and fluid, not slow and considered. No polished rendering now required, but basic quick sketch rendering still worthwhile. FAST and loose is the key.
Rendering skills are rapidly being surpassed by software: 10 years ago: Final renderings with pastels and markers 5 years ago: Final renderings with Photoshop and Illustrator Now: Final renderings with Photoshop and Alias or Pro/E + 3D Studio Max
2) Good model making ability in foam, plaster, resins, MDF board including at least an awareness of Rapid Prototyping technologies such as SLA, SLS, LOM, silicon rubber castings, investment casting, soft tooling options etc.
3) Have to know a Vector based package (such as Freehand or Illustrator 7) and a Raster based package (such as Photoshop or Photostyler).
4) 3D Modelling skills in 1 high end package such as Pro/E, Alias, Catia, I-DEAS or to a lesser extent 1 mid-range package like Solidworks 98, Form Z, Rhino 3D, 3D Studio Max etc.
5) 2D CAD skills in Autocad, Microstation or Vellum as a fall back position.
6) Self starters with good presentation and interpersonal skills (able to think on their feet at a client meeting and make a case for the concept), report writing (researching and understanding a detailed brief, documenting the design decision process, QA documentation) any industry experience a bonus (work experience, prior employment, field trips to industrial sites such as car manufacturers, plastic injection moulding plants, toolmakers etc).
7) Excellent appreciation of form and the interaction of positive and negative space.
8) Portfolios should have clear progression of the idea from fluid sketch to detailed sketch to 3D model, GA's are not enough! At least one fully detailed and toleranced part drawing of an injection moulded product, good clear photos of a good model... no poorly scanned sketches!
9) A solid understanding of the product development process and how ID fits with marketing (concept of designing for particular price points and niche markets) another bonus. A good understanding of industrial techniques such as extrusions, laser cutting, fasteners, welding, sheet metal production, composites, blow moulding, injection moulding for electronic products (no Escher products or poorly thought out part lines!). Ability to understand and design basic membrane switches a bonus.
10) All consultancies operate on an hourly fee basis and their designers must document time spent on each project accurately. Time management skills are vital as are an indication of how long the 3D renderings, models and detailed drawings took to complete. Employers want to start making money with the graduate very soon!
Note to 1) Alias or Pro/E
Be able to to take a concept from Alias and convert to a surfaced Pro/E model, solidify, shell and design internal structures ie: bosses, ribs ect.
Notes to 2)
MDF board: Pliable MDF board can be laminated, veneered, printed or drilled.
Rapid Prototyping technologies: Build parts (models) by adding material on a layer-by-layer basis, in contrast to conventional methods that remove material.
eg
SLA (Stereolithography): Creates a tangible 3-D object, or physical model, from a CAD drawing by directing ultraviolet laser radiation onto a vat of polymer resin (liquid plastic). After being cured in an ultraviolet oven, each piece is then hand-polished and finished to specifications (this includes anything from a rough-edged model to a glossy, painted real-life replica). The end product is an exact physical model, or prototype, of the 3-D drawing (in 24 hrs).
LOM (Laminated object manufacturing): Cutting and binding foil. The undersurface of the foil has a binder that when pressed and heated by the roller causes it to glue to the previous foil. The foil is cut by a laser following the contour of the slice. To help the removal of the excess material once the parts have been built, the exterior of the slice is hatched, as opposed to fluid-based processes (e.g.the SLA process), where the interior is hatched.
SLS: Employs semiconductor technology processes. Moulded articles which can not be manufactured by the techniques of precision mechanics, are realized by plasma deposition and etching techniques in connection with lithographic processes.Includes deposition of metals, insulators and optical films on moulded articles of various geometries
also..
SLS: A switch-level simulator that can be used to simulate the logical and timing behavior of digital MOS circuits.
Silicon rubber casting: Silicon-rubber molds for generating multiple wax castings is fairly successful. The molds can be used virtually forever, continually refined across generations of casts. The sprue cleanup work, however, has made this process typically impracticle for large-scale mass-production.
investment casting: The "lost wax" process. 1000+ yr old (Arab?) silver/gold jewelery technique for very smooth surface. Used for jet turbine rotors (spinning at 20,000 rpm!) to aviod fatigue crack initiation.
Soft Tooling: (Pioneered by Boeing) Apply epoxie patties to an undersized core, oven-cure, and then CNC machine. The resulting tools are lightweight, extremely accurate, and dimensionally stable for fabricating prepreg prototypes and short-run parts in an autoclave.
Notes to 3)
Freehand:
www.macromedia.com/software/freehand Macromedia FreeHand 10. Uses vector-based illustration tools to create then publishing across multiple media (page and web anyway).
Illustrator 7: Adobe Illustrator 7, one of the 3 in the vector/drawing applications. PC version now has Identical feature set to the Mac version. Adobe has finally brought Illustrator into sync with their image-editing colossus, Photoshop.
Photoshop: An image editor. Larger and mor complicated than say, Paintshop Pro because it provides for working in print as well as web based work.
Photostyler: Aldus PhotoStyler version 2.01 to manipulate and change photographic content and to produce a multitude of effects on, or with, any photographic image.
Notes to 4)
Catia: www.catia.com IBM Catia ver 5 is CAD/CAM/CAE software.
I-DEAS: Uses CAE/CAD/CAM technology. Develop a digital master model. Obtain iformation about the product's shape, behavior and cost before the fabrication of costly physical models. People from various disciplines can work together much earlier in the product development process to help reduce time-to-market.
Solidworks: A more intuitive and easier to use 3D modelling package than Autodesk's Mechanical Desktop and considered better than their Inventor (or SolidEdge) by many. Links well with XXXX for carrying out finite element analysis (FEA) of the design.
Form-Z 3.8: www.formz.com Robust and versitile 3D solid and surface modelling. Offers direct translator to the LightWave format (to produce animations).
Summary of features.
Rhino 3D: www.rhino3d.com/ Rhino can create, edit, analyze, and translate NURBS curves, surfaces, and solids in Windows.
Teachers and students can buy Rhino for US$195. Schools lab license is US$975.
NURBS, Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines, are mathematical representations of 3-D geometry that can accurately describe any shape from a simple 2-D line, circle, arc, or curve to the most complex 3-D organic free-form surface or solid. Because of their flexibility and accuracy, NURBS models can be used in any process from illustration and animation to manufacturing
For Rhino tutorials, examples and a web ring
perso.wanadoo.fr/3d
3D Studio Max:
For some free tuition
www.3dcafe.com/asp/tut3ds.asp
AutoCad: (Personal view only ..but if you can't drive AutoCad why should anybody think you can do anything)
Microstation: (An altunative to AutoCad)
Vellum:
Ten Top Links for Vellum
www.tenlinks.com/CAD/users/vellum.htm
Note to 8) The GA Technique
The genetic algorithm optimisation technique is based on natural selection and the mechanics of population genetics. It has been applied to scheduling systems. References to GA can be found on the internet applying to architecture, computer program design and designing an irrigation system (civil and enviromental engineering).
Note to 9) "no Escher products or poorly thought out part lines!"
Escher (art) is inspired by the conflicting orientation cues that are used throughout the artwork of M.C. Escher, a Dutch graphic artist, most recognized for spatial illusions, impossible buildings and repeating geometric patterns (tessellations). His work fascinates many and has been studied by mathematicians, scientists and crystallographers.