Designs of the Day

At this point, it is clear that my goal of producing a design each day that would be worthy of posting online was a bit too ambitious. I have spent time almost every day this year doing design work (minus a couple of days of moving into my new apartment). I think one problem I ran into was the same problem I had last year. I kept wanting to outdo myself each time, until it became difficult to continue working at that rate. The time required for each project would increase each time. I realize that this is just my pefectionism kicking in. In order to rein this in, I will change the parameters slightly. I want to keep developing my design skills, so I will continue to do design work every day. I will post once each week with highlights of the week's work. It may be one big project, seven small renderings, or something completely different. It will turn into "designs of the day", instead of "[intermittent] design of the day". I guess I will post on Monday nights for now, but that may change later.

The thing that I will post today is a small collection of photos of an origami tesselation I created. I designed it using a computer program I found online. Little did I know that the design I made was probably one of the more complex and difficult tesselations I could make. I modified the output in Illustrator, and printed it onto a piece of paper.



I cut a section out, and then creased all of the lines, some on one side, some on the other, which took a long time. I then spent probably an hour to collapse the model into what you see here, which is less than half the size it started as. One thing that made it difficult was that it all had to be folded together more or less simultaneously. It was very tricky to fold, but eventually I figured out the patterns, and saw which sections would have to be the highest and lowest points, and that helped in the process. One cool part about origami tessellations is that they create beautiful light patterns when backlit.






I will continue to explore this form of origami occasionally, but for now I want to do just try folding and understanding many different models, with the intention of eventually being able to design my own. I have been inspired by finding tons of amazing examples of origami sculptures online recently, and learning some of the methods of model design. Some of the masters whose works I have been marveling at include Robert Lang, Michael Lafosse, Eric Joisel, Satoshi Kamiya, Brian Chan, Jason Ku, Hojyo Takashi, Tomoko Fuse, Akira Yoshizawa, Issei Yoshino, and many more. I encourage anyone with an interest to look them all up. Prepare to be awestruck.

Bump-less Coffee Table

So, today's design is another piece of furniture. The design comes from a question I asked myself. How would one make a coffee table that would be less likely to cause severe discomfort in the shin region if bumped into? Well, the first thing that came to mind was to surround it with foam rubber padding. This would be excessive, unless the pads had some other use. Well, you could divide it into sections, and then shape them to be used as seat cushions for sitting at the table Japanese style. Well, I played around with the idea for a while, and this is the result. There are six segments, with two different types. They could be used to make sitting cross legged more comfortable by raising the angle a bit, or to rest your knees on while kneeling.



This coffee table would make for a great Lego play table, since it contains pieces and prevents them from falling off the sides.



You can also put the pads onto the table upside down, which makes an interesting pattern.



I chose to construct it with Mahogany for the main surface, and oak for the legs. I changed the direction of the grain for the corner sections of the table to make it more interesting visually, and also to help indicate how to put the pads on. In designing this table, I learned the value of making things easily modifiable. When I changed the size of the table legs, everything updated fine, but when I went back to make a change in the contour of the pads, I ended up having to reassign and redo all kinds of stuff. It was pretty frustrating. Sometimes things like that just can't be helped, but I think I started to see how it could be planned for. You need to build things with the expectation that things will be changed down the road. I guess you would call that a flexible design. That kind of thing was easy to do it POV-Ray with the different coding constructs that help parameterize things, but in solid modeling, it gets a lot trickier. There is so much that is hidden, and below the surface. There are of course ways to explore and see how things were made, but it does take a little while. I have a feeling that once I have put in as much time with SolidWorks as I have with POV-Ray, I will be producing at least as elegant of source files.

Room Arrangement

I'm moving into my friend's apartment soon, while he will be working on the west coast. I needed to decide what furniture I would be able to use, and what I would want to replace with my own. I measured everything up, and then tested out different room arrangements using sketch blocks in SolidWorks. I wanted to follow the rules of Diamond Feng Shui to have my desk and bed both facing in one of my four best directions. Someday, I'll have my office and bed in separate rooms. That will be nice. But for the time being, this will work fine.

 

The UWUD, a WIP

I have been working on this product design for some time now. It will take a lot of work to complete it. Its nature changed as I came up with more ideas on what would compose the Ultimate Wake-Up Device (UWUD). I had an idea for some modular electronic devices for one portion of it, and a couple neat products that compose the other parts. When it is all complete, this will be quite the nice addition to my portfolio. I just need to keep plugging away at it so that I can eventually work out all the details and then present it in a clear, concise manner. This is the first output that's really worth showing; it is a study on some different configuration options for the modules. I figured out how to make design tables to efficiently create multiple configurations for a single part. I had to create the module in a different way than I originally had in order to allow this, though. There is no way that one would use all of the different modules in one device. I am thinking that three layers of add-on modules would be the most that would be practical to use at any one time for a portable hand-held device. I will explain it all in more detail once I add the connectors and the details which differentiate the modules. I'm not sure if this will end up being an original invention, or more of an innovation, taking inspiration from Bug Labs' products. I did come up with this idea independently, but upon further exploration, I discovered that modular electronics products such as this are not that new, though they have yet to reach mainstream acceptance the way that convergence devices such as the iPhone have.

Blocks and Animation

In today's design, I wanted to learn how to use SolidWorks' sketch blocks feature, so I chose a subject that would work well for it, and went to work. It took a while, but I got most of the process down well. Sketch blocks are neat because they allow you to test out a design that has motion only in one plane while you are still in the sketch phase. Then you can create the parts out of that sketch. I created a simple rotary blocks device. I'm not sure what exactly it is called, but it was some little device I saw somewhere. Just posting a still image didn't seem to be enough, so I figured out how to make and save an animation of a simulation. It turned out pretty well. The next step will be to play around with all the different options and types of animations, such as exploding an assembly, making parts transparent, and moving the camera. It can make some cool looking results. I have been working on a product design with a more complex assembly which will benefit from having a nice animation to show how it works and fits together. In case you couldn't view the video below, you can download it here.

Design of the Day - Continue!

Yes, that's right. Since I am an industrial-designer-in-training, this will be part of my training. I will create a new design every day. I will vary the software I use between 2d and 3d, and sometimes I will post a drawing or sketch. I may not post each day, but by the end of the year, I will have posted 365 individual designs. That's a lot, but it's a small drop in the bucket of what I will produce in my lifetime, and I want to start filling it up right away. I want to make every one interesting in some way, and that way there will surely be many that are portfolio-worthy. I am moving out soon, and even if the job I find to support myself does not help me build my portfolio, I will build it nonetheless. My new year's resolutions are to work to support myself in living independently, and to do industrial design. I have the abilities to do real industrial design work, of student level or better, and by doing this kind of work, I shall continue to become a stronger industrial designer. These may be my most challenging resolutions yet, and they may also be the ones that I achieve in the fullest. So, here goes, 2008.

 

Getting Unstuck

Here you can see the results of yet another reverse engineering exercise. I whipped this one out in less than an hour one evening recently, and then worked on rendering it for about a half hour. It was another one of those, "hmm, how would I model this object?" moments that soon became "Now I've just gotta see how quickly I can get this." When my mom found me kneeling in the kitchen examining the OXO measuring cup so intently, she couldn't help but laugh.

It's inevitable to get stuck from time to time. And so I did. The handle for this cup was something new for me, but I wanted to give it a try. I tried to slog through the problem, and tried a couple different approaches. I learned a few things along the way, such as how to create a 3D spline by projecting two non-coplanar sketches onto one another, but still I wasn't able to find a satisfactory solution. I've gotten into the somewhat bad habit of talking to the designers of the program in harsh tones, even though they can't hear me, when I get really frustrated with their program. It's not very helpful to tell me that there was an error, and then not say a word about why there was an error. Sometimes it's over a simple issue that's easily fixed through a bit of trial and error in setting options (which I then go read about), but sometimes it's a much bigger problem. Sometimes after a bit of tweaking, I can get something out of it, which then shows me that my whole approach is flawed. That's still frustrating.





So, after a few hours, I knew it was time to move on. I found a cool product design forum a little while ago, so I looked through another tutorial, discovered an essential feature I had overlooked, and played around with it to have a bit of fun. A silly, improvisational design every once in a while helps me feel refreshed for getting back to my bigger projects.

Still Learning

I have been working on a bigger project the last couple of days, and I want to wait until I'm finished with that before I post it. It could be a decent portfolio piece when I'm done. I suppose it might be good to post it here in rough draft form to get a critique from my readers (both of them). Tonight I worked on reverse engineering a teakettle which was designed by OXO, my favorite kitchenware designer. They make products that look nice, feel nice, and work well. The full user experience is accounted for, not just the purchasing portion. Our previous teakettle looked nice, but was too heavy and had a few design flaws that made it very tough to use. The OXO kettle is a much more complicated design, with curvature along two axes, a linkage in the handle that opens the spout, and some tricky manufacturing details that help simplify thing and hold it together well. Due to thoughtful design, all that structural complexity leads to functional simplicity. I'd much rather struggle to model a great product than breeze through the design of a crappy one. I figured out how to use a few new features through this exercise. It seems that I'm getting faster with the program, and it's getting pretty fun to use. I'm also learning about how it's used within organizations and in industry. It has a lot of potential which I have yet to tap, but I'm glad to not have to use all of it's capabilities quite yet. Knowing of them is good enough for now.

Simple Solutions

Today I learned a few more new features, and worked on some complicated designs. I didn't make too much progress on them, but I did find a solution to a design problem that had been bugging me for a while. I finally figured out how to replicate a very nice looking design element on my Canon printer's front tray. The surface is inset a bit, but the transition is very smooth all around, like the shape of the miniscus of water in a test tube. I couldn't quite figure out where to start for a while, and then I tried something that didn't work quite right, and then I got it. It was a lot simpler than I had thought, and it gives me more confidence that I will be able to keep on finding the simple and elegant solutions to design problems.

Design of the Day: Split Mouse

Today I wanted to figure out how to create an arbitrary object that has separate pieces that join together to form smooth surfaces and line up perfectly. Upon observing the design of things such as computer mice and video game controllers, I hypothesized how this would be done, and set about to figure it out. I found that after a solid shape was created, it could be split by any surface into separate solids that could then be saved as different parts, hidden, deleted, or just assigned separate features. Since I now knew many ways to form surfaces, this opened up a lot of possibilities.
I constructed a computer mouse that was based somewhat on my Wacom mouse, and on my old MS mouse that broke. As I went along, I figured out how many of the features on my Wacom mouse must have been created. The next step would be to figure out how to model the interior parts so that it can hold together and hold all the electronics, while also being efficient to mold and assemble. Making a representation of a product design could be an afternoon project, but actually designing a product from start to finish is a very involved process. I want to be involved in that process again very soon, and that's why I'm working at this so hard.

Surfaces Experiment

I worked on better understanding surface features in Solidworks last night. I made extrusions, sweeps, revolves, lofts, holes, fills, and more. I then knit them together and thickened the surface into a solid. Then I could easily round the edges. I want to learn surfaces better because there are so many types of designs where they are essential. They seem to be most useful for making complex, rounded shapes, such as phones or video game controllers. I haven't mastered them yet, but I'll at least better know where they could be used in a design project. I had fun with the rendering, and added different colored spot lights to give it a cool look.

Canoscan 8600F Reverse Engineering

Yesterday evening I worked on modeling my scanner's lid. It was a lot more difficult than I initially predicted, although if I had to do it a second time, it wouldn't take me all that long. I think I spent about as much time pondering as I did modeling. I had a few "Aha!" moments, and found simple ways to create features that I had been going about all wrong at first. There are a lot of small, subtle design touches in this product which give it a striking look overall. Does the front face need to be slightly curved, angled, and beveled for the scanner to be functional? Heck no. But does it look really cool, and probably cost about the same to manufacture? Yeah. It just costs more to pay some industrial designer to figure out how to add those details. There is a lot more to the lid than what I was able to model, yet although I'm tempted to, I'm not about to dismantle my new scanner to figure out what it looks like on the inside. I wait until they break to do that. I still have the stepper motors from my old HP scanner that conked out a couple years ago. I'll make that egg-plotter yet.

Design of the Day (Times Nine)

Here is a collection of my "Designs of the Day" thus far. Only two were from last year, although I rerendered one of them. Each design involved an exploration of different elements of Solidworks, such as lofts, shells, patterns, flexing, assemblies, sweeps, and of course, lots of fillets (rounded edges). I included larger versions of the images in a small gallery.

I'm starting to look at common household objects differently. I either think, "Oh, I could model that using such and such features", or I think, "Dang, I wonder how I'd model that?" My goal is to have more situations where I can figure it out right away, so I want to practice more.

Design of the Day

I am working to become an industrial designer, so I want to learn to use many design tools, and greatly improve my design abilities this year. I plan to make at least one design every day; either abstract, illustrative, or reverse engineered (copied). SolidWorks is quite useful, so I'm studying that at the moment. Over the last few days, I have made several models to explore the various features in the program. Here, I chose an object in my room to model, so that I could put my knowledge of all the new techniques to the test. I had a fun time figuring out the right combination of features to use to make it work. I then spent a long time working on the settings, scene, and materials to render it properly. It's a pretty close match. This is a cutaway view of my Bose Companion speaker. I'm just guessing at what it might be like inside, as I didn't actually dismantle it. I'll post the abstract experiments I made so far in the next post.